"The Offense of Grace"

"The Offense of Grace"

    It is hard to imagine a more beautiful reality than God's grace, that is, His freely given favor in the Lord Jesus Christ.  Such goodness nevertheless offends the human heart apart from Christ and the flesh of even born again believers.

    "The natural man receiveth not the things of God, for they are foolishness to him" (I Corinthians 2:14).

    "With the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin" (Romans 7:25).

    Grace intrudes on the deception long ago embraced in Eden by Adam.  "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil" suggested Satan (Genesis 3:5).  "No you shall not, and you are not!" declares the grace and truth of God in the Lord Jesus.  Grace comes to us with a blessed, but humbling message.  It affirms that God is God, and we are not.  We are rather His subservient creations by physical birth, and His dependent sons and daughters by spiritual birth.  Satan's lie infected our original parents, however, along with their subsequent offspring through the ages.  "In Adam all die" wrote the Apostle Paul (I Corinthians 15:22).  We seek to have life in ourselves rather in the living and true God.  The deception manifests itself in countless modes and measures, from braggarts who boast of their greatness, to the cowardly who live in fear because they will not forego their independence to trust God.  Grace speaks to both, and to all degrees of the deceived, commanding the knee to bow, the heart to receive, and the spirit to receive the freely given gift of life in Christ.  "Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound, that as sin hath reigned through death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 5:20-21).

   Even after salvation, grace confronts the law of sin that remains in our earthly members and faculties.  Born again believers are still susceptible to the pride, fear, and lust for self-centeredness that reveals the ancient "ye shall be as gods" deception.  We must recognize the temptation by growing in our understanding of God's grace and truth in Christ, and our fleshly inclinations to resist our Lord's freely given working in our lives.  We must live upon the knees of our heart, as it were, in order to walk upon our feet by the power of God rather than the deluded notion of our own ability.  "Without Me, ye can do nothing" pronounced the Lord Jesus to His disciples.  "I can do all things through Christ" exulted the Apostle Paul after receiving the Savior and His grace (John 15:5; Philippians 4:13).  "How sweet the sound!" sings the most well known hymn of the Christian faith regarding such goodness.  This is true regarding the hearts of every believer.  However, let us understand that grace and truth in Christ still offends our flesh.  Thus, we must overcome our native tendency to exalt and trust ourselves rather than the true and living Lord of Scripture.  God is God, and we are not.  Grace blessedly relieves us of a responsibility we could never bear.  But it often offends as it demands we drop our sword and our plow to receive the freest gift ever given, purchased at a cost paid by Another.

"Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men."

(Psalm 9:20)

"I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain."

(Galatians 2:21)

"For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh, that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit."

(Romans 8:2-4)

Weekly Memory Verse

    "Put them in fear, O LORD: that the nations may know themselves to be but men."

(Psalm 9:20)