Depending on Grace
\nCopyright by Shea Oakley
\nAll rights reserved<\/p>\n
We should not presume upon grace but we must depend upon it. The term \u201ccheap grace\u201d often gets bandied about in the Church today. The implication is that many professed contemporary believers abuse the unmerited favor of God, using it as a kind of license to sin. While this is true in some cases it is also true that many other Christians have trouble receiving this gift from above in their daily lives. This is tragic, for the grace that comes to us through the shed blood of Jesus Christ is foundational to our being children of God. Without grace real faith is impossible. Grace is the very thing that gives us access to personal faith at the beginning of our Christian walk and grace is what enables us to continue in that walk throughout our lifetime. It is impossible to stay in Christ without it.<\/p>\n
The problem with indiscriminately attacking those who openly rely on grace as being in danger of abusing it is that it is a fundamentally wrong assumption. It is impossible for a believer to \u201cabuse\u201d grace if he or she is humbly dependent upon it to provide the ongoing sanctification that must occur in a healthy Christian life. After playing its essential role in our initial salvation this is its continuing purpose, to both sustain and perfect us as we live on this side of the Resurrection. <\/p>\n
The phrase, \u201chumbly dependant\u201d is the critical distinction. It is indeed possible to treat this approval that we cannot earn cavalierly. Such an attitude does not mean that someone is overly dependant on grace but more likely indicates that they are not really receiving it at all. To believe that God has made some kind of provision for a person to continue in willful sin is to completely misunderstand not only what grace is but also how one can receive it. This is probably where the idea of \u201ccheap grace\u201d comes from. The person who actually obtains grace is the person who is truly sorry for their sin when the Spirit convicts them of it. Once He has they desire to put it out of their lives. In confessing and repenting of the sin in question they receive both forgiveness and the ability to resist temptation in regards to it in the future. But if someone instead thinks of grace as somehow being a permit for wrongdoing they truly have made a most dangerous mistake, one that puts them in great spiritual danger.<\/p>\n
Yet I suspect that relatively few believers, at least those who are familiar with what the Scriptures have to say on this subject, start each day planning to grossly sin and then \u201cdepend on grace\u201d to somehow make it ok in the end. It appears that more Christians struggle with legitimately appropriating God\u2019s mercy when they fall in the far less deliberate ways that most, if not all of us, do on a daily basis. For them the problem is in trusting that such mercy is truly obtainable when they see so much darkness in themselves. Sometimes it is easy to feel that we have crossed some invisible line in the sand and have somehow used up our portion of grace. But this feeling is most often not to be trusted either.<\/p>\n
The truth is that our Lord knows that we will not be completely free of the ability to sin until we stand in His presence and are finally made perfect. In the meantime He has provided the answer for our continued imperfection in the form of grace. The Bible is clear that true believers are capable of moral failure and it is equally clear that grace is available to us when we fail. We are meant to be dependant on such grace, in the form of the cleansing blood of Christ, to enable us to be restored to fellowship with the Father of our souls after we have strayed. To continually ask for grace to accomplish this in our lives is not to make it \u201ccheap\u201d but simply to use it for a purpose for which it is intended. If we want to be rightly related to God we must depend on His grace everyday for the rest of our lives. This dependence does not cheapen anything. It simply honors the desire of the One who died and rose again to make such grace accessible to us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Depending on Grace Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved We should not presume upon grace but we must depend upon it. The term \u201ccheap grace\u201d often gets bandied about in the Church today. The implication is that many professed contemporary believers abuse the unmerited favor of God, using it as a kind of license… <\/p>\n