Too Much Grace?

"I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing!"  Galatians 2:21

 

In my recent blogs I have been talking about two opposing ways of viewing the world, and more specifically God and our relationship to Him.  For a more in depth understanding of these different points of view, I refer you to my blog entitled Which Lens.  But briefly, Action/Consequence is our natural, default way of thinking. It is about me--what I do and what I expect to achieve or receive as a result. When I live in the Action/Consequence world view, my life is about seeking gratification, recognition, glory, honor and praise through my own actions. As a result, my life will be about comparing and competing which leads to judging and often condemning others or myself. This way of thinking applies to everything in our lives, including religion, and leads to a distorted view of God.

Death/Resurrection, on the other hand, is a completely unnatural, counter intuitive way of thinking. It is a point of view which only comes to us through the ministry of the Holy Spirit and without his help we quickly revert back to Action/Consequence thinking. It is all about God and what he has done for us through his son, Jesus Christ. It recognizes that without Jesus we were dead (Ephesians 2:1), but because of him we are now alive (Ephesians 2:5) and that we are all alike in our unworthiness and need. Because of that, we have no basis for comparing or competing; judging or condemning. In this world view, all recognition, glory, honor and praise goes to God alone.

Using those two lenses, I want to take a look at the great fear many have concerning the teaching of grace:  If you preach it too much, people will be likely to consider grace as a license to sin, and will stop wanting to live godly lives.

The Book of Romans has some startling insight on that subject.  In Romans chapter 5 verse 20, Paul says, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase.” What was the reason the law was added, or given? So that “the trespass” might increase.  What is Paul saying? The Greek word translated here as “the trespass” is Paraptoma and literally means “to fall by the wayside”. It is equated with sin in the sense of defeat.  The reason the law was given, Paul says, was to increase the instances of defeat.

Paul elaborates further on that thought in chapter 7, beginning with verse 5, “…the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in our bodies, so that we bore fruit for death.”  And again, in verses 8-10, “But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire, for apart from law, sin is dead.  Once I was alive apart from the law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died.  I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death.”

In our natural Action/Consequence way of thinking, emphasis on teaching the law, or what God expects from us, should result in obedience, or godly living.  It is just logical.  The more we hear regarding what we should be doing, the more likely it will be that we will do it.

Yet, in the upside down and backwards world of Death/Resurrection, we find scripture telling us the opposite.  In a world without sin, the law would simply be a description of how we were already living.  But, in this world, where sin exists, the law clarifies how we are not living; and further, because of sin, when we are told what we should be doing, our “sinful passions” are actually aroused, and instead of becoming more obedient, we get worse!

So, if preaching law, obedience and right living, because of our sinful natures, actually produces defeat and fruit for death, where should the emphasis be?  Let’s take a second look at the context of the verses above:

Romans 5, verses 20 and 21 says, “The law was added so that the trespass might increase.  But when sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

Romans 7, verse 4 says, “So, my brothers, you also died to the law through the body of Christ, that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit to God.”

And, finally, at the conclusion of Paul’s discussion of how our sinful natures take something as “holy, righteous and good” as the law and twist it into something that produced death in us, he says, in verse 24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Our emphasis must always be on what God has done for us through Jesus Christ.  There is a wonderful use for preaching and teaching what the law requires; it is to remind us of how far we have all fallen from what God demands.  But the preaching of law must always be concluded with the good news that the demands of God have been completely satisfied for us by the life, death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Contrary to the Action/Consequence logic that thinks we will only be good if we are repeatedly told how we should be living, Death/Resurrection shows us that it is only through the comfort which comes through hearing the good news of grace over and over that we will begin to “bear fruit to God.”