“Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.”
1 Peter 4:10 NRSVue
This verse follows Peter telling the readers to “maintain constant love for one another” and to “be hospitable to one another without complaining.” Love and gracious hospitality set the stage for the claim that we steward God’s manifold grace by serving one another.
The call to serve one another is clearly the main point of this passage. Yes, we must love and serve. But how do we serve?
There is something important in this passage that never really occurred to me before. Manifold isn’t a word we use very often. I personally have often taken it to mean numerous. That is part of what it means. So, in a passage like this, I often thought of manifold grace as abundant grace, as in God has a lot of it.
But that is not what this verse means. Manifold does not just mean a lot of something. It means many kinds or varied. Peter is telling the Church that God shows grace in many ways through the various gifts given to the Church.
Recently, it struck me that part of the 1 Corinthians 13 definition of Love is that “love does not insist on its own way.” (v. 5) That struck me hard. Often, we insist that things must be done our way. We insist that people give and receive love and grace in the way we want them to. That is not love.
Love seeks and wills the good of the other person, whether or not it is how we would have done it.
As stewards of the diverse ways in which God shows his grace to the diversity of humanity, we are called to embrace diversity in the promotion of unity in Christ. Grace, love, and hospitality can be given and received in many ways, even if they aren’t our preference.
A Quote to Consider:
“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell choose it.”
-C.S. Lewis
Too often, we in the Church turn Christianity into a moral system of rules. Do this. Don’t do that.
But that is not the faith once delivered. Faith in God is, as Augustine put it, an ordering of our loves. For Augustine, we must love in this order: God, neighbor, ourselves, then stuff.
I tend to talk about this in terms of orthopathy (right passions). We think a lot about orthodoxy (right beliefs) and orthopraxy (right actions), but as important as those are, they are not the heart of the Christian faith. Even the demons believe, and nobody had better practices than the first-century Pharisees. Faith in God is not about following a new rule book or a new playbook. Faith in God makes us new creatures with new minds and hearts. True faith is an orientation of our passions toward God.
C.S. Lewis is absolutely correct, but I fear we often misread him. The two kinds of people are not those who do the right or wrong things. The two kinds of people are those with ordered passions who love God, then neighbor, then self, then stuff, as opposed to those who elevate self and stuff above God and neighbor.
Prayer:
Lord of manifold grace,
Teach us to love without insisting on our own way. Help us serve one another with the gifts you have given, receiving your grace in its many forms. Order our loves toward you, our neighbors, and your kingdom.
Amen.
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