The book entitled "What is so amazing about grace" by Phillip Yancey is a must read for any fundamentalist. I for some time had grappled with the apparent lack of grace offered by that faction. I was a proponent for most of my life, but the lack of grace seemed evident. There seemed to always be a "but" at the end of a grace statement. For example, "The homosexuals are part of the world and God loves them and died for them, BUT they are living a life of sin". Yes, I will consent to the fact that in deed they are living in a life of sin, BUT so am I! I live in sin everyday. How does this make me better loved by an all-loving God? It doesn't. I guess the chapter in Yancey's book about his friend Mel (who is homosexual) was followed by the chapter on cheap grace for a reason. There is a fine line where grace is concerned. If we are not careful though , we will hold to one side of the law/grace fence and one will ultimately be missing the "balancer".
I was talking to my friend the other day and asked him what he thought the balancer of grace is. I thought about it and I kept coming back to just "ungrace" which seemed a surface answer. Something was missing. The statement he made came from the same book by Yancey in which Phillip states that grace is cheap when in advance we conspire to sin knowing that God will forgive us in the end. He also used an example of me (who is married) going out and cheating on my wife. Now according to grace, God will forgive my sin, but the consequence of that sin is that I will have broken up my marriage and family. At best, I will have only put her trust in me in peril. Without trust, our relationship will be set back years possibly decades. The bottom line is why do I not cheat on my wife. The answer is love for God and love for my wife and family. I do not do that because I love God and want to follow His commandments and love my wife and family too much to chance losing them.
I guess what I am trying to say is grace, though the coolest thing God arranged for us, has the greatest amount of room for error on our part. Let's be careful not to go overboard on either side, too much law or too much "cheap" grace will only harm us and those around us.
Uncle Ben said to Peter Parker, "With great power comes great responsibility" and that is how we should treat the grace of God.
Graciously,
SIM Church Planter
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About Me
- Jared Funderburk, SIM CP
- Louisiana, United States
- A husband, father, and son.
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- Nomad, The Warrior; Thought I would give this a try. The only thing I can remember about this movie is the landscapes. Completely predictable, not very good.
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- Don't Know Much About History by Kenneth C. Davis; Read the Mythology book by the same author. Good stuff put in a great readable form.
3 comments:
When I first thought of the "balancer" of grace, I thought of the law, in the sense that it is the opposite of grace, but in light of our conversation and this post I understand the word "balancer" to mean that which keeps grace from becoming cheap. As you said, it is an issue of personal responsibility that prevents the grace given to us from being cheapened by our own selfishness. Love is the ultimate "balancer" of grace in our lives.
What an awesome quote by Uncle Ben, "With great power comes great responsibility," therefore, may it be said that with great grace must also come great love. Those who have been given "Grace, Greater Than All Our Sin" must be good stewards of such a gift by living a life ruled by love for God and others.
i grew up in an age where i was bombarded with the "buts" in issues like this...the ole attitudes of God the Father is a hammer...Jesus gets the crap kicked out of him by the Father for my sins, etc...all of that is the concept of "forensic" and formal western theology and Christianity of Rome and Augustine (pronounced auGUStin - augusTINE is the city in Florida). While some of that "salvation in a courtroom" stuff is certainly true in a sense; I've traded it in for the eastern Christian outlook of salvation and Christianity (influences of my living in eastern europe?). The Orthodox view is familial - the prodigal son looking to the horizon, finally seeing the familiar skyline of home, only to also see his father running down the road toward him at full speed - mindless of how it makes him appear to the hired help...cloak flapping in the wind...hair mussed...and dirt kicking up from his feet as he runs along the dirt road...in complete joy that his lost son has returned...now that's grace!
We're all bastards, but Jesus loves us anyway. That Yancey's a good guy, eh?
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