When it comes to the grace of God, one of the biggest problems people have is accepting that it’s real.  It seems too good to be true.  I mean, let’s face it.  How many times in life do we encounter someone willing to give us something indescribably valuable that we did not earn or deserve?  And that’s exactly what grace is.  Grace can also be defined as the unmerited favor of God toward man.  Either way you slice it, grace is a gift from God, not something we earned through our own efforts.

Despite the fact that it can be difficult to believe, God has giving us many things we did not earn or deserve.  As we’ve examined in previous posts, God has forgiven all our sins, freed us from our guilt and shame, and freed us to love Him and to know His love.  By themselves, these are incredible gifts from God, but there is so much more to explore.

Another thing that is sometimes difficult to believe is that God truly loves us.  In our honest moments of reflection, when we take an inventory of all the awful things we’ve done in our lives, it’s seems impossible that He could ever love us.  One of the reasons why it’s difficult to believe is because we know that deep down inside, we wouldn’t love someone who has repeatedly ignored us, slapped us, spit on us, insulted us, hated us, and outright hurt us.  We would want nothing to do with a person like that.  And yet that’s exactly how we have treated God.

But love us He does, and His grace pours out from His love.  And over the next several articles, I want to reveal many of the ways that He has demonstrated His love and showered us with grace.  If we don’t get this, we will struggle to grow as a Christian.

Failing to understand the love and grace of God can bring doubt to our minds.  When we see ourselves in the light of a perfect and holy God, it can lead us to question, “How can He love me?  I’m such an ugly, pathetic sinner!”  And whenever we trip up and commit some sin, especially if it’s a serious one, it becomes natural for us to think, “I can’t believe what I’ve just done.  How can I call myself a Christian?  God must be angry with me.”  Once we reach that point, we will find ourselves on a rollercoaster of emotions.  One day we may be up.  The next we may be down.  It all depends on how we see ourselves, which is often based on how good or bad we perceive ourselves to be at any given moment.  That’s when we start playing the game of “He loves me, He loves me not.”  When we think we’ve been good, we know He loves us.  When we’ve messed up, we’re certain He can’t possibly love us.  That’s how the mind works when we have missed the unconditional love and grace of God.

If you find yourself trapped in the “He loves me, He loves me not” game, let God’s word start renewing your mind.  Let’s begin with a simple, very well known verse — John 3:16.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

What a definitive statement.  God loves the world!  He loves you and He loves me.  He loves us so much that He gave us His Son.  And through His Son, He offers the world eternal life.  How do we get it?  Do we have to be perfectly obedient?  Nope.  Do we have to faithfully follow His laws?  Nope again.  Do we have to qualify for it?  In a way.  But the qualification is not impossible for any of us.  To qualify for eternal life, we must believe in Jesus.

Now let’s think about this for a moment.  If we had to be perfectly obedient or faithfully follow God’s laws in order to receive eternal life, would any of us make it?  To answer in technical terms, there ain’t no way.  If we could (and we can’t), then that would mean that we could earn it.  If we could earn it, then it wouldn’t be grace.  As Paul said, “And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace.”  (Romans 11:6)

But it is indeed grace.  That’s what makes God’s grace so amazing.  Wrap your mind around what this means.  God’s love is so deep, so infinite, that He provided a way out of our predicament through the sacrifice of Himself through Jesus Christ.  It’s just as Jesus told his disciples: “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  (John 15:13)  And that’s exactly what He did; he laid down his life for us.

One thing that is readily apparent when you read through the pages of the Old Testament is that the penalty for sin was death.  If God held us to that standard, there would be trouble for us all.  The prospect of eternal life would be a farce.  If He didn’t love us, we’d all be dead.  As it is, apart from Christ, we’re all dead in our sins and transgressions anyway.  (Ephesians 2:1)  So God stepped in and did for us what we could never do.  “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  (Romans 5:8)

So how do you measure God’s love?  By what He was willing to do to save us.  Would you go to that length for someone else?  God did.  And he did this, as Paul states, while we were His enemies.  “For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life!”  (Romans 5:10)  That is absolutely stunning!  He suffered, bled, and died for us — His enemies.  I’m sure most of us could come up with a list of people we care enough about to be willing to die for.  But for our enemies?  For those who hate us?  For those who have abused us, burned us, lied about us, smeared our reputation, and set out to destroy us?  Unlikely.  And on top of all that, he now lives for us.

There is no more powerful symbol of God’s love and grace than the cross.  It is there that He revealed the depths of His love.  Through His Son, He gave up everything for you and me.  Let that truth sink deep within you.  It will erase the doubts in your mind, fill your heart with joy, and free you from the endless game of “He loves me, He loves me not.” But we’re not done yet.  We’ve only begun.  Next week we will explore even more evidence of God’s endless love for us.  Be amazed at His wondrous grace!

Welcome back to Essential Grace!  I hope you and your loved ones enjoyed a joyful and peaceful Christmas.  My family and I sure did.  We were blessed to have our entire family together on Christmas Eve, including all the grandchildren.  There is nothing like watching the excitement and anticipation of little grandkids ready to open their presents.  Even better is getting big smiles and hugs from them as they say “Thank you” and “I love you.”  That certainly makes it all worthwhile.

Just prior to Christmas, I posted an article explaining how God’s grace frees us from the guilt and shame brought on by sin.  We also saw that Jesus willingly went to the cross, “scorning its shame.”  (Hebrews 12:2)  This was the grace of God in action.  Why would he do it?  That’s what we will be exploring in this article.

To understand why Jesus went to the cross, we first have to understand the heart of God.  From beginning to end, a story unfolds throughout the Bible about a God who passionately desires to share His love with those whom He created.  We see His love for Adam and Eve as they walked with Him in the Garden.  He breathed the breath of life into them.  He provided for them.  He even gave them the responsibility to rule over His creation.  

And even after they sinned, we still see His love for them.  In what may have been the first act of grace by God to man, He dressed them in animal skins so they wouldn’t have to live in a covering of fig leaves.  Even driving them from the Garden was an act of pure grace and love.  If He hadn’t, they may have eaten the fruit from the Tree of Life and lived forever in their sin and shame.  (Genesis 3:21-24)  There would have been no hope for restoration otherwise.

And that’s what the story of the Bible is about from that point on – God’s mission to restore what had been lost.  To repeat a point I made last week, living with guilt and shame can have tremendously adverse effects upon our ability to have a healthy, flourishing relationship with God.  God knew we needed to have our sins completely forgiven, otherwise we would never get beyond our guilt and shame.  And if we could never get beyond that, we would never truly understand His love and be capable of loving HIm in return.

Jesus illustrated this important point in what was perhaps his greatest parable – the story of the Prodigal Son.  Found in Luke 15, we see the younger son leaving his father and brother with his share of the inheritance and living a wild and reckless life.  He finally hits rock bottom and is living a life of regrets.  He decides to head back home, but to demonstrate how shame can impact relationships, he’s not returning home as a son.  He is so ashamed of how he’s lived and how he has dishonored his father that he’s certain his father would never have him back as his son.  So he’s prepared to beg his father to allow him to be like one of his hired servants.  That’s what sin has done to him.  He now sees himself as being worthy to be nothing more than his father’s servant.

But that’s not what the father sees.  As he spots his son returning home, he runs after him and gives him a huge bear hug and kisses him.  He doesn’t even respond to his son when he protests that he’s not even worthy to be called his son.  Instead, he calls for his servants to get his son dressed in the finest clothes and to prepare a big feast.  He doesn’t see another servant; he sees his son.  He doesn’t treat him with contempt; he showers him with love.  The father has been aching to celebrate the return of his lost son.  It doesn’t matter what it will cost him.  It only matters that the relationship has been restored.  

That’s the point of the cross.  It didn’t matter what it cost God.  It only mattered that our relationship with Him would be restored.  That is grace in its purest form.  That is a love that is radically different than anything we experience in the world.  God knew that we could never truly share in His love as long as sin and shame stood in the way.  So He freed us from the power of sin so that we could be freed from guilt and shame.  He freed us from guilt and shame so that we could be free to know His love.  That’s exactly what the father in the parable did.  He overcame his son’s guilt and shame with incomparable love.  Without it, restoration would have been impossible.  

Once we start comprehending the love of God, once it begins to captivate our heart, we can’t help but love Him in return.  We must remember as John declared, we love Him because He first loved us.  (1 John 4:19)  Paul is the perfect example.  As Saul, he hated the church and anyone who followed Jesus.  He was a leader in the effort to destroy the church.  He even participated in the arrest and deaths of Christians.  But then came the love and grace of Jesus Christ.  He was so spellbound by it that he experienced the most incredible transformation a person could ever experience.  He went from being a murderer to becoming someone willing to sacrifice everything for Jesus.  Why?  As he said himself, it was the love of Christ that compelled him.  (2 Corinthians 5:14)  He was now free to share the love of God.

The same transformation that Paul went through awaits anyone who desires it.  It’s not the law that leads to that transformation.  It’s not self-effort that leads to that transformation.  It’s not even religion that leads to that transformation.  It is God’s love and grace and only His love and grace.  Nothing else compares to it and nothing else can free us from sin and shame.  And when His love conquers our sin and overcomes our guilt and shame, we are free to know His love.  Restoration is complete.  It’s time to live in the relationship with God that He has always desired.  It’s time to grow in His love and grace.  You’ll never be the same.

Imagine you have a teenage son.  While at school one day, he hears about this incredible party that a female student is planning for the weekend at her house.  Her parents are going away for the weekend so it’s all happening quietly.  Your son would really like to go.  First of all, his friends are going and he enjoys hanging out with his best buddies in the world.  Second of all, he really likes this girl.  This would be a great opportunity to really get to know her.

As the week progresses, he finds out that it’s going to be a wild party complete with a keg and other adult beverages.  He’s never indulged in drinking before and he knows his parents would not approve of him going.  But the opportunity to get to know the most popular girl in the school is just too good to pass up.  

So he decides to cook up a scheme.  He says he’s going bowling and to the movies with his friends and asks his parents if he can borrow the car.  They trust him; they’ve never really had a reason not to.  He’s never been in trouble before.  And what’s the harm.  His friends seem like a good group of young men.  So they buy the lie and let him go.

I’m sure you can imagine the rest of the story.  He goes to the party but struggles to find the courage to talk to the girl.  So his friends (and others) encourage him to loosen up.  You know what that means.  He imbibes in the drinking and gets totally wasted.  He ends up with another girl in a bedroom but doesn’t remember what happened.  And after the party, he crashes his parent’s car, one of his friends suffers paralysis in the accident and winds up in the hospital, and he gets arrested and spends the night in jail.

Can you imagine the shock when his parents get the phone call from the police?  Can you imagine the fear the son has of having to own up to this?  Think about the embarrassment, the shame, and the guilt.  How can he face his friend who is lying in a hospital bed facing an uncertain future because of the choices he made?  How can he face his friend’s parents?  How can he face the girl that he so desperately wanted to get to know?  How can he face his parents who trusted him implicitly?  All he can do is think of ways that he could run and hide from it all, but he knows that’s not possible.  So his mind begins racing to find ways to shift the blame to others.  Anything to try to ease his guilt and put things back to the way they used to be.

But there’s no turning back.  What’s done is done.  Think of how this will affect the relationship between the son and his parents.  It’s not that the parents will disown him.  They can’t.  He is their son.  It’s not that the parents will stop loving him.  They can’t.  He is their son.  But think of the pain the son will feel from all he’s done.  Think of the burden of guilt that he will carry in his soul for years to come.  Think of the shame that will cause him unbearable grief.  As he faces his parents for the first time since the party, he is filled with unutterable fear as all he has done comes rushing back to his mind.  He anticipates punishment.  He anticipates justice.  It’s like a nightmare that returns to haunt him every night.  The torment is too great and it begins to erect a barrier between the love his parents have for him and the relationship they long to restore.

Does the story sound familiar?  It should.  It’s pretty much a retelling of what happened in the Garden of Eden.  Think about it.  What was life with their Father like before Adam and Eve made the choice to eat the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil?  He walked with them.  He talked with them.  He loved them unconditionally.  There was no indication that Adam and Eve ever feared their Father.  It was a relationship built on love and intimacy.  But in a moment, the relationship vastly changed.  

How did Adam and Eve react after they ate the fruit?  The first thing they did was to cover themselves in fig leaves.  Why?  Because for the first time, they realized they were naked.  They were covering their shame, or at least trying to.  

And when God came looking for them in the Garden, what did they do next?  They started playing the blame game.  In an attempt to transfer their guilt to someone else, Adam blamed Eve and Eve blamed the serpent.  You know how it goes.  It’s always someone else’s fault.  We’ve all played that game at one time or another.

Why do we do those things?  Why do we try to cover our shame and transfer our guilt?  It seems that we just can’t live with the knowledge of the terrible things we’ve done.  It’s a self-defense mechanism.  You know what I’m saying.  We all have things in our past that we are ashamed of and wouldn’t want anyone else to know about us.  They are ugly stains seared in our consciences and they impact the relationships in our lives.

That can be especially true in our relationship with God.  It’s one thing to do something really horrible to someone you love here on earth that can leave a lasting imprint.  But even in that situation, we can at least rationalize that none of us are perfect and the person I hurt has probably done things to hurt me or someone else too.  That thought can make us feel a little better about ourselves, though it is obviously wrong thinking.  But before a perfect God?  What rationalization could we possibly conjure up?  When we mess up, what defense do we have before Him?  None.  I’m sure we would respond very much the same way Isaiah did when he saw the Lord.  “‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’”  (Isaiah 6:5)

But that’s not where the story ends.  It is so much greater and more exciting than that.  As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, we are celebrating the coming of Jesus into this world – Immanuel, God with us!  Why did God leave his heavenly throne to become a lowly human?  Why did God take on flesh to be just like us?  Why did God in Jesus Christ hang out with the sinners, suffer for the sinners, and die for the sinners?  The writer of Hebrews gave us an often overlooked answer.  “For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”  (Hebrews 12:2)

Why did Jesus endure the cross?  To scorn its shame.  God knew that as long as sin remained an issue, guilt and shame would always stand in the way of the relationship He longed to have with us.  Jesus took not only our sins away but he took away the guilt and shame that came with it.  Now we can live in a relationship built not on fear of what a perfect, all-powerful God will do to us, but on the love He’s always had for us.  If we are still relating to God out of fear of pending punishment due to our lack of obedience, then there may be something about His love we still do not yet understand.  As John said, “There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.  We love because he first loved us.”  (1 John 4:18-19)

But how can we know for sure that God loves us?  As Jesus declared, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  (John 15:13)  The cross is the greatest symbol of love the world has ever known because that’s where Jesus laid down his life for us, his friends.  We have no need to fear him.  We have no need to fear our Father.  If we live in His love, His love will drive out our fear.  And as that fear melts away, so too will the shame and guilt from our ugly past.  That’s what grace does.  It drives out everything that hinders the loving relationship our Father longs to have with us.  

So just as the love the parents have for their son will slowly drive out the guilt and shame he feels for the terrible things he did at the party that night, so God’s love will do for you.  Let His love captivate your heart and share that love with others who are enslaved by guilt and shame.  Show them the love of Jesus Christ and watch their fearful hearts be changed to hearts filled with love and joy.

“Free at last!  Free at last!  Thank God Almighty, we’re free at last!”  Those immortal words were made famous by Martin Luther King, Jr. at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960’s.  I would like to borrow that phrase but under a different context, a spiritual context.  If you are in Christ, you are indeed free at last and that’s because of the grace of God.

As we saw in the previous post, God in His infinite love freed us from the bondage of law through his grace.  Christians are not under the law.  We are in Christ.  His life, truth, and grace pulsates through our newly born spirit.  We need to let this truth sink deep within us so that we are transformed by the renewing of our minds.  (Romans 12:2)  We are free from the severe and exacting requirements of the law, which demands no less than perfection.  Thank God Almighty that we have been set free.

Unfortunately, in some Christian circles, a mixed message is presented.  There are some who teach that an unbeliever comes to salvation by God’s grace through faith alone in Christ alone.  In other words, there is nothing you can do to earn God’s love and acceptance.  You could never be good enough to be saved apart from faith in Christ.  Christ died so that your sins would be forgiven and that you could have his life in you.  That’s good news!  (And biblical too.)

Sadly, though, that’s where the good news ends in this mixed message of grace and law.  Once you’re saved, so this message goes, it now suddenly becomes imperative that you live right or else.  Now that God’s Spirit lives in you, there are things you must do and things you must not do or your salvation could be in jeopardy.  To translate, now that you are a believer, you are suddenly back under law.

Given all the verses and passage we’ve examined over the last couple weeks that clearly state that believers are not under the law, it’s hard to imagine that we somehow miss the truth.  But being human, we often do.  I know I thought this way for years.  I just knew in my mind that if I sinned too much or committed certain types of sins that God may not forgive me.  I mean, it has to be true, right?  Wrong!  Try as hard as you might, you will find nothing in the New Testament that supports such thinking.  Nowhere does it say, or even hint for that matter, that we can cross a line that would cost us our salvation.  

“Hold on just a minute,” you might be thinking.  “Doesn’t 1 John 1:9 say that we have to confess our sins in order to be forgiven and cleansed?”  Yes, but that’s not the right question.  The right question is, “Who was John writing to?”  The most common thought is that he wrote that to Christians.  Wrong again.  Let’s dive into this and see who his audience is in chapter 1.

Let’s first read how John starts his letter.  “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.  We write this to make our joy complete.”  (1 John 1:1-4)

The first thing to take note of is that John is clearly testifying about Jesus Christ.  His reference to the “Word of life” is very similar to is his description of Jesus at the beginning of his gospel.  And further note who he is proclaiming Christ to – those with whom he wants to have fellowship, a fellowship that is with the Father and the Son (see the underlined portion).  That can’t be a reference to Christians; they already have that fellowship.  So he must be writing this part of his letter to unbelievers.

“That doesn’t make sense Steve,” you may be thinking.  “Isn’t he writing a letter to believers in a church?”  That seems to often be the common thinking.  But he doesn’t say that he is writing only to believers or even to a particular church.  I think that we often have the misconception that because a letter such as this appears in the bible, it must be for Christians only.  Not necessarily true.  Even if he did intend this letter for a church (or churches), that certainly doesn’t mean that there are only Christians there.  Think about it.  Have you ever been in a church where not everyone was a Christian?

But even if that doesn’t convince you, there’s more.  “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.  But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”  (1 John 1:5-7)

Notice that he’s talking about people who walk in darkness yet they claim to have fellowship with God.  As a result, they are living a lie and not living in truth.  Is he describing a Christian?  I don’t think so.  Instead, he encourages these people to walk in the light as he (God) is in the light.  How do we do that?  We have faith in Jesus, the one who described himself as the light of the world.  (John 8:12 and 9:5)  Now at the risk of sounding like one of those TV infomercials, but wait, there’s more!

“If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.  If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”  (1 John 1:8-10)

Who claims to be without sin or to have not sinned?  A Christian?  That really makes no sense.  By definition, a Christian is one who acknowledged their sinful state.  That’s what brought them to Christ.  So when we read the famous 1 John 1:9, it’s critical that we read the two verses that sandwich it.  In its full context, I believe that it becomes clear that 1 John 1 was addressed to unbelievers, not Christians.  

Still unconvinced?  Still thinking that verse 9 is meant for Christians because we still continue to sin even after being saved?  Still thinking that we could sin our way out of fellowship with God or lose our salvation if we’re bad enough or commit really awful sins?  Then John has a message for you.  “I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.”  (1 John 2:12)  Rejoice, Christian, because your sins have been forgiven!  That’s past tense.  Forgiveness has been accomplished.  It’s done.  Or as Jesus said, “It is finished.”  (John 19:30)  There is no line you can cross.  There is no such thing as sinning to a point of no return.  Jesus has already taken care of it.

I also ask you to notice that in verses 7 and 9, John goes out of his way to state that if we walk in the light (have faith in Jesus) and confess our sins (an acknowledgement of an unbeliever), he purifies us from all sin and unrighteousness.  ALL!  Not some.  Not only the ones we’ve committed until now.  ALL!  Jesus died for all our sins – past, present, and future.  

So if you struggle with the thought that you can lose your salvation if you don’t live right and stop sinning, I encourage you to leave that thinking behind.  As long as our sins continue to be in the forefront of our thinking, it will get in the way of our relationship with God blossoming as it should.  We have wallowed too long in our sin.  Through Jesus’ death, God’s grace has freed us from the guilt and shame that stood between us and our loving Father.  Through his life, we can go forward in confidence knowing that there is no one who loves us and accepts us as God does.  Now that’s a gift worth enjoying in this Christmas season.  Accept it.  Unwrap it.  Live in it everyday.

When we last talked (well, I typed and you read), we were seeing how incompatible the Christian life is with trying to live by God’s laws.  If God expects us to live in obedience to His commandments in order to get Him to love us or to keep loving us, then He has set us up for failure.  As Paul said in 2 Corinthians, the Ten Commandments kills and is a ministry of death and condemnation.  Sure doesn’t sound like a way to live to me.

But that’s not all Paul had to say about the law.  He further explained that God’s laws were never intended for Gentiles in the first place.  As he stated in Romans 3:19, “Now we know that whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law.”  Gentiles were never under the law.  He made that point abundantly clear in the previous chapter when he said, “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.”  (Romans 2:14)  So if you are a non-Jewish Christian, the law never applied to you, and that includes the Ten Commandments.

However, it goes even further than that.  Even if you are a Jewish Christian, the law does not apply to you either.  In fact, it simply does not apply to any Christians.  Look at the following verse and let the truth sink deep into your mind and heart.

For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.  (Romans 6:14)

There it is, simple and to the point.  We Christians are not under the law.  And why are we no longer under law?  Because we are dead to the law, as Paul declared in the following verses.

So, my brothers and sisters, 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 for God.  For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.  But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code.  (Romans 7:4-6)

For through the law I died to the law so that I might live for God.  (Galatians 2:19)

Dying to the law was critical so that we would no longer be enslaved to it.  This allows us to truly live for God.  Besides, as I mentioned in my previous post, we couldn’t live up to it’s perfect standards anyway, no matter how hard we try.  That’s evident in these next two verses.

Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God’s sight by the works of the law.  (Romans 3:20a)

So we, too, have put our faith in Christ Jesus that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no one will be justified.  (Galatians 2:16)

Did you see it?  No one, not even Christians, will be justified or declared righteous by obedience to the law.  That’s because all of us are guilty before the law, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.  (Romans 3:23)  As James states, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.”  (James 2:10)  That’s why Jesus did what he did to free us from the law.  Consider the following verses.

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.  (Galatians 3:13)

For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one (Jews and Gentiles) and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility, by setting aside in his flesh the law with its commands and regulations.  (Ephesians 2:14-15a)

So Jesus set aside the law and redeemed us from its curse.  Praise the Lord!  Could you imagine our salvation being dependent on our ability to follow it without fault?  “No way!” you say.  “Impossible!”  you declare.  You’re right on both accounts.  That’s why Jesus did what he did on the cross.  As Paul said to the Romans:

Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.  (Romans 10:4)

And there is the good news in a nutshell.  We are righteous, not because we obey God’s law, but because we believe.  We are righteous, not because of anything we have done to earn it, but because Christ did it for us.  

That’s the essence of grace.  God knew we could never live up to the requirements of the law, so He gave us another way – through faith in Christ.  Trying to live by the law is a losing proposition and a way of life that can never please God.  It is only through faith that we can please God.  (Hebrews 11:6)  We come to Christ in faith and we are to live in Christ by faith everyday.  It is by faith from first to last.  (Romans 1:17)

God’s grace has freed us from the law.  That is something to celebrate and should fill us with great joy!  The frustration of trying to prove ourselves worthy is over.  It died with Christ on the cross.  But that is not all that His grace has freed us from.  We will explore the freedom we have through grace more deeply in the my next post.  May God’s grace be with you all.

In my previous post, I focused on my past experience to illustrate what grace is not.  In fact, I focused on my legalistic past, which is just the opposite of living by God’s grace.  In this post, we’re going to examine legalism even more closely to see the danger it presents to all Christians.

So that we have a common frame of reference, let’s first define legalism.  Legalism is the attempt to be accepted and loved by God, and thereby attain and maintain salvation, by living according to a set of laws and rules and through the performance of good works.  To put it in simpler terms, if I live right, I’ll be okay with God.  If I live wrong, God will be angry with me.  That’s legalism.  And sadly, that’s the way a lot of Christians approach their life of faith.

Is that what God had in mind for His children?  Does He want or even expect us to live up to His perfect standards?  Let’s take a look at Scriptures.  

The first thing we generally think of when we think about living by God’s laws is the Ten Commandments.  Surely God wants us to obey those, right?  Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, had some interesting things to say about that.  In 2 Corinthians 3:7-9, he states, “Now if the ministry that brought death, which was engraved in letters on stone, came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look steadily at the face of Moses because of its glory, transitory though it was, will not the ministry of the Spirit be even more glorious?  If the ministry that brought condemnation was glorious, how much more glorious is the ministry that brings righteousness!”

Paul’s reference to letters engraved on stone is a clear reference to the Ten Commandments.  Notice how he described them.  He calls the Ten Commandments a “ministry that brought death” and a “ministry that brought condemnation.”  Additionally, in verse 6, he refers to them as letters that kill.  “He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”  (2 Corinthians 3:6)  

Death?  Condemnation?  Kills?  What kind of language is that to describe God’s holy commandments?  Paul explains what he means In Romans 7:6 when he says, “For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death.”  

Think about that for a moment.  The law arouses sinful passions in us.  How?  If you have children, you certainly know how.  You lay down a law and what do your kids want to do?  Just the opposite.  “Don’t get into the cookies.”  The temptation for an Oreo can be too great.  “Don’t turn on the television until your homework is done.”  Guess what they’d rather do.  “Be home by 10:00.”  Anyone want to bet that 10:00 gets stretched by several minutes?

And I certainly don’t want to leave the adults out either.  “Doesn’t the speed limit sign really say that I can go over by 10 mph?”  Nope.  “I know I’m only supposed to get an hour for lunch, but no one at work will care if I take an extra 10 minutes.”  Your boss might think differently.  “With all the money the government takes, I don’t need to worry about claiming this extra income on my taxes.”  Any comments from the IRS?  

That’s just the way it works.  Our flesh resists anything that tries to keep it from what it craves.  Paul understood this all too well.  Listen to his own personal story.  “I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘“You shall not covet.”’  But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of coveting. For apart from the law, sin was 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. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment,deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.”  (Romans 7:7b-11)  

Notice that sin, through the commandment to not covet, produced in him all kinds of coveting.  So just like the examples above, Paul found himself wanting to do the very thing that the law said not to do.  And further notice the end result – death!  Paul heard the commandment to not covet.  His flesh said, “But I want this,” or “I want that.”  And what did Paul find himself doing?  Coveting.  And his coveting certainly didn’t bring him life.  It brought him death.  There is never life in sin.  There is life only in Jesus Christ.

Not only this, but read the books of the Law in the Old Testament (Leviticus and Deuteronomy, for example) and what was the penalty for breaking the laws of God?  Death!  There was nothing but death surrounding the law.  It brought both spiritual death and physical death.

So this begs the obvious question.  Why would any Christian want to put himself under the law?  First, as we’ve already seen, it brings nothing but death.  Second, the law was given through Moses to the Israelites.  So unless you are Jewish, the law was never given to you in the first place.  It was never intended for a Gentile.  And third, you could never live up to it anyway.  Only one person ever could.  (More on that in the future.)  Try as hard as you like, you will never be able to perfectly obey the commandments of God.  It’s an impossible task and it was meant to be.  (More on this in the future too.)  

So if your idea of pleasing God and getting on His good side is to go through life living in obedience to His laws, good luck.  You’re going to lose.  The more you try, the more it will stir up the desires of the flesh.  And that is not the way to please our Father.  Then how can we please Him?  That’s what we will begin to explore in the next post.

P.S.  If you’d like to leave me a message, check out the Contact page on essentialgrace.org.  Leave your name, email address, and a comment.  Hearing from people who enjoy the blog or are helped by it is always very encouraging to hear.  You can also click the links to my Facebook and Instagram pages at the bottom of the Contact page  and like us there. You can also Like the blog at the bottom of each post.  So take a few moments to take advantage of the multiple ways to let me know that you’re out there.  May God bless you.

Before I dive into a biblical exposition on grace, I thought I might first give some background.  I have found that it sometimes helps to explain things by using personal experience.  There are other times when it helps to explain something by explaining what it’s not.  In the next few articles, I’m going to do both.  Today I’ll be using personal experience to describe what grace is not.

So what is the grace of God?  Why is it so important?  And why should I live by God’s grace over everything else?  These are the questions we will explore together.  For me it starts with my childhood.

I grew up in a church tradition that was very legalistic.  As with most people who are born into it, I learned the Ten Commandments as a kid.  I could recite the “You shall not’s” with the best of them.  And I can still recall the guilt I felt whenever I broke one.  I mean, come on.  What child on the face of the earth has honored their father and mother 100% of the time?

But the church provided a remedy for those days when you broke some of the big ones.  It was called confession.  Sit yourself inside a booth, tell your priest what you’ve done, and he would tell you what you needed to do to obtain God’s forgiveness.  It usually included a lot of prayer.  And I suppose it was also supposed to get you over the guilt you felt too for having broken God’s rules in the first place.

So I felt fine — for a while.  Time would pass and I would find myself breaking some more of His rules.  Not always one of the big Ten per se but at least the spirit of some them.  Talk about feeling trapped.  It just seemed to happen some how.  Just living life, going to school, hanging out with friends, etc., and you find yourself doing things that violated God’s high expectations again.  Back to the booth I went.

And it wasn’t just the live-sin-confess merry-go-round caused by the “Play by God’s rules” emphasis that made it legalistic.  There was also going to church itself.  My church tradition taught that you had to go to church every Sunday in order to be under grace.  There were even other special days in which you were obliged to be at church.  Talk about an oxymoron.  To be under God’s grace (which brings freedom) you were obligated to attend.  So you were made to feel guilty if you missed church on those days.  Now that’s grace.  (Not!)

Even church service was very legalistic.  There were rules and traditions that governed everything.  And nearly everything was scripted out, from what the priest said to how the people were supposed to respond.  That’s what is called a liturgical style of worship.  I’ll never forget the first time I went to Jenni’s church before we got married.  Talk about a contrast.  It certainly wasn’t scripted there, at least not in the very formalized way I was accustomed to.  You can only imagine what Jenni thought when she first attended mine.

Through the first six years of our marriage, Jenni and I would go back and forth between our respective churches.  One week we would attend hers, the next week would be mine.  That continued even after we had our first two children.  It was probably some time after our second child turned one that Jenni and I decided that this back and forth stuff had to end.  It was time to find a single church that we both could agree on and one that we could raise our children in.

Coming from two fairly different church backgrounds meant that it would require quite a bit of searching, but search we did.  We checked out a wide variety of churches in different denominations.  The ones we liked we checked out again.  The ones we didn’t never saw us again.  (If this sounds like we were shopping, we were.)  We finally narrowed our search down to one and started attending a Christian church regularly.  We ultimately placed our membership there and were baptized in 1995 as we were expecting child #3.  We had now found a church home and it was the home for our children all the way up to adulthood.

So that is the story of our first brush with God’s grace.  Through the Holy Spirit, He used our desire to find a family church to remove me from a legalistic way of relating to Him.  Of course, that is not the way I saw it at the time, but there is no question about it looking back at it in my mind.

In our new church, He would start to slowly reveal His true nature to me.  Over the years, I would come to know Him as a loving Father and God of grace.  He doesn’t want us to relate to Him through legalistic rituals and fear-based living.  That is not the heart of our Father.  Instead, He wants us to have a relationship with Him in which we experience His love in deeply penetrating ways.  It’s His love that opens our eyes to His grace and begins the transformation that allows us to live and flourish in it.  That’s what I pray others will come to know.

In my next post, I will explain more about legalism and how it gets in the way of experiencing grace.  But for now, may you and your family have a very Happy Thanksgiving.

Do you remember when you were first saved? Do you remember the exhilarating joy you felt with the knowledge that your sins had been forgiven? Do you recall the heavy weight lifted off your shoulders as the shame and guilt of your past melted away in the glow of God’s grace and love?

If you were like me, you probably had thoughts similar to these.  “What an incredible God!  What indescribable love!  To think that he could accept someone like me as his child. To think that Jesus would take all that excruciating pain and anguish for not only all my sins but all the sins of the world. Who wouldn’t want a God like this for a Father?  Who wouldn’t want to know his unconditional love and grace?”

But then time goes by.  Perhaps its a few months.  Perhaps its a year.  Perhaps its two or more.  No matter how long it takes, the honeymoon seems to fade away.  The joy of your salvation gets crushed under the weight of trying to live up to expectations.  You hear a steady drumbeat of what it means to be a good Christian.  You have to pray more.  You have to read your Bible more.  You have to give more.  And not just your money but also your time.  You have to go to church every Sunday morning, Sunday evening, and Wednesday night.  In fact, you should be there every time the doors are open.  And it’s not enough that you just show up.  You also need to volunteer to lead every program or bible study group you can.  And on top of all that are the many warnings about how you need to clean up your life, obey God’s commandments, or else.  Before you know it, the things you once did because you loved God you now do to be loved by God.  Your initial joy has been replaced by obligation and duty.  What a miserable way to live!

If this describes your experience, you are not alone.  There are many others who have gone through the same thing you have.  For all of you who have experienced this, this is the blog site for you.  In future blogs, I will be writing about the grace of God and how it transforms every life that is touched by it.  Together we will examine how his grace frees us from legalism, frees us from the power of sin, frees us from the desires of the flesh, frees us from the tyranny of having to please others, and frees us to love him as he loves us.

Even if you haven’t had this experience in your life, this is still a blog site for you.  There is nothing that compares to living in the grace of God and there is no better encouragement than to be among those who are doing so.  It is my prayer that you will receive that encouragement from this site.  And besides, with all the different worldviews out there competing for our hearts and minds, isn’t it good to be firmly grounded in his grace and love?  I further pray that this post and the ones to come in the future will help provide some of that grounding.

And even if you are not a Christian, I would still recommend this site for you.  In fact, I would recommend many such sites for you.  I want you to know that God loves you.  I want you to know that Jesus died for you and lives for you.  I want you to know that if you’re tired of the daily grind that comes from this world and it’s empty promises, there is a much better life waiting for you.  It’s a life of peace you have never before experienced.  It’s a life of love you have never before known.  It’s a life of freedom that far exceeds any freedom this world has to offer.  Stick with this blog.  It may take time to get it but the message of grace and peace that God wants you to know is real.  And so is Jesus Christ, the one who is filled with grace and truth.  (John 1:14)  Once the joy of knowing him grabs hold of you, your life will never be the same – and you will never want to go back.  It is then that you will discover the peace of God which transcends all understanding.  (Philippians 4:7)

To this point I’ve only made references to the wonders of grace in an individual person’s life.  But that’s not all there is.  Another wonderful aspect of the grace of God is the impact it has on the life of the church. How his grace plays itself out in each Christian also helps shape and influence how the church operates, how it functions, why it meets, and how it interacts with the world at large. So my posts will not only focus on God’s grace at an individual level but also on how it is revealed through the church. And what we discover may surprise you.  You may come face-to-face with a far different view of church than you’ve ever seen before.  As each person lives in the grace of Jesus Christ, the church as a whole will reflect it, and the glory of our Savior, the head of the church, will be evident to a world thirsty for real truth and love.

Now you may be thinking, “You make it sound like that there is nothing more important than grace.”  To that I would respond with a huge “YES!”  Since we can’t have life without Jesus and Jesus is the very embodiment of grace, we can’t live without it.  Apart from his grace, we would be dead in our sins, forever lost and separated from our Father.  In his grace, we will bear fruit and the light of his love and truth will shine through us.  There is nothing more important.  There is nothing we need more.  Grace is essential for our Christian life.

So this introductory post is just for starters.  Stay tuned.  There is so much more to come.