"The Ten Commandments begin with grace."

Mike Cosper writes a fairly thorough response to Ricky Gervais' recent polemic against Christianity. You can read it here. These things are good to keep up on, especially when the opposing voice is someone like Gervais, who has a fair amount of pop culture influence. His is an influential voice in opposition to the truth of God, regardless of how eloquent and well-crafted his argument is.

I really like where Cosper takes his response, because he hits on some things I've recently learned from studying Galations with our shepherding group on Monday nights.

Basically, Gervais, as an atheist, claims to be a better Christian than most Christians in the world because he does a better job at keeping the Ten Commandments. But what Cosper brings out is that even in Exodus, God's grace to save sinners is central to the whole picture. It's not about the laws on their own, but about God's grace to purify and keep a people for Himself. All along, God's grace has been what saves, not a person's ability to keep the law of God. And the Church, with all its imperfections and mistakes, has always had at its core a sinful people whom God has saved out of His grace and not their own merits.

Cosper says the following:

[T]he Scriptures place the Ten Commandments inside the context of a redemption story. God didn’t appear to the Hebrew slaves and tell them, “Do these things and I’ll rescue you.” Instead, he rescued them and invited them into a life lived in covenant community. As Marva Dawn once put it, the Ten Commandments begin with grace. “I’m you’re God. I’m the one who rescued you.” The Exodus story foreshadows the gospel, showing that at the heart of law, at its origins, is God’s grace. It’s the opposite of religion—even in the Ten Commandments.

There are millions like him (Gervais), both inside and outside the church. They believe that the essential message of the Bible is, “If you behave, then you belong.” We have a better message and a much richer story, one drenched in grace and mercy. Remember, as many Christians before us have understood, the gospel tells us that we’re far worse off than we ever imagined . . . and far more loved than we ever dared to dream.