grace and sin abound
The problem with grace is that you can’t control it. You can’t control the effects of it either. The results can be disastrous in a community context. In a milieu of grace where we can literally get away with murder, people get murdered. In a context of grace where we can safely admit our weaknesses and sins, weaknesses and sins abound. Because that’s the way we are bent. Which lead to the Roman heresy of concluding since grace abounds where sin abounds, grace must permit and even encourage sin and its expression so that grace can have greater expression. Unless people are jumping to this erroneous conclusion because of your teaching, then you are not teaching grace in its most true and radical form.
My God! My community is in such a mess! Sometimes I pine for the old days when a little bit of religious expectation could lay an attractive veneer over all our crap. But what we are seeing in our community is what’s really here. Why hide it? Why pretend it isn’t here? It IS here! Let’s face it. We all, ALL like sheep have gone astray and there isn’t one of us who is without sin. Not one! Here is bitterness, unbelief, depression, hatred, lust, adultery, promiscuity, separations and divorces, abuse, theft, laziness, lying, drugs and drunkenness, etc.. It’s all here! And it’s all there too, whether you admit it or not. All our feet are swift to shed blood. Not one foot is innocent. I’m always suspicious when people claim that revival has happened in a certain place and everything is just wonderful praise god. What has really happened is that sin has been driven deeper underground.
When I think about “church” this all makes me want to give up. But when I’m thinking right and am thinking about the people, the fellowship of my community, then I’m still in the game. No matter how chaotic it gets. Because this is how I’ve been treated. This is what grace does. Doesn’t it?
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A.W. Tozer, who passed away in 1963, spoke of the spirit and content of orthodox Christianity changing so radically under the vigorous leadership of undiscerning religionists that, if the trend “is not stopped, what is called Christianity will soon be something altogether other than the faith of our fathers”. “We’ll have only Bible words left;” he said, “Bible religion will have perished from wounds received in the house of her friends”. My own perception of that as having come to pass amounts to our having reduced the reality of what Christ brings to us into no more than definitions we then cut and paste until we have our individual totems before which we fall down. We speak of Trinity, but either discard the Spirit as a manifestation in our walk or, just as bad, think ourselves to be empowered of Him while not being possessed by Him.
For me, “grace”, “faith”, “peace”….all are who He is “in” me. He verifys their possession by His river bringing confirmation of His promises; and out of those things that He gives unto me, not out of some counterfeit that I try to create for myself, do I find flow to extend unto others.
Thanks. As a youth pastor whose heart is broken by the sin in his students and who has been preaching a lot about radical grace lately, I needed that.
David, have you read “Becoming a True Spiritual Community”, by Larry Crabb? I’m just about done it (it was a great follow on from “Pagan Christianity?”). It’s absolutely wrecking me. The chapter I just finished was on dealing with exactly what you are talking about. When we start to get things right, and start to make a safe place for people to be broken, together, it’s going to look really ugly before it starts looking any better.
If you’ve not read it, I seriously recommend it. As much as “Pagan Christianity?” challenged my mind, this one is doing a number on my heart.
jonathan: i did read it. years ago. “before it starts looking any better” hasn’t happened yet. new sinners keep coming.
nakedpastor, some day you will be thankful for grace. and i find it interesting in your diatribe against? grace not one mention of Christ. after all its the “grace of the One Man Jesus Christ that we Christians can call ourselves Christian and expect any hope of grace on THAT day.
NP writes:
“My God! My community is in such a mess!”
—–That surely doesn’t mean every congregation is a mess. There surely are folks in every congregation that are a mess, but that does not mean the congregation is a mess.
Now Ananias and Sapphira, they were a mess–but God did not impugn or punish the whole congregation.
—– Don’t you have, even a few in your congregation, that are not in a mess?
—–Don’t you have anyone living in Galatians 5:22-25, 22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law. 24Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the sinful nature with its passions and desires. 25Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.”
fishon
The more you face life the freer you are.
Good stuff David.
That did me good to read. As a prison chaplain my “congregation” have lots of mess. From time to time it’s really overwhelming for me to feel immersed in their mess. I too, like you, have to stand back and remind myself to focus on the Big Picture which is the grace of God.
Don’t remember Jesus hanging out much with the sorted and settled…more chance he’d be in your church by the sound of it.
x
PS I realise my comment implies I have none of my own mess. If only!
Good comment clarebirch…!Good to remember that. =) Otherwise, I love it what my friend has said in her FB religious views: “Love mercy, engage suffering”
I do not try to be all I can be for God. I just try to be who God made me. I don’t think he fucked up when he made me. So why try to be something he doesn’t want me to be. I do not get in to all of that Church/Community as a self help place to make people better people. When people let go of that, it is MUCH easier to follow God. Many fewer stumbling blocks.
nakedpastor, you nailed the issue we have with grace. It’s impossible to control. Rules are sooo much easier. And so much more deadening.
Awesome post, np!
That’s pretty much it. When thet haranged Luther over preaching grace, they said to him “if we preach grace then the floodgates of iniquity will open wide.”
Luther said, “Let ‘em open! Better to have the floodgates of iniquity opened than to have people living with a yoke of slavery, and no grace at all.”
Hey Dave,
As always, you nailed it. Where I come from, we dont hear enough about grace. mayvbe thats why much of the church here has become a place for the self righteous…and we forget how far the Lord has brought us in this journey called life. May he forgive us.
I love what you say Nate…it has taken me 5 years to get to that point that you speak of, when I realise that i must try to be who God made me to be…
Blessings y’all
1What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? 2By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?