Years of teaching the Bible have brought many women into my classrooms who come from a variety of backgrounds, and some have mistaken ideas about major tenets of the Christian faith. It is amazing how many people misunderstand grace. They have been taught that God loves everybody and that it is his will that everyone should be saved. They have come from churches that focus one hundred per cent on God's love and literally erase the verses about God's wrath and coming judgment. They don't see how God's wrath and grace can co-exist.
Misunderstanding Grace
As you know, this blog is dedicated to the understanding of radical, life-transforming, outrageous, scandalous grace. Grace is a good thing. It is a positive thing. It is the thing that saves us for all eternity if we are recipients of it. So when you begin to read this blog, you may have expectations of a kind of warm fuzzy grace that makes you feel pretty good about your standing with God. You might expect to hear only of God's love and nothing of his wrath, and certainly no talk about hell. Not in a blog about grace!
Did you know that the Bible talks about God's wrath three times more than about God's love? If you read through the Psalms or the prophets at all, you get a sense of impending doom for those who are wicked. Yet God extends grace to some of them while destroying others. Grace begins with a warning. Grace begins by convicting a sinner of his sin. Grace gives warnings about hell and eternal suffering.
Well, you might say, "That doesn't sound like grace to me." But God doesn't owe anybody a warning. He could by all rights just send everybody to hell and we would all deserve it. He doesn't have to warn us about the coming wrath at all. The fact that he does is outrageous! Who gives their enemies a warning about what is to come? When you are fighting enemies, part of a good strategy is to take them by surprise. Giving them a warning and telling them what you are about to do, and then giving them a chance to repent is scandalous. If a soldier did that, he could be executed for treason. These warnings fly in the face of human reason.
Misunderstanding Sin
People are also confused about what constitutes sin. We recently heard a sermon in church where the pastor reminded us, "Sin is what God defines as sin in the Bible. If it is not a sin against God, it is not a sin at all." The point is that God defines sin; people do not. A person is not sinning against us if they are not primarily sinning against God. They may not do what we want them to do, but that is not in itself a sin. They may do things differently than we do, but that is not in itself a sin. We do things differently from other people too. We don't obey all their rules either. There is no sin in that. We are not bound to live by other people's rules. There is a great deal of liberty in Christianity. The only rules we are bound to live by are God's rules. That can be really annoying when we are trying to control other people and make them do what we want them to do. But we always have to stop and consider: Are they really breaking God's rules or just my rules?
You not only have to be careful about the demands you place on other people, but on the demands they make of you. Are their demands in conformity with God's commandments? Or are their demands merely an attempt to dominate or control you? Unfortunately, I have known many women who are or have been victims of domestic abuse and who wrongly feel they have to submit to all kinds of abuse by controlling men because they have a wrong concept of submission to husbands. God never demands that you submit to anyone who demands that you submit to abuse in an attempt to control you for their own purposes or that you submit to anyone who tells you to do something wrong. God puts authority figures in our lives for good reason, but we are not to obey or submit to them when they ask us to participate in something that is wrong. Acts 5:29 says, "We are to obey God rather than man."
Here is a misconception people have about the relationship between grace and sin. They think that grace will cover all their sins even if they don't repent of all their sins. They think that all the good they do will somehow outweigh the bad. They think they can cling to one secret (or not so secret) sin that will be overlooked because they go to church and do a million good works. The lesson of Moses should correct that thinking. Forty years of righteous behavior didn't compensate for the one sin that kept him out of the Promised Land. But nobody says it more plainly than Jesus himself in Matthew 7:22-23. Jesus says, "Not everyone who says to me 'Lord, Lord' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, 'Lord Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' And then I will declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'"
So much for all their good works.
It only takes the habitual practice of one sin of defiance to keep us out of heaven for all eternity. One sin that we love more than God. One commandment that we refuse to obey. I am not talking here about all the myriad of sins we commit every day without even realizing it. Nor am I talking about common sins that we really struggle with or the sins we truly hate. We all have sins we hate and try to overcome and struggle with because of our weaknesses. I am not talking about those kinds of sins. Just to be clear, I am talking about known sins that we love and that we refuse to repent of. Sins that we try to justify on the grounds that our case is special or that our circumstances demand it.
Nobody's case is special. It doesn't matter what other people have done to us or what our particular circumstances are. None of those things give us a right to sin against God or our neighbor--as defined above. We never hear God say "Thou shalt not murder...unless somebody really annoys you, and then I would totally understand." No. He says, "Thou shalt not murder. Period. This can be applied to any of the commandments.
If you need more proof that the defiant practice of just one sin can keep you from heaven, read Galatians 5:19-21.
"Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
Or I Corinthians 6:9-11
"Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, not thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God."
Or we can go back to the Garden of Eden. How many sins did Adam and Eve have to commit to lose their standing with God and be deserving of hell? ONE. Or what about the rich young ruler who thought he obeyed every single commandment, but Jesus pointed out the ONE sin that would keep him from heaven?
Are you beginning to see the point of this? If you are worried about your sins keeping you from heaven, just answer one question: Do you truly hate your sin and repent of it, or do you love your sin, cling to it, and try to justify it? The answer will tell you which path you are on. If you love your sin and refuse to give it up, your only hope is to pray that God will change your heart. If God moves you to pray that prayer, then he will do as you ask. John 6:37 says, "...whoever comes to me I will in no wise cast out."
So you see, mercy and grace are there for the asking..if we ask with a heart of true repentance.
Even the warnings are grace. It's all grace. Outrageous. Scandalous. Grace.
For you.
Winter Walk in the Woods
