A short while back, the phrase 'Fallen from Grace' was in the headlines again.
Not long ago, it was Prince Andrew's 'fall from grace' that filled the news headlines.
This time it was the recently ousted British Prime Minister Liz Truss…although the reasons for the two are hardly similar, the result elicited the same phrases by the media.
So what was going on here, and what can we learn?
We instinctively know that to 'fall from grace' is to lose your honour…to be in a state of shame…to not perform to the standard of basic social expectations.
For Prince Andrew it was related to links with criminals of the sexual-abuse kind. What exactly he personally did has not been determined by the courts, but his associations and actions taken to settle the case out of court was enough, to not only gain the disdain of the public but also have his mother as Queen strip him of most of his royal status. So one could say he failed to live up to what was expected as morally acceptable as a normal citizen and human being let alone as a royal Prince.
For Liz Truss it was quite different - she was chosen as Prime Minister by her political party and did nothing illegal or immoral by any general moral code, except that she failed to act in a way that met the expectations of her parliament to steer the country in a manner considered to be stable and responsible in the opinion of the party.
Now I don't want to get into any arguments on whether her policies were good, bad or otherwise. What I want to observe is this context of 'falling from grace'.
Both Prince Andrew and Liz Truss failed to meet expected standard in one form or another. Yet, their 'sins' were very, very different, and one could argue that why should Liz Truss be described in the same way as Prince Andrew?
But I think there are two significant things to learn from this.
1. It doesn't matter in which way you 'fall' short, the reality is that 'fallen short' you are.2. If to 'fall from grace' means to no longer be in a position of honour or to lose honour, then we need to realise that the word 'grace' is rooted in honour, almost to the point of being a synonym of 'honour'.
Yet…'grace' is a word that we talk a lot about, especially as Christians, like it was some special concept all on its own. We don't stop to think whenever we read it in our bibles that this is a reality that is entwined, enmeshed, enveloped, infused and inextricably merged with honour. It is often defined as 'God's unmerited favour'…but what is favour? To favour someone is to particularly bestow some kind of honour on them.
We seem to also recognise that to use the word 'grace' in the word 'disgraced' is to recognise a sense of losing honour…yet we still fail to just come out and say that 'grace' means honour.
Surely then we must stop and consider God's grace to us as God's honour put on us. Paul in Romans calls it a gift (Romans 5)…and yes it is a gift…and yes it is unmerited and there are no good works that we can do to gain or achieve such honour being given to us. God's grace is God's unmerited gift of his favour toward us…his favour of giving us the full honour of being in his Son, joint heirs with our Lord Jesus Christ so that our sin's (falling short) shame is covered, our 'disgrace' has been removed and we have been 're-graced' in Christ.
It is none of us and all of Him, we in Christ, and Christ in us.
We are now accepted before God in the glory of His Son and one day will receive the full promise of resurrection glory for our bodies too. We live in, and with, the sure hope of that full glory yet to come.
But meanwhile instead of our sin counting against us, we are counted in the glory/honour status of Christ, and indwelt by Him in the glory of him having the fulness of the God-head dwelling in him bodily.
So….. let that little phrase 'fallen from grace', as it occurs from time to time in our world, remind you of the grace you have truly fallen from in the Garden of Eden's greatest 'Fall' of all, and then ponder afresh the wonderful grace you have been given in God's unmerited favour gifted to us in the glory of Christ.
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