GRACE THAT ISN’T GRACE

After an evening service one Sunday, a young man comes up to me to ask for prayer.

He relates to me his experience the past several months. He said that hearing, reading and studying the grace of God has caused him to go back to his old ways and live a life that is licentious.

In his mind, “because God is so gracious, then I know He will forgive because His grace can cover any of my mistakes.”

I can understand where he might be coming from. However, I told him that causing us to go back to our old ways and maybe worse is missing the point. That wouldn’t be the grace Paul talks about in Galatians.

It is for freedom that Christ has set us free.Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery. You who are trying to be justified by the lawhave been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. (Galatians 5:1,4)

The operation of God’s grace on our behalf doesn’t imply any lessening of his demands. God has always and will always demand perfect obedience. But his grace is experienced when we realize that those demands for perfection for each of us have already been met by our Savior, Jesus. Jesus fulfilled all of God’s conditions on our behalf so that our relationship with God could be unconditional. Christianity is the only faith system where God both makes the demands and meets them. (Tullian, Jesus + Nothing = Everything)