Last night I, along with two other men were examined by the Presbytery Organizing Commission for our new church to determine if we were elligible to be elected to the position of Elder or Deacon. The three of us did acceptably well and the commission voted to place us on the elligible list. There was only one question that was asked that completely stumped all three of us...
How would you explain the term "means of grace" to a non-Presbyterian friend who heard it in a service in the context of the Lord's Supper?
We were clueless. I stumbled through a guess but wasn't especially close. When they told us the answer it made pretty good sense - we'd just never hear the term.
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The means of grace, also known as the "ordinary means of grace," are the ordinary (usual) ways through which God graces us with his blessing. They include:
- The Holy Bible
- Prayer
- Baptism
- The Lord's Supper
I did a quick search for the term "means of grace" and found this Wikipedia article. As I understand what the Commission was telling me, the "right" answer was close to the Lutheran camp (as described in the Wikipedia article), but I can definately see the point of the extra means of grace included in the Methodist list in that article. God certainly blesses us through fasting, abstinence, Christian fellowship, etc...
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You know, a good exercise related to this would be to search the Bible for the phrases, "blessed is" and "blessed are," looking for various biblical means of grace.
2 comments:
I find it interesting that they used the phrase "to a non-Presbytery friend" in their question. It would seem appropriate to just ask you how you would explain the general concept of "grace" to anyone, particularly unbelievers. In the response you posted you ended up using the word "grace" again.
I know what oyou mean. That confused us too, as if "means of grace" were some sort of special terminology for presbyterians. They told us later that they're not sure that the exact term, "means of grace" appear in Westminster or the Book of Order.
Anyway, grace is certainly not an exclusively Presbyterian thing.
In my response, I wasn't really trying to define "grace" by using the word "grace" again. I was trying to say that God, in his grace which is unmerited by us, blesses us through these several means. There are other menas of grace, but apparently these are the "ordinary" or usual ways that God blesses most folks.
Thanks for the responses, Usher-san. Keep it up.
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