Grace and Holy Living

At Grace Life Center we have been asking who we are and what God has called us to be. We began with love, the foundation of everything, because God does not want anyone within our reach to ever feel forsaken or forgotten. We moved to our passion, which is to pursue God Himself, since many people become Christians not to have God but to use God to get something else. And we looked at the word of His grace, the truth that God gives us what we could never deserve and enables us to become what we never could on our own.

Grace is what God has done so that you can be saved, loved, healed, and blessed. Law is what you must do so that you can be saved, loved, healed, and blessed. Some churches major on what you should do to be blessed. Here we preach what God has already done, because it is hearing the word of grace, Paul says, that builds you up and gives you access to your inheritance. But that emphasis always raises questions.

The Question Everyone Asks

Is it wise, people ask, to keep preaching grace to Christians who sin over and over and never seem to get their act together? Won't telling them God loves them no matter what simply encourage them to stop trying? Don't we need to add a little performance mentality, at least for young believers? And won't all this talk of grace harden the ones who are already indifferent to sin, confirming them in an attitude of, it doesn't matter? Many assume that emphasizing grace is spiritual permission to do as you please.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Notice carefully who Paul is addressing when he speaks of the word of grace that builds up and gives an inheritance: those who are sanctified, that is, those already saved by the blood of Jesus. He is talking to Christians. And to the Corinthians he writes that some of them had lived deeply sinful lives, but, he says, you are washed, you are sanctified, you are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus.

For an unbeliever, the word of grace, rightly heard, compels repentance unto salvation. For a believer, the same word of grace compels repentance unto the pursuit of holiness. Built right into God's grace is the expectation that the one who receives it will chase after holy living. As Paul told Titus, the grace of God that brings salvation teaches us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly and godly in this present age. And when he asks in Romans, shall we continue in sin that grace may abound, his answer is immediate: God forbid. How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?

A Good Day and a Bad Day

Jerry Bridges, in his book The Discipline of Grace, offers an illustration that exposes what we really believe. Picture two very different days. On the good day, you wake the moment your alarm sounds and have a rich, unhurried time in the Word and prayer. Your plans fall into place, you sense God's nearness, and you even get an unexpected chance to share the gospel with someone who is genuinely searching. On the bad day, you hit snooze, oversleep, skip your quiet time entirely, and rush out feeling guilty. Everything seems to go wrong. You grow irritable, your thoughts wander where they should not, you say things you regret. And then, that very evening, you unexpectedly get a chance to share the gospel with someone truly open to Christ.

Here is the searching question: would you walk into those two conversations with the same confidence, or would you feel far bolder after the good day than after the bad one? If you are honest, most of us would feel more qualified on the good day. And that reveals something. Deep down, even though we know better in theory, we still believe God's blessing rests on our spiritual performance, that if we do certain things we can get God to come through for us.

But does God actually respond to us that way? Consider the bad day first. What should a washed, sanctified Christian do after failing? Go back to the cross. Come to God and say: Father, I have sinned. The problem is not only my actions; there is wickedness in my heart that makes me hurt You, even though I love You. But thank You for Jesus, whose cross has cleansed me, so that there is now no condemnation for me. Jesus bore all my sins, including the ones I committed today, and took the punishment I deserve so that I could receive the blessing. So enable me now to be an effective witness. That prayer takes sin seriously; it does not shrug at it. And no one who genuinely prays like that gets up and dives into the next sin. If you are truly sanctified, you set your heart to pursue holiness.

Now the good day. Have you thereby earned God's blessing? Someone will object, but doesn't God only work through clean vessels? Fine, let us assume that. Then how good do you have to be to qualify as clean? Jesus said the greatest command is to love God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and your neighbor as yourself. By that standard, how good was your good day, really? Did you keep it one hundred percent? Jesus says, be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect, and James says whoever keeps the whole law yet stumbles at one point is guilty of all of it. Which means that, before God, your best day and your worst day are in exactly the same category. So you enter that witnessing moment with the very same prayer you prayed on the bad day: Father, I am completely undeserving of Your grace, yet You took the blow for me. I receive this opportunity only because of Jesus.

Never Beyond Reach, Never Beyond Need

Regardless of our performance, we are always dependent on God's grace, His unearned favor toward people who deserve His wrath. As Jerry Bridges puts it, your worst days are never so bad that you are beyond the reach of God's grace, and your best days are never so good that you are beyond the need of God's grace. Because even as sanctified people we still sin, some of it we notice and much of it we do not, we constantly need to be reminded of this grace. And that reminder is what arms us against the two schemes the enemy uses to keep us from holiness.

The Trap of the Pharisee

The first scheme is to get us fixated on our external performance until we become proud, like the Pharisee. Slowly we start looking down our spiritual noses at people who seem less disciplined or committed than we are, never realizing that this very attitude is pride. Because we dress a certain way, we fail to notice our critical spirit. Because we pay our tithe, we miss that we are manipulative and not truly generous. Because we attend every program, we overlook that our love for God has quietly grown cold. We assume that because we had a good day, by our own definition of good, we must be fine.

So do not hide or cover your sin; God is not mocked. We play defensive games and rationalize. Instead of I lied, we say I exaggerated a bit. No, you lied. Own it, because naming it honestly does not change how God sees you anyway. Instead of admitting I am hurt and I have not forgiven him, we say I am staying away for the sake of peace. Call it what it is, knowing that Jesus has already borne that very sin on the cross. Only then can you genuinely repent and move forward in holiness. It is impossible to pursue holiness without real repentance, impossible to repent without owning your sin as yours, refusing to blame your brother, your circumstances, or anyone else, and impossible to own it unless you are anchored in the word of grace, that God has shown you mercy even though you deserved His wrath.

The Trap of Guilt

The second scheme is the opposite, and it targets sincere, sanctified believers: the enemy buries us in guilt over our failed attempts. You have received Christ. You have heard the call to forsake sin and follow Him, and in your heart you have answered it. But you struggle. Maybe it is anger, or lust, or jealousy, or unforgiveness, or a stubborn lack of trust. You have wrestled and not seemed as successful as others around you. And because you are not resting in the word of grace, you conclude that God's love and blessing rise and fall with your performance. So you despair. You begin to draw back and give up, telling yourself, I can never be like that brother or that sister.

No. Grace is unmerited favor toward those who deserve wrath, so do not draw back. Pick yourself up. Scripture says a righteous man falls seven times and rises again. Notice, he was still called righteous, not because he never fell, but because God had declared him righteous and favored him, even as a sinner. So rise up. If you are heavy laden with guilt and shame, hear Jesus say, Come to Me. It does not matter how many times you have fallen. Say to yourself, I will not stay down. I will get up and keep pursuing, pursuing holiness, pursuing my calling, pursuing the Lord, because no matter how good or bad my day has been, I am secure in the grace and love of my God. In your weakness His strength is made perfect. Keep looking to Jesus, the author and finisher of your faith.

One Last Word

So no, the gospel of grace will never enable sin in the life of someone who is genuinely born again. If a person hears this message and uses it as cover to sin freely, that person was never truly saved. But if you are here, sanctified, having received Jesus, and there is something you are struggling with, then let this word of grace build you up. Let it give you hope, lift you off the ground, and send you out to pursue holiness. Let it free you from shame and guilt and put in you a fresh desire to make every effort to conquer sin, not to make God love you more, but because you have come to love the Lord more and more for the love He has already shown you. As Paul says, the love of Christ compels us.