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(The following is a combined version of what was said in three different services.)

What do you remember about what was going on before you were born? I suppose that people have almost always understood that children aren’t born out of a vacuum: that our existence is due to our parents and to their parents before them; that many of our physical traits are ours because they were passed on to us from our ancestors; and perhaps also that the events and character of our community and home shape how we perceive the world around us, how we learn to think, and in large measure what it’ll be possible for us to become.  None of us knew that any of that was the case before we were born, but it was—before we knew it!

Let me make it more personal. Before Lauren was born, we were serving a church in Lake Jackson. At conference time, I was to be appointed to return to school to a Ph.D. program, so in anticipation of our move and of Lauren’s birth—at that time still more than five months away—some of the folks we had come to know and love gave Martha a baby shower. And when we moved, we prepared a room in our little home for the happy day when our first daughter would enter our lives. Lauren didn’t know about any of it; in fact, she has never met most of the people who helped make her young life comfortable. She benefited from their giving, as from our own preparation, but it all happened before she knew it.

Those of you who attended or are attending (or hope some day to attend) the university across the street—and those of you who work or have worked there—know the traditions that are held dear to the A&M community—traditions that, in many cases, were well established before you knew about them. Maybe some of you will have an influence in building some of the traditions (I say “some” because the body of tradition is far larger than any individual). If so, whatever you contribute will be bequeathed to future Aggies; the new situation you create will exist before they know it.

We could multiply the illustrations in matters of life and death. Whether it’s an unexpected opportunity that “drops into your lap,” the sudden loss of a loved one before you were able to say your good-byes, or any number of other moments in life, things often have a way of “creeping up on us” and “taking us by surprise.” They happen due to forces that are at work before we have a chance to do anything about them. They happen before we know it.

What We Believe: Grace

For the past six weeks, we’ve been looking at the church’s foundational beliefs. They’re all aspects of common Christian and United Methodist faith that were handed down to us. When Paul wrote the Corinthians, “I handed on to you as of first importance what I in turn had received . . .” (1 Cor 15:3),  he was saying, “folks, this isn’t some new-fangled message that I brought to you, and I didn’t invent it; it preexisted my ministry; declaring it is a grace entrusted to me (Rom 12:3; 15:15); I’m only a witness, a link in the chain, transmitting to you something that’s bigger than I am.”

In our scripture for this morning, we’ll see the same thing—illustrated in Jesus’ first encounter with one of his disciples, and illustrating a fundamental truth about the way God relates to us and to all humans. Something essential about the relationship was established before we knew it.

The key word is grace. We’ll see it unfolded over the next couple of weeks as Laurinda and Lance lead us in examining two of the signal movements of grace in the Christian’s life: justifying grace (the grace that sets us right before God) and sanctifying grace (the grace that carries us on toward God’s goal of re-forming us into the image of Christ).

Today, we look at what Methodism calls prevenient grace, the grace that goes before us, the grace that was there before we knew it, that made possible our first movements toward faith, and that’ll characterize God’s way of relating to us until the end of our natural life and in our fully realized eternal life.

But let’s first listen to the word in John’s Gospel.

The Text: John 1

Jesus is calling his disciples. Andrew, a former follower of John the Baptist, has already sought Jesus out, and when Jesus taps him to be a disciple, Andrew becomes the first evangelist. He goes and finds his brother Simon, whom Jesus renames “the rock” (Cephas/Peter). Next, Jesus calls Philip, who goes and gets Nathanael.

At first sight, Nathanael appears to be a “tough sell”; as it turns out, he’s just an uncharacteristically honest and no-nonsense guy (maybe with a sense of humor)—somebody who speaks his mind but who is ready to learn and to follow. Philip finds him, and the conversation goes something like this:

Philip: “we have found him about whom Moses in the law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus son of Joseph from Nazareth!”

Nathanael (skeptical or chuckling?): “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” (That may have been a common expression, but it certainly reveals the relative insignificance of Jesus’ home town in his mind.

Philip: “Come and see.”

And that’s where we pick up with the reading:

John 1:47-51 When Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him, he said of him, “Here is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit!” ⁴⁸Nathanael asked him, “Where did you get to know me?” Jesus answered, “I saw you under the fig tree before Philip called you.” ⁴⁹Nathanael replied, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!” ⁵⁰Jesus answered, “Do you believe because I told you that I saw you under the fig tree? You will see greater things than these.” ⁵¹And he said to him, “Very truly, I tell you, you will see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.”

It’s an interesting encounter, isn’t it?—Jesus in control, anticipating at every stage: recognizing Nathanael’s character, “seeing” him before his arrival, and revealing something of what is to come.  Reading it superficially and out of context, we might be inclined to say, “OK, so Jesus was a psychic.” Clearly, this Gospel writer imagines nothing so cheap. Instead, this is part of a consistent picture already painted for us in earlier verses and carried throughout the Gospel. Look back, if you will, at the climactic affirmation in the prologue:

John 1:14-17 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth. ¹⁵(John [the Baptist] testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.’”) ¹⁶From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.  ¹⁷The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

In these words, I think the Gospel has already interpreted for us something essential about what’s transpiring between Jesus and Nathanael in our own text. And it has already given us license to understand that encounter as an encounter of grace. (Is it coincidence that even Nathanael’s name means “God has given”? He is mentioned only in this Gospel [he may be the Bartholomew of the other Gospels], and one wonders if John isn’t trying to convey something by reference to Nathanael’s personal name. Is John reminding us of what verses 14, 16, and 17 said God gave through Jesus—grace?)

In any case, John is clearly presenting Jesus to us, not as one who merely knows ahead of time, but as one who comes to the present out of eternity (remember 1:1—“In the beginning was the Word . . .”), bringing grace and truth.

We’re not being introduced to a mere man, but to the Son of God—as John the Baptist had testified (v. 34) and, notice, as Nathanael confesses in v. 49. We’re being introduced to the Word who was with God and was God from the beginning, and who now appears in human form. 

From the outset of his Gospel, John wants to stretch our minds about who this Jesus is.  Hebrews 13:8 declares that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever.”  It’s an affirmation that John could as easily have made.  Jesus, so to say, comes to the present as one who has somehow already been here in understanding and purpose. And what he brings to the present is a continuation of what he has prepared in the past.

(We could follow the trail of thought right on down to John 14:2-3, where Jesus announces to the disciples his purpose in departing: “I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”  As Christ has previously prepared our present, he will prepare our future. And he’ll also prepare us for it.)

At heart, that’s what we’re talking about when we use that odd-sounding term that is so central to Methodist theology.  Prevenient grace.

The Place of Prevenient Grace in Christian Life

“Prevenient,” as all you Latin-students and Methodist lay theologians know, refers to something that “comes before.”  In Wesley’s day, the term “preventing” was often used, since “prevent” derives from the past participle of the same Latin word (venire, ventus).  In a now-archaic meaning, “prevent” once meant “to prepare for an occasion, to meet or satisfy in advance, to act or arrive ahead of time.” That’s how Wesley knew and used the word. But now we say “prevenient.”

As applied to grace, prevenience expresses a foundational concept in a robust Wesleyan doctrine.  The back of our “Vision Path” brochure and this week’s newsletter describe it, not unreasonably, as a core belief. What does it mean?

In Methodist theology, it has two basic senses, though sadly, we tend to hear only about the first one:

1. In the standard three-stage “map” or “timeline” of faith, prevenient grace is the grace that is prior to justification. It’s the first element in a three-stage movement of grace in our lives that Wesley identified as being:
     Prevenient - Justifying - and Sanctifying.

As such, it really was essential to Wesley’s theology. Let me see if I can illustrate and explain why.

Friday’s newspaper carried a story about a Texas Dept. of State Health Services study that has revealed a high rate of birth defects in Corpus Christi.  Babies born there, it showed, are 17 percent more likely to have a severe birth defect and nearly twice as likely to be diagnosed with some kind of birth defect than were babies born elsewhere (The Eagle [7/14/06], A7). The question epidemiologists and area residents face is why? What environmental factors are responsible—refineries, chemical plants, landfills in Nueces County, or what?

In an orderly world, any time a situation differs markedly from the perceived norm or from what we anticipate, people for whom the difference matters tend to take note.  The victims may just feel helpless. If it goes on long enough and they’re isolated enough, some may eventually accommodate to the unusual situation and begin to regard it as normal. Others, realizing their powerlessness against what they know to be abnormal, may look for help from elsewhere—or for escape.

But let’s change the image. Suppose some “abnormal” situation has, in our experience, come to be universally “normal”—the way things actually are and always have been—everywhere. But suppose that something (whether history, legend, intuition, or wishful thinking) tells us it is “not the way things ought to be.” 

If it were something as simple as a “lemon” you were driving around, other people’s experience and maybe your own prior car ownership would tell you that the thing shouldn’t need to be in the shop all the time, and a lemon law might give you the right to get reparations. But what if the lemon experience were everybody’s?  Would you conclude that car makers just hadn’t “gotten it right” yet, or would you suspect that “getting it right” wasn’t possible—that there was something perhaps in the nature of powered vehicles that made them impractical?

Maybe, for example, you would realize—we’re imagining, after all—that you lived in a world where the natural elements didn’t provide materials durable enough to withstand the rigors of automotive technology.  Some people would struggle to make do with what was available; others might seek out new sources of materials to attain their dream of Nascar racing (though it’s hard to know where they’d look, since weak metal was universal). A fair number of people would probably become satisfied with the existing situation and just make friends with the local mechanics (they’d use the lemon to make lemonade), and a minority would remain dissatisfied and grumble but do nothing about it.

It’s admittedly a parable. But let’s apply it in a rough way to theology.

John Wesley inherited a doctrine of the total depravity of humanity. The idea had come to full expression in the Reformation, but it rooted in Augustine’s fifth-century understanding of original sin, an understanding that in turn was based on Augustine’s reading of the New Testament, and especially Paul.

This is what Kip talked about a few weeks ago when he characterized us as “broken mirrors.” We were meant to bear the image of God—to reflect God’s nature and to relate to God in unique ways. But something intervened that irretrievably distorted that image. Sin entered the world—not just as random misdeeds, but as a power that gained mastery and enslaved every person born into the world.  No one is exempt.

To use the terms of our parable, it’s as if the molecular structure of our imaginary world was altered and elements ceased to have what should be their normal strength. It’s not that the elements ceased to exist or that they were useless for any purpose, but they became ineffective for the chief purposes they should have served.

Again in theological terms, a radical breach was effected between humans and God, and it became impossible for us to love God perfectly, to relate to one another as God’s creative purpose had intended, and to become, individually, fulfilled people. It became impossible even for us to desire to be, once again, whole persons. And no amount of merely human effort can change that basic reality.

In its essentials, Wesley shared this doctrine of original sin and total depravity not just with the Anglican church, in which he was ordained, but with the Calvinist traditions, among others. And therein lay a dilemma. Because Calvinism (what we know as Presbyterian and Reformed churches) moved by a natural progression from (1) saying that humans are totally depraved and incapable of knowing or responding to God to (2) saying that some humans were enabled to respond because they were unconditionally elected (i.e., predestined) to salvation by God and irresistibly graced for it. They could do nothing but respond; God’s sovereign election and irresistible grace made it impossible for them to turn away as their fallen nature would otherwise predispose them to do. Christ’s atonement, Calvinists asserted, was thus limited: it affected only the elect; others were predestined to perish.

All these Calvinist assertions except that of the entirely broken human condition were anathema to Wesley, but the problem was how to get around them. How did one affirm both that human character had been totally ruined by the power of sin and that there was some unaffected element, some unspoiled remnant of the divine image in us that could respond to God?

Enter the doctrine of prevenient or preventing grace—grace that comes to us while we are yet sinners and by which we are enabled to take the first steps toward God. It really is grace before we know it.

That brings us back to what we learn in the first chapter of John’s Gospel. In John 1:17 a little while ago we read about grace and truth coming through Jesus Christ. Essentially, Wesley said, this grace—prevenient grace—was the gift of Christ to all people. (The “all” is critical here, and it’s why our hymnal violates the meter of Hymn 139 in the way it punctuates the second stanza. We sang it at the beginning of the service: “God’s care enfolds all, [comma!] whose true good He upholds.” The comma distinguishes a Methodist belief [God upholds the true good of all people] from a potentially Calvinist belief [God’s care enfolds all of those in the select group of people whose true good He upholds].) 

According to Wesley, universal prevenient grace does two things:
     a. it brings basic forgiveness for sins of the past, and
     b. it restores our ability to respond to God.

And it does these things as a first step, a preparation of us to be able to desire the good, to hear the gospel receptively, and to respond and receive God’s justifying grace in Christ.

So that’s one aspect of prevenient grace in Wesley—the first level of God’s new initiative toward humans in Christ. The second aspect of prevenient grace isn’t so constrained to the early stages of our journey with God, but is much broader:

2. As Wesley scholar Randy Maddox points out, Wesley also “invoked the prevenience of grace to affirm that every salutary human action and virtue, from the earliest expression of faith to the highest degree of sanctification, is grounded in the prior empowering of God’s grace” (Responsible Grace, 84).

From this perspective, the fourth stanza of Hymn 365 (“Grace Greater than Our Sin”), which we’ll sing in a few minutes, tells only part—and not the basic part—of the story.  “Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace, freely bestowed on all who believe.” It’s perfectly true that those who believe receive further grace. (Maybe this is part of what the Gospel means in saying that we receive “grace upon grace.”) But if the stanza is intended to say that in order to receive grace, we must first believe—that is, if believing is understood as a prerequisite, a qualifying action on our part for the reception of grace—the stanza isn’t Methodist.  It would be much more Methodist if it read: “. . . freely bestowed that all may believe.”

The fact is, of course, that all don’t believe. But Wesley, and Methodism following him, utterly rejected the notion that the reason some don’t believe is that they weren’t given the grace to do so—and the conceit that the reason we believe is that we’ve been specially elected and predestined for salvation.  Similarly, Methodism repudiates the idea that some people are predestined to damnation—not because we doubt that there is such a thing as ultimate loss and damnation and that some people will experience it, but because we believe God offers grace to all. And we believe God does that preveniently in order that everyone may share together in life—but not as determining that everyone must.

What Is Prevenient Grace?

So what is prevenient grace? The question may surprise you. Maybe you’re thinking, “haven’t you just told us what it is? It’s the grace that precedes us, the grace that is at work for us before we know it.”

Sure. Good enough. That’s what it means and does, but what is it? What’s its nature as grace?

We know what it’s not, right? Friday’s newspaper story from Corpus Christi is only an illustration. Before anyone was aware of it, something has been at work producing birth defects, altering life as it should be.  The sin and brokenness of our own lives has the same effect—and will continue to do so unless something intervenes. That’s what prevenient grace does.

What is prevenient grace, that it can accomplish (or begin the accomplishing of) such a rescue? Two questions have typically come to the fore, and we’ve already anticipated the first:

1.  Is it pardon, or is it power at work in us? (These were the typical Western and Eastern answers.) Wesley taught both. Grace is unmerited pardon, wiping away the stain of what is past (of original sin), and it is God’s power, shaping and restoring our created but fallen natures and enabling us to respond to God.

Between the Western and Eastern theological traditions, a debate had long raged between these two options. Western theologians had generally emphasized pardon; Calvin did so almost exclusively. But the Eastern theological tradition, understanding grace more as participation in God, focused on the power dimension. Over and over in his sermons, Wesley combined the two, and in his brother Charles’s hymns they’re inseparably woven together.  According to John Wesley, the grace of creation was complemented by the grace of restoration; thus as the Gospel testifies, it is “grace upon grace.”

2.  The second question is one that you may think only theologians could debate: Is prevenient grace a created thing or an uncreated presence? Here, Wesley took a side. Grace, he insisted, isn’t some “thing” that God manufactures to apply to us, but the unmerited presence of God in our brokenness. It is not a gift from God, but the gift of God at work in and among us. It is not a “possession” that we could “have” but a transforming relationship that we continue to enjoy or forfeit as we welcome or resist the One who comes to us.

To put it in biblical imagery, I suggest that the prevenient grace of God is something like the Spirit of God upon the waters of a still-formless creation. What God’s Spirit did, blowing upon that setting, we can’t say precisely, but it was into that Spirit-swept environment—into the place of His presence—that God spoke and brought forth light and life.

So What?

But not many of you came for a theology lesson this morning. At least, not if it’s unrelated to practical living.  And neither did I.  So how do we apply our understanding of the grace that precedes us? What difference does it make? Let me suggest a few ways. Most of these could easily occupy a whole sermon, so you’ll have to fill in the blanks for yourselves. But let me offer some quick thoughts:

Baptism of infants

As you know, it bothers a lot of people that in the UMC we baptize infants rather than waiting until they become “believers.” It’s not that we don’t baptize adults; of course we do when they come to faith and have never previously been baptized. But if children are born into a Christian home or to at least one Christian parent who intends to raise them in faith, we baptize them.

Why? In briefest form, we see baptism not as a legalistic means of “obeying” God (as some churches claim) but as an acknowledgment of God’s presence and activity in us—an activity that, as we’re reminding ourselves this morning, always in part precedes our recognition of it and response to it.  We also see infant baptism as an intentional commitment of ourselves to God’s gracious presence and power.  So as parents and as a congregation, we come to God, giving thanks for God’s grace already at work in the child’s life and covenanting to be partners with Him in extending that prevenient grace to one we recognize as an heir together with us in God’s life.

It’s a fitting visible sign and acknowledgment of God’s gracious dwelling among us and of a grace that, if Wesley was right, has already wiped away the stain of past sin and positioned us for growth. What a beautiful thing for children never to know the harsh dominion of sin because they have grown in an atmosphere of grace and increasingly consciously accepted that grace from the beginning!

Communion

When we come to the Lord’s Table, we come to a table of grace—a table that has been prepared beforehand, a table that Jesus shared with his disciples on the night before he was betrayed, and a table that took on new meaning as it was sealed by the offering of his body and the shedding of his blood for the sin of the world.

If we follow the Communion service in the hymnal, we hear, each time, the words of pardon, the “good news” from Romans 5:8—“Christ died for us while we were yet sinners; that proves God’s love toward us. In the name of Jesus Christ you are forgiven.”  While we were yet sinners? Exactly. Grace that shaped God’s eternal plan and was revealed in Jesus Christ has broken through our sin before we knew it.

United Methodists call Communion a “means of grace,” but that makes the offer of it no less an act of grace—prevenient grace—that offers us the opportunity to respond.

Prayer for the Unborn

Let’s go back to the introduction of my message. We buy gifts for our unborn babies; why not invoke grace for them as well? Do we imagine that God can’t or doesn’t do anything for a child until the child is born? Or do we resign ourselves to think that that what God does, God does in the same measure whether or not we ask?

We baptize babies. So why don’t we dedicate parents-to-be—or even those wishing to be parents? Why not give greater place for the operation of God’s grace? Why not give the children-to-be of the church a gift before they know it?

There’s no knowing what each child born into the world will face. But God is bigger than any spiritual, human, or natural evil. And His grace is ready to meet us. What I’m pleading for is that we open ourselves to that grace, that we learn to apprehend it on our own behalf and on behalf of our children and the children of the church at the earliest possible point.

Dating and Marriage

Take God’s prevenient grace back another step before the conception and birth of a child—or is this forward into the life of the child who has grown up? What about dating and marriage?

When do we begin to recognize God’s wisdom with respect to how we relate to others? Once we have gotten what we are looking for in a relationship? Only after we have pursued it to some predetermined level and are engaged, or standing at the altar, or even married?  Or do we, from the beginning, resolve to focus in absolute purity on getting to know the other person and on encouraging their growth in Christ, while leaving it to God to show us if and when the time is right for the relationship to become a commitment, and the commitment to become a marriage, and the marriage to become what only a marriage should be? Do we take hold of the grace that awaits us, or do we turn it away in favor of our own passions and “wisdom”?

Every Aspect of Daily Living

This is a message of God’s prior presence in everything we do and everything we can face. Wherever we are in life, the eternal God is there before us. Not there in the sense of predetermining the details of events, but there, as I’ve imagined it, like “the spirit of the Lord hovering over the waters” of a still-incomplete creation.

Some people like to say that “nothing catches God by surprise.” I think it’s more than that. I think God has not only anticipated everything but also planned for it. Not intervened in it and determined it except, perhaps, in cases where we’ve welcomed and invited His presence. But known us and planned perfectly for us.

From our salvation from a broken human condition to the offer of meaning and opportunity for a child born out of tragedy and into tragedy, to God’s ability to rescue you from whatever it is about life that has dealt you a raw hand, to God’s ultimate purposes in history and in each individual life, God’s grace knows a way.

But God’s prevenient grace isn’t the end of the story or the whole story. It’s something much more like the beginning and continuing condition of every story. Because prevenient grace needs a response.

Wherever we are, God is already graciously present, ready for us. But what we do in response to that grace matters.

This isn’t a back door into legalism (though some people could easily turn it into that), but it is a warning to the complacent who think, “I can do whatever I want, because God’s grace comes regardless of my action.”

George Macdonald wrote that, paradoxically, we aren’t condemned for the sins we’ve committed but for the sins we continue to commit. There’s a certain truth in that, because God comes to provide a gracious way out of sin. But what happens when we spurn that grace isn’t so much that the grace is revoked as that we become less able to recognize it—and when we do respond, we have more ground to cover and less preparation for covering it than if we had responded sooner.

This is exactly the situation and mistake that the author to the Hebrews devotes two chapters (3 & 4) to warning readers about. “Don’t harden your hearts, but to strive to enter God’s rest, “while it is still today” (i.e., while the opportunity still exists).

It’s no secret that in our society, employment opportunities are often given on the basis of preference; it’s often not what you know but whom you know that matters. Those are usually unfair situations, and we all recognize it (unless, of course, we happen to be the beneficiaries of the preference).  But imagine a situation where the employers are honest and gracious: they still have to make decisions, and the more evenhandedly they do so, the more it’s going to matter what we’ve done with the earlier opportunities we had (whether, e.g., we dropped out of school or finished with distinction, served with distinction or were derelict in duty, cultivated proper relationships or spurned them).

Twice in the NT we’re reminded of what the Proverb (3:34) says: “God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble” (Js 4:6; 1 Pet 5:5).  In fact, I think it’s fair to say that God can’t continue to give grace to anyone else.

Which means that in every circumstance, we’re left with a choice. Because prevenient grace isn’t a “thing,” an impersonal “is.” It’s ultimately an offer that ceases to be if its Possessor is rejected.

How do we want to move into the future? What do we want its shape to be? Shall we go our own way and bear the consequences of unfulfilled life, or do we want to go “from grace to grace”? The difference between the two isn’t in whether we earn grace to get us there; it’s in what we do with the grace that, at every stage of our life, is already there for us—before we know it.