Unraveling Grace

I once asked a pastor why grace wasn't talked about more in that particular church.  He replied that they didn't want to talk about grace too much, lest people take advantage of it and "abuse" it.

So instead of talking about grace, they talked about getting involved, serving, money and tithing, missions, evangelism, discipleship, intercession, quiet times, reading your Bible, fasting, getting rid of sin, making no excuses.  There's nothing particularly wrong with any of those things, but without grace (something Paul spends an entire book talking about in Galatians), all these good things end up being no different than the prayer, fasting, tithing, teaching/training, serving, sacrifice that the Pharisees were so skilled at doing.

The argument for keeping grace "hush hush" has been around since the first apostles.  Paul addressed the idea of a sin free-for-all because of grace -- essentially, that this attitude doesn't align with someone who has died with Christ -- died to self -- and now lives again in Him, in His resurrection.  We're dead to sin but alive to Christ.  (Romans 5-7)

So why still avoid talking about grace?  Do we want to prevent people from taking advantage of God, as if God can't take care of Himself?  We feel the need to prevent people from committing this "heinous crime"?  If someone's heart is prone to taking advantage of God's kindness, they'll find some way to do it regardless.

But the ramifications of carefully keeping grace tucked into the corner are disastrous.  I crochet fairly often.  I always do it in one piece.  Even if I change the color of yarn, I try to tie the new color to the end of the old.  But once the product is finished, if down the road someone works out one end, the whole thing can come undone if you pull at it long enough.

The foundation of Christian life is the same way.  If something like grace can be worked out and pulled on, everything can unravel.  If Christian duty and Christian acts are discussed, but Christian status (under God's grace) is never discussed, the Christian begins to believe that duty is required to stay in good standing with God -- what else is there?  Grace hasn't been heard of since salvation, and you know all that "cross-grace-salvation" stuff -- that's behind you and now you're moving forward in service, ministry, and generally being an all-round amazing Christian.  You were saved, you learned, and now you "know better".  It's good works, or nothing.  

So then, as we get on the treadmill of "being a good Christian", our eyes are turned from faith in God and His promises of love, acceptance, and identity to faith in ourselves and expectation of good performance.  Grace has been unraveled, and now it's taking faith with it.

And after awhile, we've been disappointed in ourselves, and maybe others have been disappointed in us too, just one too many times.  We knew better, but we still struggled in that one area.  We know what good Christians are supposed to do, but we still only spent time with the Lord 5 days in the week instead of 7.  We're just not good enough.  And then hope begins to unravel.  We want to serve God, to love Him, to "bear fruit" for Him, to do good things for Him, but we keep falling short.  We lose the hope of being pleasing and close to God as hope is the last thing to unravel.

We end up separated from grace, turned away from faith in God, and lost our hope.  And this is a very, very big deal -- for God grace through Jesus shed blood on the cross and our faith in Him is the only way to Him, not only on the day of salvation, but every single day after that.

How do we know if we've been separated from grace?
"You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace." Galatians 5:4

Is there anything that we can't let go of?  Can we miss church Sunday morning and still feel secure in Jesus?  Do we feel nervous at the thought of not sharing the plan of salvation?  (Not to be confused with a heart-desire to just talk about Jesus, who He is, and what He has done -- loving to talk about it.)  Are we keeping track of how many times we had a quiet time, and how long?  Or how many times we asked to pray with people?  If the thought of skipping something makes us nervous, like Peter felt nervous when God suggested he eat "unclean" food and go to a Gentile's house, we need to go deeper into grace.  Grace allows our faith in God to freely express itself in love, not work out of a sense of duty and obligation.

What's It Worth

When I went to camp in high school, one year we had a speaker who used a $5 bill as an example in one of his messages.  He took out the $5 bill and said that no matter what you did to it, it would still be worth $5.  He punched it, yelled at it, called it names, told it that it was worthless, screamed out it.  He said you could abuse it.  He even rip it in half, but it was still worth $5.  It has value intrinsically in just being a $5.  He said that our value is the same thing -- no matter what, the value God has placed in us as a creation in His image doesn't change.

I suppose the analogy could be taken a bit further if talking about a brick of gold.  Even if it were to be thrown into a fire, it may melt, but liquid gold is as valuable as solid gold.  In fact, it may even become more valuable, as every impurity can float to the top to be removed.  But for some reason, all we ever seem to see is the dross and forget that the gold is still gold, and it's value and worth hasn't been diminished at all.