When Is Grace Not Grace?
“Oh, now I get it!” I was mowing the lawn at my mom’s house after my college sophomore year, mulling over a particular Bible passage, Ephesians 2:8-9.
For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast (ESV).
That previous November I had recognized the reality of Jesus’ deity and the fact that he died to take care of my separation from God caused by my sin. Over the next few months, my understanding of the Christian life grew, and now I finally grasped the fact that I really didn’t have anything to brag about because I believed in Jesus. Even that belief was a gift from God and an expression of his grace. I certainly hadn’t earned it.
Christians who take the Bible seriously are big on the concept of grace. But I’ve noticed a disconnect for many when it comes to experiencing grace on a day-to-day basis. For some, grace seems to be primarily a “past tense” and theological concept. What I mean is that they fully recognize that their behavior didn’t earn their initial standing with God, and they often point to a moment when they trusted Christ to forgive their sins. That part of grace they get. But for some, grace seems to be frozen in the past.
The problem with the “backward-looking” view of grace is that it often crowds out a “present tense” understanding of the concept.
A few weeks ago, I finished reading Paul’s letter to the church in Galatia. His primary message was that they were messing up by thinking they had to follow the Jewish law in order to be good Christians. No, says Paul. As good as the law is, no one is saved by following its requirements. It’s all God’s grace. Verse 2:21: “If a living relationship with God could come by rule-keeping then Christ died unnecessarily (The Message).
Unfortunately, I have seen a number of churches and ministries with “grace” in their names, but which exhibit anything but. This shows itself in two ways:
In what they expect of Christians – Leadership often places overly strict behavioral standards on themselves and their followers. This guilt-inducing legalism is tragically reminiscent of what Paul preaches against in his Galatian letter and what Jesus so thoroughly denounces in the Pharisees.
In how they view “outsiders” – They can develop harsh attitudes toward people who don’t agree with their theology or behavioral expectations. This lack of empathy often creates pushback against Christians. Sadly, among the first words millennials use to describe the church are “judgmental” “homophobic,” and “hypocritical.”
Another way of describing this dynamic is that Christians with a “past tense” sense of grace often fail to manifest grace to themselves, their followers, or outsiders. How tragically opposite this is from Jesus’ command to love God and love our neighbors.
Let me be clear. Our behavior does matter. Christians are called to holy living. And Christians do have a legitimate role in public policy debates. We must never jettison God’s standards in order to conform to a watered-down, new age concept of love. Jesus, of course, perfectly modeled the right balance. He graciously received and forgave the women caught in adultery but went on to instruct her to leave her life of sin (John 7).
As we urge conforming to God’s requirements, we must do so in a way that reflects his ongoing grace for every individual. Otherwise, we gut the word “grace” of its meaning.
Let’s neither throw out the truths surrounding God’s holiness nor try to bludgeon our way into making people behave as we think they should.