Justice, mercy, grace, and the state police

One of the early pictures I heard/got about God's grace versus his anger or justice was this:

Justice is like if you get pulled over by a state trooper and the officer tells you what you've done wrong and writes you a ticket for the law you broke.  That's justice and you got what you deserved.

Mercy is like when the same officer tells you what you've done wrong and instead of writing you a ticket, lets you off with a verbal warning.  That's mercy and you did not get what you deserved.

Grace is when the officer pulls you over for doing wrong and instead of a ticket or warning, the officer writes themselves the ticket for your offense so they have to pay for it and it goes on their record and not yours AND also gives you their vehicle, their gun and uniform, AND as they hand you the keys to their vehicle, tells you about $10,000,000 in cash that's in the trunk that is now also yours as well AND to have a nice day.  Grace is not getting what you deserved, but getting an enormous blessing instead.

It's one of those stories I heard from a couple different preachers/teachers decades ago and it stuck with me. After a lot of study and life experience, I do think it's true - it's a worthwhile example to know about.

When I first heard it, it seemed too good to be true.  I believed it, but never saw it in practice or referred to in normal settings.  It was like it was a nice thing for a visiting preacher to say, but during normal times, it was back to justice and the occasional mercy.

I think in churches we struggle with language and action.  We love the idea of grace, but fear that if we talk about it too much, we'll lose our ability to "hold others accountable" by use of fear, guilt, and shame.

On average, I don't think we know how to understand and live in grace.  I don't think we know how to speak the truth in love, practically speaking, so we assume speaking the truth has to hurt and be without grace.

Titus 2 says "the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope."

It's not fear, shame, guilt, or social demotion, or looks of disapproval, or being preached at that teaches us - it's the grace of God that teaches us.  I don't think many people understand how or why grace can work and so they always go back to justice with the slightest hope of mercy.

If you haven't yet, may you come to understand the grace that God has for you. Read through Romans 5 a couple of times and let it marinate in your mind.  

Be blessed and know that "churches" sometimes don't "do grace" for different reasons - you might have seen that and felt the sting.

They're still learning and will catch up, hopefully.  Go ahead and live by God's grace and maybe they'll see what's going on in your life and want to know what's up.