What is the proper relationship of grace and nature?
When grace eats up nature, you end up with the antinomianism of progressivism. There is no natural order inherent in creation to which we must conform. There is no divine design embedded in reality, so anything goes. You can be whatever you want to be. You can do whatever you feel. Misreadings of texts like Galatians 3:28 end with grace devouring nature. Grace eating up nature gives you the civil rights regime, Obergefell, transgenderism, and multiculturalism. This view is summed up by Anthony Kennedy: “ At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” This view treats racism as the ultimate sin racism does not let other people fulfill their chosen good. Race is a natural category that (like gender) must be devoured by grace.
On the other hand, when nature eats up grace, you end up with a return to the state of nature, in which life is, as Hobbes put it, nasty, brutish, and short. You get biodeterminism in which everything is reduced to genetics, race, IQ, and other “natural” features. Grace gets subordinated to nature, faith gets subordinated to rationalism, and the church gets subordinated to the state. The natural bonds of kinship are valued over Spiritual bonds in all contexts. Blood-and-soil identity trumps other identities, including religious identity. Racism is regarded as a virtue rather than a vice because it’s looking out for one’s own. Race-essentialism becomes the driving category because race is natural.
Against these false views stands the biblical view of grace restoring nature in Christ. Nature is already filled with grace. Nature’s very existence is an act of God’s graciousness. When man rebelled against God, nature came under the curse of death. But in Christ’s death and resurrection, the curse on nature has been broken and nature can be restored to its design. By grace, in Christ, we can become his new humanity and begin to fullfill our created purpose. The aspects of life in which the curse is manifest, including marriage, parenting, worship, politics, education, art, music, and so on, begin to be restored. Creation begins to heal. “He came to make his blessings flow as far as the curse is found.”
Grace restores nature, and this means we begin to live according to divine design embedded in us and in the whole creation. Grace does not obliterate natural (and providential) identities, such as sex, nationality, and race, but it does transform and in some ways relativizes those identities. Grace does not abolish my identity as a Lusk or as an American, but it does change how those identities get prioritized and transforms how I live our those identities. Grace does not destroy my masculinity as a man, but enhances and fulfills my masculkinity, me the man — and husband and father — God intedned for me to be. As grace restores nature, nations can remain distinct with their own unique cultures, but can also learn to live at peace. Ultimately, grace elevates and glorifies nature in the resurrection so the world fulfills the purpose for which God created it in the beginning.
TPC Pastor's Page 