Grace of God

Are we good? Are we seasoning the meals of others? Are we giving flavor to other men’s lives? Or do we leave them without salt, as we prisoners were once left without salt? The simple fact that the Gospel calls us salt is not enough.

How do we become good? We have to rely utterly on the grace of God. You become good when you make the great discovery that you are not good, and can never be so. Then you ask God to make you so. The result is that you die, and Christ comes to live within you. All of his righteousness and goodness as you are to proclaim yourself the owner of any estate that you have inherited or been given legally as a gift. Either all the Christians have been fools, or a Christian can say to Jesus, “You are me!” or like Luther in his commentary on Galatians, “A Christian is Christ”.

Now, how should I proceed practically to be not me, but Him? The Gospel speaks about the foolishness of the cross, even about the foolishness of God. So let us learn from the madmen.

There are madmen eho believe that they are others. Each behaves according to what he reckons himself to be. The man who thinks he is Napoleon will put on a tricorn hat and curse the English for having defeated him at Waterloo. Those who think they are St. Francis will fast and pray a great deal and speak holy phrases, even if they do not make sense. The man who reckons himself to be Churchill will always carry a thick cigar in his mouth and talk about politics. What you reckon yourself to be determines your behavior.

Faithfully consider yourself what so many other saints have considered themselves to be: you are He - Christlike.

This mad presupposition will have the same result as with other madmen. More and more, you will come to behave like Him. As Paul said, “For me to live is Christ”.

It requires faith to believe yourself to be He, when you are a sinner. But what do we really know about the lives of the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi? We know their prophecies, not their virtues and failures. You become a child of God by faith, by virtues and by good deeds.

Have this faith in Him, and the salt can never lose its saltness. You will become the unalterable formula of “goodness”.

By faith, lay down your own life completely. Deny the self. Cease to “practice” its virtues as much as its lusts. You have been crucified with Christ, and have suffered the fate of every crucified man: you have died. Yet you live. Since you exist after having died, you must have been born again, this time not from an earthly union; you are begotten from God. You are once again a child, an “angel”. You have been born with a new, angelic, divine character.