day no. 16,727: the hierarchy of grace

“For the very nature of grace is to unite all things to the main thing . . . Then the Spirit of grace, seeing there are many useful things in this world, has a uniting, knitting, subordinating power to rank all things so they may agree to and help the main thing . . . Little streams help the main stream by running into it; so grace has a subordinating power over all things in the world, so that they help the main. ‘One thing have I desired’ and I desire other things if they help the main thing.” — Richard Sibbes, A Breathing After God

Grace is an agent of order. It gives not only the respective graces, but places them in right relation respective to the others. Children are, for example, a great grace of God; but the grace of God cannot permit them to rule the roost. God, in His grace, has commanded the father and mother to instruct their children and forbade them from being disciplined by the baby. The parents honor the child by not submitting to it because they're in submission to God's decretive order. Discipline is simply learning how to order our affections. It is instruction on what goes where and to what degree it goes anywhere.

"St. Augustine defines virtue as ordo amoris, the ordinate condition of the affections in which every object is accorded that kind of degree of love which is appropriate to it." — C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

The grace of God would keep you from loving some things to certain degrees. God has determined that certain things merit more love than others with respect to each other. It is His grace that reveals this and enables us to conform our hearts to this by His Spirit according to His Word.

Colossians 3:5

Mortify therefore your members which are upon the earth; fornication, uncleanness, inordinate affection, evil concupiscence, and covetousness, which is idolatry:

By the grace of God, we can put inordinate affections to death. This does not require the killing of all affections, but rather the reconstitution of required affections. You cannot love without loving, but you can love something in a way or to a degree that is unloving to it. Idolatry is assigning more to something than it deserves. We can make an idol of anything by revering, fearing, desiring, or wanting it more than it merits. But in Christ, we better appreciate everything else. We love things better by loving them less if we have previously held them with inordinate affection.

Matthew 6:33

Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.

Other things are only safe when they play second fiddle to the kingdom of God and Christ its King.

2 Chronicles 27:6

So Jotham became mighty, because he ordered his ways before the LORD his God.