I’ve been thinking about grace lately, considering writing a long article about it, its abuses, its nuances. It seems we’ve taken the marrow out of the word and Americanized it to mean that we can do anything we darn well please, invoke the grace card, and smile our way through sin. After all, it’s not kind to deal with sin. It’s not kind to ourselves, and it’s certainly not kind to point out the splinters in other folks’ eyes.
What happens, though, when grace becomes tasteless? Mundane? Ordinary?
Why is it that we see Jesus offering grace to folks, healing others, but we forget that He is holy and He threw a holy-hissy-fit in the temple, turning over tables. Gee, that’s not gracious! It’s not very nice. Certainly not safe.
Here’s what I’m wrestling with:
What if grace is invoked to such an extent that innocents are harmed? What if we extend so much grace to offenders so that they’re enable to keep offending? Is that grace?
Once I poured my heart out to someone in leadership about the sexual predator tendencies I saw in someone. My hope in doing so was to find some help for this person, but mostly, to be honest, it was to remove the person from the situation so no children would be harmed. The response from the leader? “This is Kingdom work. Keep with them. Don’t give up.”
I still get a stomach ache thinking about that advice. Kingdom work to tolerate sexually-inappropriate folks? What about turning over the tables? What about calling sin, sin? What kind of grace allows this behavior in churches? There is a marked difference between grace and license.
Bonhoeffer said this: “Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.” He continues, “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves . . . the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship.”
How cheap is the grace we so freely offer? Is it grace? The beauty of grace is its cost: the life of One Perfect Man. We treat it in a blase manner, as if it was ho-hum that Jesus sacrificed Himself for our sin. Bonhoeffer continues: “It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.”
Grace is grace because of holiness. Let’s not cheapen it in order to assuage our own consciences or the consciences of those we want to impress with our friendship. Grace is radical, but it requires cost and repentance. True kingdom work is walking that sacred line between God’s love and God’s holiness, where grace bridges the gap.
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