The most perfect picture of the love of God the Father I have ever known, short of direct divine revelation, came from an incident in my childhood, a kindness from my own father which I never forgot even though I was and am still slow to draw the meaning from it as applies to the love of God.
I was about 10 years old, so this was in or near 1968. The family was going out, though I cannot remember where, but that is not the point of this remembrance. I had taken some childish fit of sulks and would not come with them.
So I was sitting on the sofa in the kitchen/diner (I can picture it now, more than 45 years later) crying, as small boys do, and Mum Dad and my brother (there were only the four of us) were outside.
What did my father do?
He always was very good with small children. He delighted in them and they loved him.
He came in, spoke softly and gently to me, wiped the tears from my eyes and persuaded me to change my mind and come with them on the outing.
Though I have not yet grasped in my heart of hearts the acted parable that this was or at least could be seen to be, it became clear at least on a cerebral level, years after I was converted, that this is how the grace of God works.
If church teaching were true and my father were acting as the churches preach God's grace, he would either have left me in the empty house (there were no home alone laws then), shouted at me to "make the act of will" to get out there, come in and dragged me out or even beaten me.
But he did none of these.
He came in and comforted a distressed small boy and by personal persuasion had me change my mind and consent to come with him.
The problem with the standard teaching of grace is that it leads men to make the decision then grace, viewed as some kind of abstract power or energy, will enable the person to act.
But this skirts the fact that the will of man is the problem, not the solution. We cannot make ourselves genuinely and heartily willing by what C S Lewis condemned as maistry, but when we are told that God will not make our decisions for us, the way it is framed leaves us with no other choice.
The grace of God is not a power we get after we have chosen, it is the direct, personal and above all relational intervention whereby he persuades us to repent, that is where He persuades us to choose and that in one on one counsel. For He is among other things Wonderful Counsellor, as said Isaiah the Prophet.
In taking my issues to the Lord the Spirit of Christ in prayer, which for me ceased some thirty years ago to be the typical church sanctioned recitation of a formulaic shopping list aimed at the ceiling, I have seen that He has been all kindness, patience and gentleness in His dealing with me.
I repent, that is to say change my mind, as He persuades me to do so in one on one conversation, which conversation has been going on for more than thirty years now. As this is gentle personal persuasion it does not violate my freedom of will. He is not tinkering with a mechanism, neither from a distance or even up close, He is interacting with a person, a child. But if he did not intervene in this fashion I would be bereft, lumbered with impulses which, if I am responsible for them, and scripture is most plain that I am, are the true set of my will and which, in the sense that the church preaches this matter, He has not raised a finger to help.
No, I am not denying grace. I am saying it is something else entirely.
It is personal one on one relationship and when we are in it He is all kindness and patience.
Just like my now late father at least in this instance, who never was a Christian.
My only regret is that he died before I remembered to thank him for this, the Most Perfect Picture.
