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Written by Andrew Buchanan
Andrew & Abi Buchanan are serving in Indonesia with CMS

Some time ago, I happened to look at a lesson from the Church of Toraja's official Sunday School resource material. In Numbers 22-24, Balaam is hired to curse Israel but by God's power blesses them instead. In a cultural context where occult power is still in the background, it is a powerful story of God's control over all such phenomena. So, what was the main point for the Sunday School kids? Don't use bad words about other people! God's salvation of his people was ignored entirely.

I have observed this kind of moralism—focussing only on the moral implications of the story and ignoring what God is doing—ever since I came to Toraja. The last fifteen years have seen an improvement in Sunday preaching due to various courses such as Langham preaching that have helped ministers to pay more attention to the text. However, there is still confusion about grace, about how God's forgiveness of sinners in Christ apart from what we do relates to the clear insistence in Scripture that faith leads to a changed life.

When we came to the topic of grace in my masters class on biblical theology in March, I began with those concerns. The class was in the Christian Education stream, and it turned out that one of the students was involved in a revision of the Christian Education curriculum for schools in Toraja. The current curriculum has a heavy emphasis on the need to prepare for God's final judgment by doing good works. Encouragingly, it had been noticed that this effectively taught salvation by works, in contradiction to the church's teaching on grace. At the same time, schools have no desire to be heard (by students or parents) saying that doing good doesn't matter!

In response, I sought to anchor the discussion in biblical images. That curriculum material is focussing on God as Judge. The doctrine of justification by faith speaks directly to that. Sin is condemned in Jesus' flesh so that those who believe in him are here and now counted among the righteous, confident that having been justified by his blood, we will be saved from God's wrath. This salvation is a contrary-to-desert gift of something we were helpless to do for ourselves. This rightly implies that any good deeds we do play no part in our acceptance by God. However, relationships in Toraja are constituted by concrete actions, not feelings, so a relationship with God would imply concrete actions. Justification by faith apart from works is easily heard as acceptance without relationship.

In our class discussion, I explained the relational cultural background to grace, the term Paul uses to characterise this gift. A generous gift from a strong party to a weaker party was intended to bring the recipient into a relationship with the giver, but not by repaying what was given (the point of the gift is that it is beyond the recipient's capacity), but by thanksgiving and loyalty. So, when Paul does speak of us giving an account of our lives before God, it is as servants of our Saviour and Lord, not as accused criminals before a judge (Rom 14:1-12).

But there is another image that speaks more deeply about the relationship that the gospel enables, namely that we know God as Father. This implies as high a standard as God's judgment, being nothing less than being conformed to the image of his Son. However, as Father deals with us gently, moving us forward with instruction and discipline, taking joy in the small steps that the Spirit enables in us. This is a completely different path of obedience to that of futilely trying to impress an exacting Judge. Grace removes us completely from the sphere of the law-court and into the family of God.

Do pray for the curricula in schools and churches, and for those using them. Pray that my students will be able to present grace as the good news, not just of free forgiveness, but also of a new, transforming relationship with our heavenly Father.