The ugly truth about grace
It's mostly because we don't separate the good news of what God is doing in Jesus from the Old Covenant.
Jesus came to show us his father's heart, tell us something much bigger was coming - and made it happen.
We often don't see the Old Covenant and the New Covenant as distinctly different, so we hang on to versions of ceremony, law keeping, and "better safe than sorry" and try to blend them with the gospel.
The good news, is simple - the life that was lost because of sin has been restored through what God has done in Jesus. Sins are forgiven and not counted anymore, God's Spirit lives in us, if we'll believe it.
If we "grew up in church", we likely heard that "mercy there was great and grace was free. Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty, at Calvary."
Some people's experience might have been (thankfully) different, but many of us learned that we really didn't believe songs like that. Or at least we reinterpreted them to say what we really believed...
...that grace was not free. That we can have assurance with God only if we stay prayed up, stayed good with our church going and giving, and kept on asking for forgiveness, all the time.
But that's not true.
Sure, the local gatherings many of us grew up with said it was true, usually with good intention - usually because that was what they were taught as well.
But grace isn't tied up with all those things. The only time the New Testament said someone has fallen from grace was when Paul was talking about people who were trying to be right with God through their keeping of the Old Law or religious rules.
And even then, I believe Paul wasn't saying they weren't saved, but that they weren't actually living in grace - they were trying "earn it" still - and he wanted them to know it was a damned lie, a miserable way to live, and to stop spreading fake news.
The ugly truth about grace is that it is bigger than we can imagine and probably bigger than we want it to be.
We really want people in our life that we know and feel might deserve God's grace to "get it", but the rest of the people - well, sometimes we're not sure about them.
We might want them to do something or stop doing something before we feel comfortable in saying they're able to access or have God's grace.
What we don't know, usually, is what happens in people's lives and minds and hearts when we're not looking and so we don't know a lot of thoughts, ideas, and actions that - if we saw it or knew it - might cause us to change our minds about some people.
In other words, we give grace to those who we deem worthy of it. And we project our judgements on to God and feel that he only gives grace to those we'd give grace to.
That's an ugly truth.
Yes, there are people who you'd rather NOT get or have grace that will get grace.
I grew up with a tribe of people who felt strongly that you had to believe some very specific things and "practice" your beliefs in very specific ways or you would NOT be a recipient of grace.
Actually, with the exception of a few songs, I don't remember hearing about grace at all till I was in my teen years. Before that the big ideas were "We're working our way to Heaven." or "If you died tonight would you be ready to meet God or would you go to Hell?"
And it took a while to actually read up on grace and think it through before I realized that we were all pretending to believe in grace.
Or that we'd actually redefined it to mean the opposite of grace.
It's much bigger than you imagine.
If you've ever thought that you've done enough good or avoided enough bad to earn Heaven and to avoid Hell - I'm sorry to tell you that it's just not possible.
For you to have fully confident access to God, he had to do some much bigger things in and through Jesus.
It is by grace that you or anyone else is saved.
It is by grace that you are kept saved.
It is by grace that you live.
Grace is the free gift of life in God.
You don't get more of it for "going to church" and you don't get less of it if you don't.
That's a shocking and ugly truth that more people read way too much into in both directions, but it's true.
Live free and know his grace.
Peace and goodwill
The grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. Paul in Titus 2:11
More on that later as time and energy permit.
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