Free of Charge

What does it mean to be a Christian in a culture that no longer offers grace?

Maybe you’ve noticed it out in traffic, or in your workplace. You’ve almost certainly noticed in in our politics. People are quicker to become angry. They want what they believe is rightfully theirs. Bad choices are met not with forgiveness, but with ridicule, outrage, or even revenge. There are other worrying trends, too. Giving to charity is decreasing. In our politics, the loudest voices insist that someone is trying to take away what rightly belongs to us. We all worry that, if the other side gets into power, they will take from us, and not give—they won’t look out for anyone but themselves.

We have been given so much, and we have been forgiven so much.

It seems we’re all getting a simple message: take what’s yours, stay away from what’s mine, and don’t ask for anything. Giving and forgiving are for losers. And as a result, the world seems meaner than ever before.

So what can Christians do to make a difference in this culture? How can we bear witness to something better?

It has never been more countercultural to remember this, but it has never been more important, either: We have been given so much, and we have been forgiven so much. We need to understand just how deeply rooted our lives are in giving and forgiving—and how we should respond, so that we can experience God’s love, and so that God’s love can move through us and into a world that needs it so badly.

That’s why we have created a discussion guide for a book by Miroslav Volf called Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace. It’s a book that can help you think carefully about what you have been given—and how you should give. It’s about what you have been forgiven—and how you should forgive. It will help call you back to a better life—more loving, more lovely, more meaningful, and more rooted in the One who has given us everything we have.

Remembering what we have been given and forgiven isn’t simply some duty that has been imposed upon us. To look again at everything we have been given, and to see its source at work in our lives, is a way for us to be renewed and refreshed—to be called back once again to the Living Water whose streams can bring us the joy and courage we need to face our challenges.

Welcome to this opportunity to better understand what it means to live free of charge.

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A Culture Stripped of Grace / Miroslav Volf and Drew Collins Introduce Free of Charge

What can we do to make a true difference in a culture that seems to brim with quick-tempers and fear at every turn?

Gift / Free of Charge Prelude

We have all been given gifts. It is one of life’s earliest experiences: when we are babies, before we know how to do anything for ourselves, others do things for us. They give us gifts that we cannot possibly pay them back for. As life continues, we’re able to do more and more for ourselves—and we like it that way! We are more and more able to give gifts, not just receive them. But still, even as we become more self-sufficient, we receive gifts.

We never become completely self-sufficient, much as we might like to believe otherwise. The author of this book, Miroslav Volf, was given a life-changing gift on the day that his oldest son’s birth mother decided to give her son up for adoption—and then again four years later, when he received the gift of his second son. Reflecting on the gifts we’ve been given is a good place to begin to think about how to live in a way that places giving at the center of our lives.

God the Giver / Free of Charge Ch 1

The question Who is God? is not one with a quick, easy answer. But one of the ways that Christians have come to understand God is by seeing God as a giver. We understand God as the ultimate source of every good gift we’ve been given—even if, as is most often the case, that gift may have come through someone else. We have many images of God that reflect something of who God is, but a good place to start is by seeing all the ways that God gives.

Our understanding of God as Giver fits well with our image of God as Creator. We think of beautiful sunsets, or fresh fruit, or perhaps especially our loved ones, and we are thankful to God. And even when we’re tempted to see ourselves as completely self-sufficient, deep down, we know better. We cannot create the air we need to breathe, or the water we need to drink, in order to survive. We need these gifts, just as we need the One who gives them to us. But God’s giving is not limited to creation. It comes in the form of redemption, too. God has saved us from the power of sin in ways that we could never save ourselves.

How can we respond to all of this? We can’t possibly repay God; not only would our debt be too great for us to repay, but we also don’t have anything God needs. So our job is to respond by participating in God’s giving—by becoming channels of God’s good gifts. When we do so, not only do we respond as we should, but we also get a further gift: the opportunity to participate in the life and work of God!

How Should We Give? / Free of Charge Ch 2

In the book of Ephesians, we are told to “be imitators of God.” But when it comes to giving, it’s especially difficult. After all, God is infinite, and we are not. God can always give more. But we are finite; if we give everything we have, we will die! So how can we be imitators of God in how we give? If we can’t give exactly the way God gives, how might we give similarly?

First, we should imitate God’s generosity. We experience that generosity every day, in ways that range from the beauty of the world to the kindness of strangers to the love of those closest to us. It is all ultimately a gift of God. We should look for ways to imitate that generosity, even in our finitude.

Next, we should channel what God has given us. What we have to give, after all, is itself a gift from God. So by giving to others, we are like God in giving what God gives.

We should also give freely. God is not obligated to give us anything, yet moment by moment, God’s gifts keep coming. No one is making God do this, and God doesn’t owe us anything. Yet God gives. That’s how we should give, too.

We should give to those in need. Giving is an opportunity to see the world differently: to notice suffering, to extend a helping hand to those who need it, and thus to widen the scope of our lives beyond ourselves and our families and friends. We are connected to all those who need help, and giving helps us to see more clearly what we have in common with others.

And finally, our giving should be rooted in love. We were created for communion not just with God, but with one another. Giving gifts—and receiving them—helps us to build and nourish a community of love.

How Can We Give? / Free of Charge Ch 3

Now we’ll look more closely at another difference between God and us: God is perfect, and we are not. So, what tendencies must we overcome in order to give in a way that fights against our sinfulness and makes us better givers?

Three sinful tendencies in particular come to mind when we think about giving. Selfishness limits our giving. Even when we have plenty, we worry that everything could change; we decide that we need to protect ourselves more than we need to help others. So we limit what we give.

Pride corrupts our gifts. When we begin to admire ourselves for all we give—or even when we do it simply to feel better about ourselves, or to push back against some guilt or shame we might feel—we take the focus off the needs of others and the blessings of giving, and turn that focus to our own goodness.

Sloth can also keep us from giving well. Giving can be hard work. It takes time and effort to help at a soup kitchen, or to investigate how best to help the unhoused persons we might encounter on the street.

So what do we do? We’ll never be able to make our gifts pure—not in this life, anyway. But we can make them better. Once again, we need to begin by reminding ourselves of who God is. We need to remember that God is a God of enough. We have been given all that we need—even though some resources seem to be in shorter supply sometimes. So we need to change our attitude—toward what we possess, toward others, and toward ourselves.

Daniel’s Death / Free of Charge Interlude

If you’ve been wronged, it can be very difficult to think about forgiveness—and even more difficult to talk about it. Just the prospect of having to consider it may make readers tense up. The very idea of forgiveness seems strange in this culture; the pain that often accompanies the need for forgiveness is discussed far more. And when we speak of forgiveness now, it is often in a therapeutic way: You should forgive, we are told, because it will make you feel better. But forgiveness as we think about it in this book has nothing to do with therapy. Sometimes it doesn’t feel very good at all. But feelings are not why we forgive.

This section of the book begins with a personal story from Miroslav Volf, who has seen firsthand a kind of forgiveness that may seem difficult for many to imagine. In a sense, the rest of this book unfolds from this interlude.

God the Forgiver / Free of Charge Ch 4

The God who has given so much also forgives. It is as much in God’s nature to forgive as it is to give. The same love that propelled God to create by giving propelled God to mend creation by forgiving.

Most of the time, when we hear this, we experience it as relief. If we have any conscience at all, we are aware that we have done plenty of wrongs, and we long to be forgiven. We might be grateful for God even to turn a blind eye to our misdeeds. But that’s not the way it works. We know that God is not blind; it is in God’s very nature to pay attention. If God were to be like a doting grandparent in the face of all the wrongs that have been done, how could God be trusted, let alone loved? We have all done wrong, but we have also been wronged. Whenever we experience those wrongs, we want justice. So we can feel in our bones why God must be just.

The world is sinful. That’s why God can’t just be a doting grandparent. But God loves the world. That’s why God doesn’t punish it in justice.

It all seems like a kind of double bind for God. So how does God respond? God forgives.  It’s important to see what God does not do in forgiving. God does not minimize sin, or ignore it, or pretend it didn’t happen.

But the Bible also tells us that in forgiving us, God does not keep track of our sins. God hides our sins. And eventually, our all-knowing God even forgets our sin!

Forgiveness holds such incredible power because God’s own Self, in the Person of Jesus Christ, takes on the destructive power of sin on the cross. God was the only one who could save us from the power of sin—and so God did it. That’s how it becomes possible for our communion with God and with each other to be restored.

How Should We Forgive? / Miroslav Volf and Drew Collins on Free of Charge Ch 5

How should we forgive? Here once again we come up against a challenging truth: We are to imitate God, and yet we are not like God. We cry out for justice when we have been wronged, and yet our attempts at justice so often look more like vengeance. But revenge only multiplies evil. And even when we try to limit our response to some appropriate form of retribution, the whole world ends up being destroyed. There’s just too much wrongdoing to address.

So if we are to imitate God, we are to forgive. As we’ve already seen, God doesn’t minimize sin. God doesn’t simply shrug it off, either. But at the same time, God doesn’t condemn anyone. There are charges to be brought, but God doesn’t press charges. God forgoes the demand for retribution. Forgiveness gives blame—but does not punish. That doesn’t mean we need to expose ourselves to repeat offenders; or simply endlessly tolerate bad behavior. But it means that retribution will not be part of the response.

God also releases wrongdoers not only from punishment, but also from guilt. When we forgive, we recognize and affirm the guilt of those who have done us wrong, but we also lift the burden of that guilt from their shoulders.

And now for the best thing, and the hardest thing, about God’s forgiveness: There are no unforgiveable sins, and there are no unforgiveable people. What a relief—but also, what an outrage! Yet it’s true: God’s forgiveness is indiscriminate. No action, no person, is beyond the reach of forgiveness.

But what if those who have hurt us won’t repent? Forgiveness is a social affair. It involves both the offender and the offended. A gift doesn’t become a gift until it is received, and forgiveness doesn’t truly become forgiveness until it is received, too. So while forgiving is not dependent on repentance, being forgiven is. For forgiveness to exist in a relationship, it must be received as well as given.

How Can We Forgive? / Ch 6

Forgiveness is difficult in part because we exist in a web of relationships. The forgiver and the forgiven are often only two people in an interconnected world, and their actions and reactions reach well beyond them. What we do has an impact beyond the person we are to forgive. So we need to ask: Do we have the power to forgive? And for that matter, do we have the right to forgive? We do have the power, and we do have the right—but only because Christ first forgave the offender. Ours is only a derivative power to forgive.

Just as God gives through us, God forgives through us, too. We are to be God’s channels of forgiveness just as we are to be instruments of God’s giving. Martin Luther wrote that Christ is “the basis, the cause, the source” of forgiveness. It is the work of Christ in us that sets us on the path to forgiving.

Yet forgiving can make us feel vulnerable. Sometimes we are in a weaker position for having forgiven; it can be scary. Then we need to remember that the One who forgives us and forgives through us is also with us. God is there with us, caring for us as the process of forgiveness opens old wounds and exposes deep hurts.

None of this comes easily. We need Christ working in and through us, but it also helps us to surround ourselves with a healthy community of forgivers. Vibrant communities of Christian faith can help us to live counterculturally by doing the hard work of loving, giving, and forgiving.

A Conversation with a Skeptic / Free of Charge Postlude

It seems like a beautiful life that’s sketched out in this book, doesn’t it? Giving and forgiving, loving and being loved by an all-powerful God? It is beautiful—maybe too beautiful for some skeptics. We all know such skeptics; sometimes we hear that voice of skepticism in our own minds, too. What if it’s all too good to be true? That’s an important question to ask in light of the issues we’ve covered in this book. Because this life of giving and forgiving is a good life—but it’s not an easy life.

As Christians, we place a lot of weight on belief. We often think we must first believe the right things about God, and if we do so, then we will behave rightly, too. If we believe in a God of giving and forgiving, we will give and forgive. But ultimately the relationship between belief and behavior is more complicated than that. It is possible not only to believe our way into a new way of behaving, but also to behave our way into a new way of believing. Behaviors have a way of shaping belief.

This book invites you to step out beyond the endless arguments about whether God’s existence can be proven or disproven, and instead to begin to live in faithfulness to the ideals sketched out in this book about giving and forgiving—and in faithfulness to the God Who is their Source. Try living as though it is true, even as you may continue to hold on to your doubts. You may find yourself seeing a different, more powerful truth than the arguments of the skeptic. You may also finally encounter a living God.