It's a BIG DEAL!

The last couple of posts have dealt with the mixed messages that we often hear in church. There are those who seek a balance between grace and the law, love and wrath, mercy and judgement, and/or freedom and requirements. I understand the struggle because I lived it for so many years. Much of what I preached, taught, and wrote about was nothing more than a mixed-grace message. A jockeying back and forth between the Old and New Covenant. It wasn't until I resigned to live a life of grace that I discovered just how distorted the Christian life had become.

Galatians 3:3 sums up perfectly what I am trying to say about living in grace versus trying to live by the law: "Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?" In essence, what most people seem to believe, live, and teach is that we are saved by grace but kept by the law. Which is drastically different from the message of grace that Paul preached which is summed up in these words: It is grace that saves you, grace that keeps you, and grace that empowers you.

Where we have failed to connect the dots is in what Paul is trying to say to the church in Galatia. You are not made perfect by the flesh. No amount of flesh can validate you, justify you, keep you sanctified, or add anything to the grace of God at work in your life. To try and live this way, according to Paul, is to actually fall from grace. It is to backslide (if you will) into a life of keeping the rules rather than living by the enablement of God. Which sounds better to you?

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, you need to get this definition deep down into your spirit. The word GRACE that we read in our bibles is the translation of the Greek word "Charis" - the merciful kindness by which God, exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ, keeps, strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection, and kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues. It really doesn't get much simpler than that. It is our misunderstanding of grace that has kept us living out the mixed messages, struggling to understand the power of God available to us, and fearful that we haven't done enough. The grace of God allows you to rest. To trust. To live in absolute assurance.

How often have we sang the words "Grace greater than all our sin", only to hear something from the pulpit that sounded much different? The struggle is real. The mixed messages are all around us. We've received them from parents, peers, spouses, and pastors. We've experienced them in relationships and even within ourselves. It's maddening. PLEASE HEAR ME OUT: It takes faith to believe that His grace is enough. We call it rest, but we often have to labor to enter into it. Don't sell yourself short. Don't fall into the trap of the mixed-grace message. Believe in the grace of God as fully as the Father believes in it. It's a BIG DEAL!

Remember Romans 3:20, "NO ONE will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law." Learn to live in His grace. It is a life worth living. Shalom!