An Existent God; A Holy God; A Personal God

In your last post you set out three pre-conditions that must exist in the mind of a person before the idea of "Grace" -- let alone the acceptance of Grace -- may become a reality. I've been pondering that ever since; even after I'd posted one response. Let me suggest that the whole of the Christian Faith may be difficult if not impossible to grasp without three key foundation blocks in place:

1. God exists
2. God is "Holy"
3. God is personal

God's Existence

It would seem this goes without saying. Certainly if one holds to a purely atheistic worldview, then any discussion of forgiveness, sacrifice and Grace will seem foolish. If God does not exist, then there is no God to offend with my "sin."

However, there's a gray area between faith in no God and faith in the God, isn't there? Many people reside there: "God" is out there ... somewhere ... I think ... I guess. Both you and I fell into this category just a few short years ago.

If one's understanding and belief in God never progresses beyond this, what hope is there of a real understanding of our hopeless standing before God, his selfless sacrifice, his gracious forgiveness? Little, I would suppose.

God's Holiness

And by this I mean that everything about him is unimaginably beyond our standards -- he is powerful beyond our ability to comprehend; he is perfectly righteous; he is unchanging, not needing to change because his every way is flawless; his sense of justice and mercy is perfect.

That's a very difficult thing to imagine. Our minds, I think, stop well short of being able to fully apprehend it.

And yet understanding this -- however dimly -- is, I think, a pre-requisite to saving faith. The idea of us falling short -- even the truly saintly among us -- before this perfect God is what moves to understand a need for a savior. The idea of a need to make restitution for the offense committed before this perfect God would seem folly if we felt that God himself was capable of an occasional mistake or error in judgment.

God's Personal Nature

Finally, if the "perfect God" was utterly indifferent towards the world, then any notion of his taking special effort to provide a means of salvation to us would seem ridiculous. This is where the idea of God being a "life force" or "universal energy" falls short. There is no concept of the personal in a "force" or an "energy." A non-personal force or energy may be "out there," but if it has no personal interest in me, then why I would take an interest in it isn't clear.

But once one starts to grasp the idea of the existent God -- the Holy God -- taking a real and personal interest in each of us ... well, then the dynamic of things changes quite a bit.

Please ... do not misunderstand me. I am not saying that a person must fully and comprehensively grasp all three to be in a position to have saving faith. I believe I have little more than a tenuous grip on all three. But your comment about talking to someone about "Grace" prior to establishing the pre-conditions you outlined really got me thinking. You're absolutely right ... there must be some "up front" beliefs before the Christian story makes much sense. The point I'm making in this post is that the three points I've outlined here is what "sets the stage" for a subsequent discussion of sinfulness, sacrifice, atonement, justification, salvation and ... Grace.

Note: an analogy -- I can hardly teach someone about derivatives or integrals before first teaching them about numbers and fractions ... or at least determining if they already know about those prerequisite skills.

I am still pondering your other questions:

• Why God would require a sacrifice?
• What exactly did God suffer or sacrifice during the crucifixion of Jesus?