Recap: Are We Missing the Point?

Imagine going to the Doctor because you have been sick for some time. After a thorough examination, the Doctor gives and explanation of what is wrong and offers a treatment. The first treatment is quite simple: Heal yourself. The second treatment isn't much better: He hands you a list of how healthy people live and tells you to live like a healthy person and everything will be okay. If you were to go to such a Doctor, there is a good chance that you would be looking for another Doctor. However, there are so many people who sit through this type of treatment each and every week of their lives. They just do it in a spiritual atmosphere.

I think we have missed the point. The Gospel is the Good News of what our Heavenly Father has done on our behalf, not what we need to do on behalf of our Heavenly Father. It sees us in our weakness, our brokenness, and our utter inability to heal ourselves. It doesn't give us a checklist on how to live, but offers us the very life of Christ. In the same way that we would not trust a Doctor who tells us to heal ourselves or to live like healthy people when we are sick and it will all work out; we should not trust anyone who tries to add the the Gospel of Grace.

I realize that the word GRACE has become a buzzword to some and a byword to others. There are people all over the spectrum with regards to this word. Grace is our way of life in Christ. It is the grace of God that turns us to Christ, saves us, and enables us to live this life of faith. It's God's ability at work in our lives conforming us into the very image of Christ. But somewhere along the way we have missed the point of all of this. There's plenty of people within Christianity who believe that the prayer of salvation is just about getting you to Heaven. Which has nothing to do really with this life. Then there are those who treat the grace of God as a license to get away with whatever we choose to do. Both have missed it. Both groups have failed to realize the beauty of grace in all of its fullness. Peter talked about "growing up into salvation." Paul said that we should "grow up in every way into Him who is the Head, into Christ." Rather than seeing this maturity come into full effect, we have polluted the Gospel with works and failed to allow grace to truly change our lives.

In Titus 2:11-15 (I won't post it all here but I do encourage you to read it for yourself) we see what the grace of God is trying to accomplish in our lives.
1) Training us to say "NO!"
- Renouncing ungodliness and worldly passions
2) Teaching us to say "YES!"
- To live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives
3) Telling us to Trust and Rest
- Wait for our blessed hope...Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for us to redeem us...to purify for Himself a people...

It's a reminder that the Grace of God is meant to change our lives. To make us the best us we can be. Allowing us to enter into the very life of Christ. Grace is not just a door into salvation. Grace is our salvation. It is not a license to sin. Grace is a license to be just like Jesus. I have heard people say that we can take grace too far. I disagree. I believe that we have not taken grace far enough. We have not allowed it to have its perfect work in us.

To hear some people teach and preach it actually seems harder to be a Christian than to become one. However, what I have discovered is that it takes just as much grace to live out the faith as it did to come to the faith. The Gospel is not a self-help tool and Christianity is more than behavior modification. The grace of God accomplishes in us what the law could not do [Read Romans 8:3-4]. In fact, I would encourage to look and see what all of our self-effort accomplishes. In Romans 3:20 we read and see that "By the works of the Law no human being will be justified." Go on over the Galatians and hear Paul's warning in 5:4-5 where he tells the church that to try and be justified by the Law is to fall from grace. Over and over again we are reminded that what is produced in the flesh is not sufficient, and that only what comes through the grace of God will last.

I share this with many Christians because I see their struggles. They are striving for perfection, without the understanding that they are the righteousness of God in Christ. They don't understand that God dwells in the broken us, not the performance us. All the while missing out on the abundant life of Christ that is available each and every day.

Far too many are using grace as an excuse to remain immature. And on the other side of the coin there are just as many (if not more) that haven't given grace the chance it needs to make a difference in their lives.

I blame us. That's right! Those of us who are called to share the truth. Those of us who should have dug deeper, looked more intently upon the Scriptures, and done our due diligence in relationship with Christ. We knew that something was wrong. We just kept telling people to try harder, and they believed us. All the while, trying to grab some security for ourselves. I can tell you from firsthand experience that my life changed when I came to know the grace of God for myself. When grace moved from a theory to an experience. When it stopped being "unmerited favor" and turned into the "divine enablement of God." It was like being born again again.

In the end, I want to say what the Apostle Paul said to the church at Corinth: "By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain..." 1 Corinthians 15:10

What about you? Ready for a change? It's time to trust fully in the grace of God for you. Let the journey begin.