How can we live and work together harmoniously with those whose beliefs are not just extremely different from our own but even offensive to us? In today’s shrunken world, people with radically different views live right beside one another. The Bible shows us the way to achieve something different, something even beyond 'tolerance.' It shows us the way to what I’ll call 'receptive grace.'

What receptive grace is not

In 1 Corinthians and Romans Paul addressed two parties that he called the 'Weak' and the 'Strong.' The Weak were those whose consciences were not very oriented to God’s grace and love, and therefore they easily felt condemned and defiled (1 Cor 8:7). Therefore they wanted no gray areas-- they wanted to know whether each and any practice was right or wrong. They wanted lots of rules and boundaries in order to bolster their weak consciences, and they tended to be very narrow-minded and judgmental of those who didn’t obey all the rules. The Strong were the broad-minded people. Yet Paul sharply criticizes the Strong because they disdained the Weak (Rom 15:7) and they were refusing to alter their behavior though it was being misconstrued and harming people (1Cor 8:9-11).

The irony is important to recognize. Those who congratulated themselves as being broad-minded and tolerant disdained the narrow minded. They were being judgmental of judgmental people; they were being self-righteous about self-righteous people. Though the Weak are overtly intolerant, the Strong are covertly intolerant. In the end, each side was excluding the other.

Why no one can be all-inclusive

This analysis could not be more relevant for us today. The public rhetoric today goes something like this. "People who believe that they have the truth—that their morals are the only right absolutes exclude and subjugate others. We will only get along if we all agree that no one has the supreme religion or moral values, that every individual must determine what is true and right or wrong for him or herself." But, as Paul said, this is just a new covert form way to exclude people, but now on different terms.

About 60 years ago, those who publicly promoted sex outside of marriage were denounced as 'obscene and not allowed a public voice.' But today those who speak publicly about traditional sexual morals may be denounced as intolerant or even as engaging in 'hate speech.' Now they are not allowed a public voice. This isn’t progress from intolerance to tolerance. Rather, the group that was once excluded now has to power to exclude. The rules have changed but the exclusion and intolerance continues.

Let’s take another example. To say, "I think everyone ought to be free to determine what is truth or what is moral or immoral for them" sounds quite tolerant, as if it is open to all sorts of philosophies and world-views, but it is not. It is a very western, white, almost tribal way of thinking based on the European movements of the Enlightenment and Romanticism.

That way of thinking certainly has many merits, but it is not at all 'open.' It is pressing a highly individualistic way of thinking (an epistemology that is filled with assumptions about God (namely, that he doesn’t exist or doesn’t care about truth), human nature, and ultimate reality. It is saying: "my liberal, western, Enlightenment way of knowing should be privileged over yours." This isn’t progress from intolerance to tolerance either. There must be a better way! There is.

What receptive grace is

In Romans 14:1, Paul tells the Strong to "receive the one who is weak with respect to faith." Notice that Paul calls the person "weak" spiritually and theologically. So Paul gives a negative evaluation of the person’s character and beliefs. Yet Paul calls us to receive-- to engage, to enter into relationship with those that we evaluate as wrong. In Romans 15:1 he calls the Strong literally to "bear the weaknesses of the weak" and not please ourselves. What can this mean? It surely cannot mean we are to adopt the errors of the weak. One commentator writes, "They are to sympathetically 'enter' into their attitudes, refrain from criticizing and judging them, and do what love would require toward them. Love demands that the 'strong' go beyond the distance implied in mere toleration" (Douglas Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, p.866).

Modern tolerance refuses to do any evaluation, but also refuses to let others impinge on their individual freedom. It says: "I accept all people—but I’m not going to let anyone effect the way I want to live." But Paul is calling us to something far beyond toleration. It is almost the opposite. He says that we should evaluate the beliefs and practices of others, but then we should love them, engage them. (And Paul calls us not only to have this attitude with other Christians but with our neighbors-cf.Rom 15:2).

Obviously, it is enormously hard to be sympathetic, caring, open, and non-judgmental with a person whose beliefs you evaluate as being seriously in error. Why is it so extraordinarily hard Jonathan Edwards preached a sermon in the 1740s entitled "Love is Contrary to a Censorious Spirit." We don’t use the word censorious anymore, but it means an intolerant, condemning spirit. In the sermon he points out that it is not "censorious to make sharp, negative evaluations." Rather, he says, what makes you censorious is if you enjoy making negative evaluations even if you only make them deep within your heart. The question is: do you enjoy contrasting your own views and practices with those of others Do you enjoy despising other people, even if you don’t say anything outwardly? Do you enjoy seeing those others 'trashed' in books and reviews? That is a sign, says Edwards, that your own heart has not been changed by the grace of God.

The power for receptive grace

How does the gospel do this? In Romans 15:7 Paul writes: Receive one another just as Christ received you. When Jesus died on the cross, he was making the most negative evaluation of our condition he could possibly make! His going to the cross says to us: "you are so lost, so flawed, so sinful that nothing less than the death of the Son of God can save you. I would never give away my life unless there was absolutely no other way. You are that lost!" When Jesus died on the cross he was not being tolerant!

Oh, but look at the love. He was naming us as sinners, lost. But he was loving us although at the time we were the ultimate Weak people. We did not believe the right things. We did not live as we ought. Surely our lives and attitudes would have offended him, but he entered in to our situation, cared for us, made room in his life for us, and died for our sins. If we follow a man like that, how can we ever treat our opponents disdainfully or oppressively even though we negatively evaluate their beliefs and practices?

If your identity and self-worth are mainly based on how hard you work, you have to despise those who you perceive as lazy. Or if your identity and sense of significance is mainly based on your morality, then you must look down on those who you perceive as immoral. Or if your main source of significance is that you are a tolerant, inclusive person working for the rights of others, you must look down upon those who in your view are intolerant or bigoted.

But a Christian says: "I am loved because when I was believing all the wrong things, Jesus came and entered into my reality, took on the weakness of my human nature, radically re-adjusted his life for me, and died for me." A Christians’s self worth is based on the one who was excluded for us. Jesus was socially and spiritually cast out. Now we are free to disagree even sharply with people and yet do so without any ill will, without the need to withdraw or exercise power in the relationships with them. You have the power to disagree with love, respect, deference and humility, with no inner need to win the argument. If we do that on a broad scale, eventually the world will ask us—"what have you got?" The answer will be: “Receive one another just as Christ received you."

"Receptive Grace," Dr. Timothy Keller