Escalate Grace

Last week I shared how, to me, the story of the Bible is the story of God’s work to repair everything that was broken in the Garden of Eden.

So how does Jesus fit in to that story?

There are a few ways you could answer that. I’ll just share one today.

Jesus is God’s way of rebooting humanity. Restoring us to the factory settings, you might say. Because Jesus is what we were supposed to be. Human beings were created in the image of God (Gen 1:27), but that image was defaced by sin. Then Jesus shows up, and he is the image of God (Col 1:15). He shows us the life we were created for—and we’re told that, with the help of his Spirit, we can start to recapture that image ourselves (Rom 8:29).

In Genesis 4, you get a neat example of how Jesus flips our broken humanity on its head. Genesis chapter 4 opens with the famous story of Cain murdering his brother, Abel. But there’s another, much less famous story later in the chapter: the story of Cain’s great-great-great-grandson, Lamech. We don’t learn much about him. He’s the son of Methushael (I’m sure you remember Methushael), and he has two wives. Beyond that, there are only two verses about Lamech:

        Lamech said to his wives,

“Adah and Zillah, listen to me;
    wives of Lamech, hear my words.
I have killed a man for wounding me,
    a young man for injuring me.
If Cain is avenged seven times,
    then Lamech seventy-seven times.” (4:23-24)

After Cain killed his brother, the Lord put a mark on him and warned that “I will give a sevenfold punishment” to anyone who kills Cain. (4:15) Now Lamech brags that a sevenfold vengeance is nothing­—he’ll exact a seventy-sevenfold vengeance against any assailants. The Lord was attempting to deter retaliation against the first murderer, but Lamech took that as an invitation to escalate vindictiveness and retaliation.

Now compare that to a familiar story about Jesus: Peter asks him, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” Jesus’s response? “Not seven times, but seventy-seven times.” (Matt 18:21-22)

I was reading Genesis recently and noticed, for the first time, how Jesus’s teaching echoes but transforms Lamech’s threat. Instead of escalating vindictiveness and retaliation, Jesus is escalating forgiveness and grace.

He did it because that—not Lamech’s reaction, but Jesus’s way—is what human beings were created for. Lamech is only one chapter removed from the Garden of Eden, and yet, already, the image of God has been so thoroughly demolished in humanity. But Jesus picks up those broken pieces and makes something beautiful, showing us, again, who we were made to be, what life is really all about, and what our words and actions are for.

They’re for escalating grace.

What challenges you the most about the way Jesus lived on earth?

What's one thing you could do differently this week to make your life a little more of an image of God to someone around you? Be specific.

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