Goodness Gracious
I sit here contemplating the grace of God. What does it look like? What does it do? What does it mean? What is its purpose? What is Grace? Is it simply God’s ‘goodness’ to us? The Bible says in Romans 2:4 that the “goodness of God” should lead us to ‘repentance’. Repentance is a big theme in the new testament. It seems that we as God’s children are called to it. Jesus spoke of ‘repentance’ all the time. In fact His message was ‘repent for the kingdom of heaven is near’. It is something we are expected to do. Is that then, what grace is for? To reveal God’s goodness, and then in turn, lead us to repentance?
There are those that believe that grace is there to fill in the gaps when we fail, and therefore we are able to be who we are and continue to live whatever lifestyle we so choose, and it really doesn’t matter because ‘we are covered by grace’. So in essence we can go on swearing and drinking and sleeping around and looking at porn and killing people, backstabbing, gossiping, committing adultery, lying, cheating, stealing, and so on and so on and its all good because ‘grace’ is there to pick up my slack and make it ‘all good’ with God. This is called ‘Extreme Grace’. I hear that and I think, “now that’s a Christianity I can get on board with”. I mean, all fun and no consequences, that’s pretty good if you ask me. The problem is, that’s not the grace I read about in the Bible. That seems like a man made version of what God intended grace to really be. Paul poses some really good questions in Romans 6. He asks us “Should we go on sinning so that grace may increase?” He then answers his own question with a resounding “NO”. I prefer to read his answer as “No YOU IDIOT, What are you stupid”. He tells us that Jesus died to free us from sin, so…why would we want to continue being slaves to it?
Jesus’ death on the cross is so deep in meaning that we will never truly comprehend its full value until we meet him face to face and he reveals it to us piece by piece over the span of eternity. But one aspect of his death was to release us from the bondage of sin. When we step over the line into the kingdom of God and say we believe in Jesus, we are, as Paul puts it, “no longer slaves to sin”. We then make ourselves slave to Jesus and his Grace. And if we are not living our lives according to the truths in the Bible and according to things Jesus tells us to do, the we are as James puts it “LIARS”. Ephesians says we are saved by grace, not by ourselves. It says that that salvation was a gift. When we go on sinning we abuse that gift. How dare we. How dare we take the most precious gift given to man and trample on it.
Sin is what happens when we miss the mark God set for us. Think of it this way:
Lets say you have a bow and an arrow and you fire an arrow at the target in front of you, but the target is just out of reach of the arrow. What grace does is give the arrow the extra boost and lift to get it to the target and make a bullseye every time. Firing the arrow is akin to following Christ and trying to live the example he set for us. When the arrow falls short of the target that is when sin comes in and makes us miss. The problem with living an ‘extreme grace’ lifestyle is, it would be the same as not even firing the arrow. If the arrow does not leave the bow, then grace doesn’t hit the target. And if grace doesn’t activate then we are truly screwed. We are by no means saved by our own efforts, but Jesus does ask us for our own efforts in following him. And when our own efforts are not good enough (which they aren’t) then God’s grace is there to hit the target and satisfy God’s wrath against us. Grace doesn’t exist so we can do what we want. It exists to show us how lucky we are that God chose to save us. It exists to show God to be merciful, compassionate, JUST, forgiving, and awesome. Not awesome as in “whoa dude that’s awesome (surfer dude accent) but awesome as in God is so big and so great He is AWE inspiring to the point that it forces us to our knees in AWE. Grace exists to show us that we can’t do it on our own. We need God. We need his grace.
Titus 3:3-5
“For we ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared,
he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy…”
1 Corinthians 15:10
“But by God’s grace I am what I am, and his grace shown to me was not wasted. Instead, I worked harder than all the others—not I, of course, but God’s grace that was with me.”
I say let us live in God’s Grace, and not his wrath.