Pilgrim Theology: Common Grace, Uncommon Thanks
Every November, our nation pauses to give thanks. Tables fill, laughter rises, and hearts recall the blessings of food, fellowship, and flourishing. But for the Christian, thanksgiving runs deeper than a holiday; it is a harvest of fruit brought forth in season after dwelling richly next to streams of water. It is less of an activity and more of a way of being, a posture (though varying postures exist for varying activities).¹ It is the pilgrim posture of those who know this world is not their home, yet receive every good thing in it as a gift from the God who is. It is being in the world even more deeply than those who belong to it, while belonging as citizens to another country being prepared for us.
Theologians have long spoken of common grace² and special grace³. Common grace⁴ is God’s kindness that falls like rain on the just and the unjust alike: His generosity in sunsets and seasons, art and laughter, bread and wine. It is what makes this fallen world still sing with beauty. Special grace, by contrast, is the saving mercy that comes only through Jesus Christ: the grace that opens blind eyes, softens hard hearts, and reconciles sinners to God. Common grace makes life possible; special grace makes eternal life certain.
The danger, however, is when we stop at the first table and never move to the second. We can enjoy God’s gifts and never trace them back to His heart. But those who have received special grace (those who know the Giver Himself) see the world differently. They taste bread and remember the Bread of Life; they lift a cup and think of the cup of the New Covenant. They taste, see, hear, touch, and smell all the wonders of this world, and a palate begins to develop that only a perfect world can satisfy. Their gratitude is not just natural. It is supernatural.
In John 2, Jesus takes what is common and makes it uncommon. Water becomes wine, not merely to save a wedding, but to reveal His glory, the glory that would one day flow from His pierced side. Later, in the upper room, He takes ordinary bread and wine again, blessing them into signs of His body and blood. For His pilgrim people, these simple things become sacraments, earthly tokens, that point beyond themselves to a greater feast.
This is what it means to give uncommon thanks. We look upon the same creation as everyone else, the same meal, the same morning light, but we see through it. We see the Father’s generous hand, the Savior’s wondrous love, and the Spirit’s life-giving presence. Every aroma, every color, every sound becomes a reminder that we were made for another world.
C.S. Lewis wrote,
“If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world…Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on that other country and to help others to do the same.”⁵
Thanksgiving, for the Christian, is the art of feeling that homesickness without despair. It is to enjoy God’s common gifts while longing for the uncommon glory still to come. It is to live between the tables of Cana and the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, tasting now what we will one day drink in full.
So when we give thanks this year, let it not be the shallow gratitude of those who mistake gifts for grace. Let it be the deep, pilgrim gratitude of those who know that every good thing whispers of a better country, where our thanks will finally be as endless as His grace.
May our feasts and our fellowship be merely a foretaste of a greater Feast and a greater Fellowship to come, when we sit with Him in His Kingdom.
¹ See Andy Crouch: The Good News in a Changing World. https://youtu.be/JTT6Wshs7NQ
² Sam Storms defines Common Grace in this way, “Common grace, as an expression of the goodness of God, is every favor, falling short of salvation, which this undeserving and sin-cursed world enjoys at the hand of God; this includes the delay of wrath, the mitigation of our sin-natures, natural events that lead to prosperity, and all gifts that humans use and enjoy naturally.”
³ Sam Storms describes Special Grace in this way, “God’s saving grace is the unmerited favor of God that reconciles sinners through Jesus Christ. This is not the same as mercy; grace is God’s goodness toward sinners, while mercy is God’s goodness toward sufferers. This grace is sovereign; God gives new spiritual life to whomever he will. This grace is unconditional; God’s saving grace cannot be earned. God’s saving grace is the foundation for God’s gracious gifts and empowerment of the Christian life, nourishing and sustaining us. Finally, this grace is fundamentally the presence of God in covenant with his people.”
⁴ It is Common Grace that John Murray has in view when he asks, “How is it that men who still lie under the wrath and curse of God and are heirs of hell enjoy so many good gifts at the hand of God? How is it that men who are not savingly renewed by the Spirit of God nevertheless exhibit so many qualities, gifts and accomplishments that promote the preservation, temporal happiness, cultural progress, social and economic improvement of themselves and of others? How is it that races and peoples that have been apparently untouched by the redemptive and regenerative influences of the gospel contribute so much to what we call human civilization? To put the question most comprehensively: how is it that this sin-cursed world enjoys so much favour and kindness at the hand of its holy and ever-blessed Creator?”
5 See C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
