Our Portrait of Grace
Grace is the heartbeat of the Christian faith. Grace is the favor God shows to undeserving people. Hence, by definition, it cannot be earned. If we could earn it, it would not be grace. The only thing that causes God to smile upon us with his favor is his own decision to do so. He delights in it (Mic 7:18).
Because of this, the teaching of God's grace is always under attack. We humans are a proud bunch. We think we are pretty good, or at the very least, better than a lot of people. We get our goodness by our bootstraps. We use our noggins. When we aren’t good, we have good excuses: I was born this way. It’s just my personality. It was just a mistake. I’ve suffered. I grew up in a dysfunctional home. I was mistreated. I was abused . . . Hence, when we behave abusively and mistreat others, we think it’s not really our fault; we can’t help it; it’s just how we are. But underneath all that damage, we think, is a fundamentally good person who deserves every good thing, and none of the bad things. We are loathe to admit responsibility for our behavior or its consequences, but we are quick to take the credit for whatever good comes our way. We want all the glory and none of the shame, all the credit and none of the blame.
This attitude is opposed to grace, and it lies at the heart of sin. The sinful heart thinks it is qualified to judge itself, and that it alone has the right to do so. Its own desires are its standard and its guide. It wants nothing more than to forge its own path, answerable to no one but itself. The last thing it wants is to be told how to live or to be held accountable, especially by a holy God. The sinful heart is dead to God. Dead as a doornail. As the apostle Paul puts it:
“[W]e all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph 2:3-9).
We lived our lives as dead men until the gospel of Jesus Christ broke through and faith suddenly arose in our hearts and we found ourselves alive, new creatures in Christ (2 Cor 5:17). The things we never wanted are now our heart’s desires. The holy God we once despised is now the love of our life. Out of nowhere we found ourselves wanting to obey him and eagerly searching the Scriptures desiring nothing more than to emulate the beauty of his holiness in our own lives. There in his word we learn that there is no greater honor in all the world than to bear the image of God. We finally see why sin is so heinous, and why only the sacrifice of God’s perfect Son could save us. The sinful life we once loved, we now abhor. We are Christians!
But it doesn’t take long for the new Christian to realize that even though God “. . . has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son” (Col 1:13), Satan and our sinful flesh, have not abandoned their work of defiling God’s image in the world. In fact, they are more urgent than ever in their efforts to destroy everything in which God delights. Evil wastes no opportunity to pervert God’s priceless work of grace in us.
This is why we need to be on guard at all times against the two basic perversions of God’s grace: legalism and licentiousness. Legalism is the flesh finding ways to take credit for its favored position in God’s sight—in gaining it, in keeping it, or both. Licentiousness, on the other hand, is the flesh using God’s grace as an excuse for sin.
Legalism is subtle because it looks “Christian” on the surface. It can live long and quite happily without detection among people who are outwardly moral and who excel at keeping up appearances. Legalism allows people who have never been saved to think that they are Christians because they act like Christians. Certainly, they think, God accepts them. They are doing such a good job! But legalism can also creep into the hearts of genuine Christians. It usually comes disguised as a means to greater holiness. To those who are inclining toward legalism, Paul poses this question: “Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Gal 3:3). In other words, just as you were saved by grace, through faith in the gospel, so your ability to live a Christ-like life comes only through dependence on this same gospel.
Licentiousness is also subtle. It tells us that because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ (Rom 8:1), we are free to live as we please. In a sense, this is true, but only insofar as our desires are those of the Spirit and not of the flesh: “For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do.” (Gal 5:17). And as Paul writes elsewhere, “if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. ” (Rom 8:13-14). In other words, it is only through Christ and the work of his Spirit in our lives that we desire what the Spirit desires. And it is the work of the Spirit to lead us not into licentiousness, but into ever increasing holiness:
“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. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (Gal 5:19-24).
So, my dear brothers and sisters, let’s take our stand together in defense of the grace of God that is found only in Christ Jesus, and show the world a living portrait of the beauty of His holiness as we carry his gospel into this dark world we once called home.
