Chapter 8 Naive Grace

* The heart of Jesus loves us as we are not as we should be, beyond worthiness and unworthiness, beyond fidelity and infidelity; He who loves us in the morning sun and the evening rain without caution, regret, boundary, limit, or breaking point. - Brennan Manning, The Signature of Jesus

* What I am suggesting is that God's grace is so outside the lines of our understanding that we can only stand in awe and wonder. Christianity is not about learning how to live within the lines; Christianity is about the joy of coloring. The grace of God is preposterous enough to accept as beautiful a coloring that anyone else would reject as ugly. The grace of God sees beyond the scribbling to the heart of the scribbler - a scribbler who is similar to two thieves who hung on crosses on either side of Jesus. One of the two asked Jesus to please accept his scribbled and sloppy life into the kingdom of God ... and He did. Preposterous. And very good news for the rest of us scribblers.

* Grace equalizes the unequal.

* The grace of God is dangerous. It's lavish, excessive, outrageous, and scandalous. God's grace is ridiculously inclusive. Apparently God doesn't care who He loves. He is not very careful about the people He calls His friends or the people He calls His church. Exactly.

* Jesus was making it very clear that there was not one iota of room in the church for arrogance because none of us belongs in it!

* The grace of God levels us all. All of us are broken, all of us are flawed, all of us are undeserving. There's no room in the church for pride, a judgmental attitude, or arrogance. All of us have had our debt "paid in full."

* Grace graces even our failures.

* Grace is difficult to believe and difficult to accept. We want so desperately to believe that God loves us unconditionally, yet we keep adding conditions. "Okay, fine," we say reluctantly, "but once we accept God's grace, we'd better get our act together. We had better be successful or we won't be worthy of His grace." We just cannot believe God can grace even our "failures."

* The grace of God says to you and to me, "I can make last place more significant than first place. I will use prostitutes to teach others about gratitude. I will use lepers as examples of cleanliness. I will take men who persecute the church and make them its pillars. I will take the dead and give them life. I will take uneducated fishermen and make them fishers of men." God's grace does not exist to make us successful. God's grace exists to point people to a love like no other love they have ever known. A love outside the lines.

* Grace includes the excluded.

* Naive grace is the kind of love that wants everyone to be included instead of finding ways to exclude. Jesus Christ was naive enough to love anyone and everyone. Even adulterers.

* Jesus was not ambiguous about sin and certainly did not condone adultery, and luckily He wasn't ambiguous about grace.

* This woman knew all about condemnation. She knew the Scriptures, knew the sad and empty consequences of her lifestyle, but she didn't know about grace. Jesus introduced her to a scandalous grace and then reminded her, "Leave your life of sin."

* The grace of God is indiscriminate, foolish, impractical, unrealistic, crazy, and naive. If God is not careful, people like you and me might actually believe Jesus Christ is winking at us ... just like a little child.