For the last 5 years or so the grace movement has really shaken the church. It is has been wonderful for people like me who have been legalistic for majority of my faith walk. For some, the grace message has been a little scary. Why? Pretty obvious if you think on the radicalism of the grace of God. People are fearful that they will allow sin to be free in one’s life. I address the misconceptions of grace HERE in another blog. You can read those later. But for now, I wanted to map out what happens in the life of believers once they have been introduced to radical grace.
My personal experience went something like this:
I privately believed in grace, but would never publicly preach or share my views on grace. The reason? Those around me did not live this kind of grace – although they privately believed it as well.
I knew that Jesus’ finished work covered my sin, but I did not believe it covered everyone else’s. I am not sure why I felt this way.
Also, I knew that I could not live up to the righteous requirements of the law, but I still tried. This constant struggle to be perfect was utterly impossible and constantly exhausting. I am so happy to be free from self perfection.
Moving on…
Image by candidkerry.wordpress.com
I want to really address in a concise manner what happens when one finds grace personally, but does not make the move publicly. Make sense? If not, I hope by the last word of this blog post that I have clarified for you.
Like I mentioned above, I was a pretty legalistic man/preacher. I really knew how to tell people what they were doing wrong and I was an expert on how one can get to hell…fast. That’s all I knew how to do – condemn.
Fast forward 10 years to my accepting grace and living and preaching its realty. Although I privately lived grace or believed in grace, I still had the tendency to publicly preach a legalistic, law driven message.
This seems to be the case with many of my friends who have found grace over the last year or so. We all want grace to cover our lives, but when given the opportunity to speak about the love and grace of God, we blow it. Why? Some are fearful that the grace of God will allow others to live like hell. So, we preach hard. We preach the “stop sinning”, “R rated movies will damn your soul”, “Harry Potter will cause you to be demon possessed” kind of messages.
I am going to be very blunt here…
Most of the time that I preached these type of “turn or burn” messages, I was also looking at porn or messing around with my girlfriend, or tearing down someone else who was “living in sin”. Yet, I still felt called to preach and did preach. I preached everybody into hell for the things I was doing wrong. I hope you got that.
So, whats the point of this blog post?
Live grace publicly, preach it publicly, and give it publicly. You will need it for your own life as well. We are all a mess in need of lavish grace. Law preaching does nothing for you or anyone else. All we do when we preach the law is make our hateful point, but we are not making a radical difference.
Be careful not to condemn others for the things in which you feel guilty.
Love covers a multitude of sin…not law driven preaching.
My heart for you today? Allow the chains of legalism to fall off so that you can live out a life of grace and impact the world around you.
What are your thoughts?
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