Life in the Kirk has been in quite the upheaval as of late.  One member dealt with cancer at the beginning of the year, and another member suffered cardiac arrest, finishing his race at the beginning of September.  But, God has called us to continue bearing witness to Himself and to His great glory until He returns or calls us home, so carry on we shall and we do.

Our Sunday school lessons this year have been a trek through the Westminster Shorter Catechism.  The first 38 questions of this catechism are tremendous gateways into the fundamentals of the historic and biblical Christian faith.  Questions 39-81 concern our duty before God, and questions 82-107 address the human responses of saving faith and prayer to God's saving grace.  Each of these questions is grounded firmly in God's Word, and this brings me to the title of this post: the means of grace.

What are the means of grace?  Protestants have identified them as Word, sacraments, and prayer.  It is good to read the Word as individuals, but it is also necessary to have the Word correctly interpreted, so the composers of the Westminster Standards identified preaching as the primary means of grace.  If you want an interpretation of a text that allows you to do what you want, you can find that interpretation.  How do we know which interpretation of the text is the correct one?  How can we identify which interpretation or interpreter gives the correct meaning of the text?  Before answering this question, it would be wise to address another.

Often, when people hear "means of grace," they think that everyone who receives the means of grace automatically receives God's saving grace.  If this were the case, then everyone who lived before Christ who was ever circumcised and/or participated in Passover was saved.  Further, those who have been baptized and/or participate in the Lord's supper since Christ would also be saved, automatically!  This is clearly not the case both from Scripture as well as from our personal experience.

Moreover, the Scriptures also make clear that we cannot please God without faith!  (See especially Hebrews 11:6.)  What is the relationship among grace and means of grace and faith and glory that makes it impossible for us to please Him without faith?  Why do faithful preachers speak in such a way as to foster true, saving faith in you?  Ah.  Now we are getting to the heart of the matter!  Now we can put forward definitions of our terms to help us understand the importance of having a correct understanding of these great matters.

Let's start with grace.  What is grace?  Grace is a common name.  Usually, when people say, "Give me some grace," they mean, "I know I'm not good at this, so please don't judge me," and extending grace and understanding is certainly a balm to the soul!  But, God's grace is greater than that. 

Grace is God's desire and decision to show covenantal favor toward all those sinners whom He has chosen to turn into saints. 

What is covenantal favor?  Covenantal favor is the love that God has for all His saints in Christ.  It is God's extending His great gifts to His saints.  These gifts are the gifts of life toward God, faith in Him, the forgiveness of sins, justification with Christ's righteousness, adoption into familial unity with God Himself, eternal life, growing desire to walk in God's ways, and a delight in being made like Him when we see Him face to face!  These are the spiritual blessings with which all who are in Christ are blessed.  These are the gifts contrasted with the judgments that we all deserve from God.  It is God's grace that motivates Him to choose some sinners to turn into saints, and He makes this transformation by means of grace.  He sovereignly uses means to produce in His people the life that He has and gives.

As above, these means are Word, sacraments, and prayer, but especially the preaching of God's holy, inspired, infallible, and inerrant Word.  It is the sound preaching of God's Word that helps us understand the fundamentals of Who God is, who we are, why we are in trouble before Him, how we are made right with Him, and why we should want to be made right with Him.  If we misinterpret Scripture, we run the risk of getting faith wrong, of robbing God of His glory, and of remaining under His ire despite our best efforts to the contrary.

This brings us back to the Word.  If we think of individual reading of the Word as brushing and flossing our own teeth, we recognize that we need to do this on a daily basis to keep our teeth and mouths from becoming diseased.  And we also need the regular cleaning of our mouths by an expert who wields specially-designed tools to remove all the excess plaque, calculus, and tartar, all of which will foster disease both in our mouths as well as in the rest of our system.  We might feel fine for a while, but the neglect will lead to greater and greater complications in the rest of our lives.  The preaching of the Word is like going to the dentist to have x-rays taken, gunk scraped off our teeth, cavities filled, teeth removed, and so on.  Listening to the preaching of the Word is not always a pleasant exercise.  Paul tells Timothy in 2 Timothy 4 that preaching involves much more than explanation of the text.  Timothy is commanded to reprove, rebuke, and exhort with great patience and teaching.

A pastor needs to take x-rays of your soul, to listen to your words and say, "Here's what you need to do in order to change for the better."  He needs to say, "Not that way.  This is the way of good that God has defined for us to walk in."  A pastor needs to scrape things off your teeth with the fine and precise instruments of the Word of God.  He should not take those instruments and cut up your mouth, but he should use them to get rid of the death that--left unchecked--will spread throughout your mouth and eventually your body. 

When a pastor preaches and shepherds well with skill, precision, care, compassion, and proper training; he is pointing his people to God.  And this brings me back to an earlier question: how do we know which interpretation of the Word of God is the correct one?  The correct interpretation of the Word of God will always maximize His glory, skillfully upholding both His holiness and justice as well as His mercy and grace, especially revealed in the life, death, resurrection, ascension, and session of Jesus Christ to the glory of God the Father by the power of the Holy Spirit. 

What response is God giving you?  Do you want to visit the dentist to get your teeth cleaned, or do you want to close your mouth and turn away?  Do you love this God, or do you want to turn from Him?  We pray that He gives you life, repentance and faith, hope, joy, peace, and covenantal love even in the midst of all life's difficulties.  The alternative is much too grave.

What does God do through His means of grace, especially the preaching of the Word?  He transforms sinners into saints by His grace, for their joy, and to His glory!

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