A brief glance at the course of theology in recent decades will help us, by way of introduction, to listen to what the Bible is saying to us now. In the war years, in years of resistance to the totalitarian regimes, the outstanding theme was the Lordship of Jesus Christ, whose sovereignty is known and confessed in the church but also embraces the world with, without knowing it, lives God's Easter-morning victory over the hostile powers. In the reign of Christ, these powers are already defeated and fettered (Psalm 110; Rom 8.37-39; 1 Cor 15.25; Col 3.1; Eph 1.20, etc) though not yet destroyed as they will be when the Lord Jesus Christ returns and his coming visible reign will supersede his present hidden reign.

The church, therefore, is the messenger to the world of strength of God which is triumphant over the provisional, illegitimate, ursuper powers which still torment and oppress the world and its inhabitants. At Easter God won his case against the forces of darkness, against falsehood, injustice, captivity and death. We are living in the interval between the victory grasped by faith and the longed-for victory which will be visible to all eyes. We are heirs of a kingdom but have not yet entered into possession of our inheritance, though we already have the promise and the certainty of doing so. We are brothers and sisters of the Lord Jesus Christ, the firstborn from the dead. His Lordship is a deliverance which reverberates within us as the only cause we have for boasting. "We exult in hope of the glory of God. And not only so, but we even exult in afflictions knowing that affliction works endurance, and endurance provedness, and provedness hope. And this hope does not put us to shame, for God's love has been poured in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us" (Rom 5.2-5). So the great theme of theology and the main inspiration of the church's life as it addressed itself to a world mesmerized and torn asunder by the false gods of propaganda and war was Jesus Christ as Lord.

Then, from 1950 to 1980, I would say, the themes were completely changed. Jesus Christ was practically no longer spoken of as "Lord" but became exclusively the "Servant". There was almost no mention of the power of God now, and even less of his omnipotence. The church's greatest sin, and sometimes the greatest sin of the church's faith, was declared to be its triumphalism. The main emphasis needed now was on the suffering and the weakness of God, the God who sides with the deprived, with the poor, with all who are despised and neglected by established society. The cross becomes the unique centre of the message. The crucified God replaces the triumphant God. All this is not false of course. The same St Paul who speaks to the Romans of exulting in the Easter victory, also speaks to the Corinthians of the humility of the fellowship of the cross. "For you know how generous our Lord Jesus Christ has been: he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that through his poverty you might become rich" (2 Cor 8.9). Certainly Jesus Christ is also a servant and his church a servant church.

We still have to ask ourselves, however, whether we were not wrong to make so radical, so unilateral and so blind a U-turn. I detect three dangers, indeed three errors, in this second period of our recent theological history. First, we have almost invariably interpreted the words "power" and "force" in a pejorative sense, and this is quite contrary to the usage of the New Testament. There the word "exousia", when used of Jesus Christ, more often than not means his true, effective, impressive authority, and, when used of Christians, their freedom of conscience and action, their strength and boldness. To adopt a systematic attitude of opposition to all powers, whatever the nature of their action, is to become merely a protester incapable of anything except criticism; it is to cease being a confessor who is also capable of affirmation and thanksgiving. Secondly, would a God who was only weakness, a God who lacked all strength of any kind, still be the God of the Bible who is able not only to show sympathy but also to deliver? Do we sufficiently realize that when we shrink from confessing the omnipotence of the divine love, we hand the world over to the omnipotence of idols or to the impotence of humanity? Thirdly and lastly, I think we are wrong about the gospel when we identify the good news announced to the poor with the good news which comes from the poor. For the poor themselves are also pardoned sinners like the rest of us and poverty is the very condition which God wants to remedy, to change, to enrich, not to glorify as such, for that would only mean a failure to take human distress and the direction of God's work seriously.

We succumbed, therefore, to a lopsided theological discourse which, in its fear to the wrong kind of ecclesiastical triumphalism, made the mistake of ceasing to speak positively of the need for and, above all, the blessings of certain powers in society, as well as the comfort and blessing of the omnipotence of the God who, with his son Jesus Christ, rescues all his brothers and sisters, in other words, the whole of humankind, from the evil forces of calumny and injustice, of cowardice and despair, which are seen at work in the history of his passion. The culmination of the entire Bible is the proclamation of the Lordship of the servant, to whom to bow the knee is no longer the acknowledgement of our defeat but the acclamation of his freedom which is our liberation (Phil 2.5-11).

We have now arrived, I believe, at the beginning of a third stage. We are recovering the courage to speak of God's commanding power and strength of his victory and triumph, without which humanity remains enslaved to the world and to itself even while claiming mistakenly to be autonomous and emancipated. We mean the amazing power of him who voluntarily became the servant of all so that all might confess him voluntarily as their Lord. It is a power without protection. Jesus Christ risked everything, his life and his death, his speaking and his silence, his actions and his passion. He put all he had on the line. This a power which is neither possessive nor oppressive. It is exercised for the benefit of others. For the real difficulty is never the denunciation and challenging of all the powers; the difficulty is for each of us in our particular situation to employ the relative power available to us in order to benefit anyone who is outwardly oppressed and inwardly despised and condemned. This is a power which depends not on our adequacy but on the authority which others recognize it to possess, in the same way that, in the freedom of his love, God made himself dependant on human faith or unbelief, human need or human indifference, human impulse or human irony. But it is also a power which does not depend on human endorsement or consensus, for the recreative power of God on Easter morning effectively countered the unreceptiveness, grief, and scepticism of all humanity. It is the power of the God whom we considered powerless because we badly misinterpreted his weakness. "We counted him smitten by God, struck down by decease and misery; but he was pierced for our transgressions, tortured for our iniquities; the chastisement he bore is health for us and by his scourging we are healed" (Is 53.5-6). This is the power of the weakness of God which is quite different from our human weakness. For we turn our weaknesses into bitter complaints or inalienable rights. But God turns his weakness on the cross into a demonstration that he is neither a tyrant nor an incompetent, but the strange Servant Lord who allies his strength to our weakness in order to enable us to ally our weaknesses to his strength.

Human beings are eager for power and crippled with weaknesses. God is prodigal with his strength and clothed in power. Here is the garment which grace offers us as our new dress to clothe our envious desires and our discouragements.

Justifying and sanctifying grace

God is the omnipotence of grace. Grace means, very simply, favour, choice, love understood in its spontaneity, unexpectedness, its inexplicability in rational terms since these could only dilute its delight, for explanations kill spontaneity and replace it by motives, ie interests. Grace, therefore, is always a dynamic relationship. Previously we have been forgotten and neglected, attacked and suspected, accused and degraded. Then, suddenly, we find grace, we return to favour, we are upheld by an affection all the more solid for depending not on grounds which we could have for deserving it once again but on the spontaneity of the one who loves us just as we are. This is why, both theologically and in human terms, grace always comes to us from someone else than ourselves. No one can really show grace to himself. At best this could be no more than exaggerated self-indulgence and, at worst, a narcissistic desperation. To love ourselves whenever others fail to love us sufficiently is to enclose ourselves on a magic island where our solitude increases. Grace is magic of a quite different kind: it enchants and strengthens at one and the same time, precisely because it is something we receive. It is a gift and not self-esteem. In grace, therefore, there is the same strength as in love, namely, the strength which derives from knowing ourselves to be precious to someone else who henceforth takes delight in our very existence. This explains the tone of brilliance, happiness, hilarity in grace, in accord with its derivation from the Greek word "charis", from "chairein", meaning "to rejoice". Thou hast found grace; rejoice, then! This has to be said before everything else, for the notion of grace has been connected far too often and quickly with the prior notion of sin or of condemnation, from which grace is supposed to spare us. Grace draws us out of the distress and inertia of sin. But the struggle against sin will only come after this, in what I will call sanctification. What comes first is the evidence of election, the free and gracious impulse of grace, namely, justification.

In this connection, the Bible often makes use of the image of the new garment (Gen 3.21; Ps 132.9; Is 61.10; Lk 15.22; Rom 13.18; Rev 7.13, etc). The garment gives a person a new look, a quite different appearance, even though the person remains the same as before. We should not say that the garment is merely camouflage, therefore, simply a misleading disguise. It is via the garment that others regard me and approach me. In a sense it signifies my entry into favour after my confusion and shame. The garment is also the easiest thing to change, the most quickly changed, and if the garment in question has been given me to cover my destitution and to signify the favour in which I am now able to venture forward with confidence, this lends the new garment of grace an enormous significance in the sight of God and of my fellow human beings. It is evidence that I have become a guest and am no longer a stranger, a friend and no longer an enemy or part of the background. By this garment, admittedly something external but from now on I wear it, I am counted among those who have received the tokens of trust and hospitality, of election and the covenant.

The same theological truth can be expressed in another more modern image, that of a country's political elections. Those elected have been clothed with the confidence of the majority of the people. Here, too, of course, nothing has really changed. The problems are still the same, there are the same pressures, and often the same limited range of real possibilities. The fundamental change which suddenly takes place when the election results are announced, however, is the favour with which the people henceforward regards this team rather than another, the "state of grace" referred to by Mr Mitterand! Just like election in the theological sense, so the political election, the election of lovers, means the giving and receiving henceforward of a gracious opportunity. This grace will make possible which would otherwise have remained impossible. A closed door is now opened, whether to political power or mutual affection, or to a life lived by faith. What has happened is like what happens when a new garment is put on or when the results of an election are announced. To readopt the classic adjectives applied to justification, this is an instantaneous, declarative, imputative, extrinsic transaction, something bestowed on us, given to us, not something which comes from ourselves or dwells in us but something which reaches me as news, the news of the favour received.

Justification is the first work God does for us in the power of his grace. Justification provides the assurance which none of us can provide for ourselves, except at the price of illusion which is the forecourt of disappointment. All human beings, believers or not, ie whether, they know it or not, live ultimately because of a justification which comes to them from outside themselves. All of us live by virtue of the trust others show in us. In Jesus Christ God shows his unshakeable trust in a frail human being. "For at the very time when we were still powerless, then Christ died for the wicked. Even for just a man one of us would hardly die, though perhaps for a good man one might actually brave death; but Christ died for us while we were yet sinners" (Rom 5.6-8). Justification has a declaratory power to open up a way. It makes possible a relationship of trust an indispensable condition for any working relationship. For justification, being declarative, at once instantaneous and eternal one could say, opens the door to sanctification which in turn is pugnacious, persevering and temporal. Employing the parabolic images of the Bible, the person who has received a new garment must now daily fight the works of the flesh within him or herself in order to learn the better daily to live according to the Spirit (Rom 8.3-13; Gal 5.13-25). It is not enough for us to be clothed in justification; we must strive for sanctification, otherwise the new garment will merely become a doctrinal disguise instead of the open door leading to changed conduct, both individual and collective. Otherwise, the person who abuses this trust becomes a fraud and a liar. Otherwise, the grace granted him or her is transformed into a vain announcement which deceives neither God nor our fellow human beings. "Not everyone who calls me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only those who do the will of my heavenly Father" (Mt 7.21).

That is exactly the message of the modern political parable. Legitimate accession to power is impossible without the election victory, without the popular favour. Without these, the door remains closed! But once election has been won (the justification received at a given moment!) we have now to demonstrate the capacity to govern justly and prudently, with freedom and authority, with daily perseverance (sanctification striven for amid all sorts of temptations and ambushes!)

Sanctification is the major work of the power of God's grace in human beings. Sanctification proves that a human being does not destroy the divine trust. Justification reminds us that we shall only enter the kingdom of God if we receive it as grace, just as children are able to receive and delight in presents. Sanctification reminds us that we shall only enter the kingdom of heaven if we struggle as grown-ups who are able to deploy their resources without wasting them and without being lazy. Whether we know it or not, whether we are Christians or not, we are all of us called to sanctification, we are all co-workers with God. "So sin must no longer reign in your mortal body, exacting obedience to the body's desires. You must no longer put its several parts at sin's disposal, as instruments for doing wrong. No, put yourselves at the disposal of God, as dead men raised to life; yield your bodies to him as implements for doing right; for sin shall no longer be your master, because you are no longer under law but under the grace of God" (Rom 6.12-14).

It is essential to differentiate between justification and sanctification. Otherwise we shall either forget the gift of justification and torture or delude ourselves or else forget the work of sanctification and fall asleep, make a botch of things and disappoint both God and our fellow human beings. The power of grace awakens us to joy and summons to combat. It tells us: "Your sins are forgiven" and "Get up, take up, your bed and walk" (Mt 9.2, 5). We must differentiate but never separate, always join together. The power of the favour shown permits and grants the power of the strictness required. Human beings are thus lifted up by divine election so that they may themselves walk with God in the divine covenant. The declaration and the imputation of grace thereby inaugurate the struggle of faith and perseverance in the faith. In this way we live by the gift of God and make gifts to God of our obedience. "Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven" (Mt 5.10). For the task is ours that the glory may be God's.

The pressures and passions of the world

We are now equipped to look more rapidly at the place and time in which we are living. Because the power of grace is at work, we are able to understand the powers of the world better, without ignoring their hard reality but also without succumbing to the temptation to transform that reality into an ineluctable fate. The strong favour and grace of God permits us to look the powerful disfavour and disgrace of the world squarely in the face and to see it for what it is, an encircled enemy and no longer a terrifying destiny. For some people idealize the world and then get discouraged when it fails to meet their expectations, whereas others demonize it but then make no attempt to fight what they consider intolerable. But those who believe in the strong grace of God, their eyes have been opened to join God in his struggle with a world which is neither an angel nor a demon but a groaning, sighing and waiting creation. Religious people have an unfortunate tendency to turn God into a flight from reality. Atheists turn reality into an absence of God. Those who believe in the strong grace of God hold reality before God and God before reality, verifying each by the other.

We are surrounded by pressures and within us are passions. In earlier centuries, all the talk was mainly of the passions and people were invited to flee from them and to master them. Today we should be more inclined to speak mainly of the pressures and to try to change the economic and social structures. I believe we must always speak of both passions and pressures and consider that these two terms are undoubtedly a better reflection of reality than the terms we sometimes use when we speak of the personal and collective dimensions of human life. Passions and pressures, moreover, are not purely negative terms. Human beings without passions are dead, even if they still survive. It is passion which makes us active, enables us to come alive and to delight in things, which gives focus to life and designates the objectives. But passion is also an appetite which refuses to accept reality, which constrains the other person, and transforms us imperceptibly into consumers, at first full of fantasies and then, very soon, of unhappiness. The Bible is peopled with passionate people who slowly learn to break free from their murderous coveting (David), from their fugitive enthusiasms (Peter) and from their stubborn pessimism (Thomas). The power of grace is at work amid our passions, not to reprimand them or suppress them but to convert them and to calm them. To ignore our passions is to ignore the energies at work in us and suddenly we find our Christian life itself becoming sluggish and insipid, as if duty had robbed it of all delight. If, on the other hand, we simply obey our passions, we no longer notice that we are unconsciously becoming prisoners and murderers of others and of ourselves. For this reason, it seems to me that the great classic theme of the proper use of our passions is still tremendously relevant today, considering that Jesus Christ himself lived passionately, ie emotionally, painfully in distress, and with pleading and urgent invitations. Passion is resolve in its extreme form. God made the loving passion of his unique Son the open gateway to reconciliation and peace "yet so as by fire" (1 Cor 3.15).

What the pressures are and how appallingly strong they are, we know. Hunger and unemployment, tyrannies and hidden nihilism, competition and the law of the jungle, the lost roots of identity, and obstructions to future development. Following a period when technological progress and economic change seemed to promise humanity an almost inevitable collective advance, we have slipped back into a time when hostile pressures seem bound to thwart attempts to increase human solidarity and freedom. Often we have reached the point when young people accuse their elders of having done nothing but heap up diagnoses of coming disasters. Shall we be ready for the salutary reminder that, in the Bible, the work of God's energetic grace has always been carried forward amid external pressures of the most tremendous kind, whether we think of Israel in Canaan, ground between the empires of Egypt and Mesopotamia, or of Jesus of Nazareth, ground between Jewish nationalism and Roman colonialism? Grace has always operated under such pressures. It has nevertheless never abandoned either the independence of its conviction or its quest for reconciliation. The energy of God operates amid the powers of the world, whether they be the powers of pride or, more often still, those of despair and desperation.

In order to open up a breach in the walls of these pressures and make a pathway through the ocean of our passions, grace confronts them head on. "Grace be to you and peace, from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the first-born from the dead and ruler of the kings of the earth" (Rev 1.4-5).

Questions

Investigate the different meanings of the word "power" (Greek, "exousia") as they are found in the New Testament.
What is meant by - the church of the poor, the gospel for the poor, solidarity with the poor? How can we relate together the two great themes of the Bible: the deliverance of the oppressed and the justification of sinners?
In terms of human understanding how can we recover the meaning of the great biblical word "grace"? How can we overcome the misconceptions of its content, such as blind acceptance, the denial of personal responsibility, capricious despotism, and fatalistic chance?
How can we demonstrate that "justification" which is external to us actually changes our interior consciousness? Discover modern parables which express the same thing.
Apply the doctrine of sanctification to personal and communal life; political, social and economic dimensions. Indicate what today in your own situation are the principal "adversaries" which sanctification must overcome.
How may we avoid transforming the restrictions and constraints of life into destiny, and the pressures and demands of experience into determinism? How may we obtain from the biblical narratives a renewal of courage without either deluding ourselves or falling into final despondency?

(Translated from the French)