The Throes Of Grace
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We need to have a conversation about the truth.
To come right out with it, faith is not a commodity you trade for acceptance. Belief itself can never be the actual cause for the life you were given before you even existed.
faith is not a commodity you trade for acceptance
No matter how “biblical” or “faithful” people claim to be who insist faith is a right of passage, the reality is they’re still thrashing in the uncertainty of their acceptance, rather than thriving in the assurance of their acceptance.
This is expressly not faith. It is religion.
Believing acceptance in God’s sight to be contingent upon faith, many proceed to do exactly the opposite of “regard no one according to the flesh” (2 Cor. 5:16). They move right on ahead in the name of “Jesus” and “Church” regarding people according to the flesh instead.
In other words, they DO NOT consider themselves or others to be miraculous “new creations” whom God is “not counting their trespasses against” (2 Cor. 5:19). In the name of “faith” and “faithfulness,” so many of us are bypassing the Gospel altogether and perpetuating the reason the Gospel came about in the first place.
GRACE ALONE MEANS GRACE ALONE
Making faith about the “pursuit of God” is a disaster because it assumes God’s absence. So, humanity is hell-bent - in distorted understandings of God - on enacting religious crusades of all kinds.
But, if God used our rejection of him at the cross to announce his acceptance of us, then there’s nothing left to fear and faith isn’t something we exchange for acceptance.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith…” (Eph. 2:8) is not a catch 22 that should scare you. It has certainly led to consternation and low grade terror for many a would-be rested up disciple of Jesus.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith…” (Eph. 2:8) is not a catch 22 that should scare you.
Faith is not said, over and over in Ephesians and beyond, to have “made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:5). God did that. In the piercing words of John Mark McMillan, “If grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.”
You don’t need to wonder if your faith is sufficient or authentic enough.
The real question, then, is, “Why won’t we let God love us?”
GRACE DEBUNKS THE RELIGIOUS GOD
I am eager to dispel this myth of the religious God because it is devastating lives left and right. It leads to divisions innumerable and depression insufferable.
So, if you haven’t yet, think about whether God is religious. Is he?
If God is not religious - and if he is relational he cannot be religious - then why would you be? Why would you be transactionally related to the God who is not transactionally related to himself? Is the Father religious in relation to Son and Spirit?
Are they religious? Are they wrestling and vying for approval from one another? Were we made in the image of a competitive community?
Do you see it? If you’re made in the image of an irreligious God who desires that none should perish (2 Pet. 3:9), and who has reconciled the world to himself (2 Cor. 5:19), then nothing you do can make your acceptance in Christ any more or less true.
Actualizing your acceptance is NOT the issue. Faith is not what actualizes your acceptance. Jesus is. Only Jesus. Accepting your acceptance so you can enjoy your acceptance - that IS the issue. Will you accept that his atoning sacrifice was “for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2)?
Will you accept that his atoning sacrifice was “for the sins of the whole world”?
GRACE MEANS IT’S OK TO LIVE IN SIN??
If you’re “still living in sin” and terrified that means you don’t have enough faith to get into heaven, then keep reading in 1 Corinthians 5. Because, there it says that “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (v. 21).
This means that “living in sin” doesn’t separate you from God. “Where can I flee from your presence?” (Psalm 139:7).
“Living in sin” proves you to be part of and in the one who became sin! Even in sin you cannot flee from his presence! That one is the same one who has been with the Father since before the beginning, the single one in whom we live and move and have our being (Acts 17:28).
“Living in sin” proves you to be part of and in the one who became sin!
Friends, if you’re in the one who is life and who is one with the Father and anointed in the Holy Spirit beyond measure, then you are exactly his cup of tea (which is everybody).
You’re right where you belong - in every sense of the word.
You can’t find a place or a state of being that isn’t in Christ - it doesn’t exist.
GRACE MEANS FAITH DOESN’T MATTER?
I know what you’re thinking: “Does this mean faith doesn’t matter?” Of course not. But it doesn’t matter in the way you think it matters.
If your faith saves you, then Jesus doesn’t. It is as simple as that. And nothing frees you for real faith like unshackling God’s love from the imaginary prison of your fickle faith.
God does not withhold his love, goodness, and will just because you can’t seem to put it to good use.
We have to reimagine everything through the unbelievable reality the scriptures reveal about Jesus Christ - the God who became incarnate, flesh. The ancient words of a very long-dead man ring out more today than ever: “Christ became what we are so that we might become what he is” (Irenaeus).
Again, if Jesus became sin, then living in sin - which is unavoidable for all of us - is exactly where you’ve been redeemed. If Jesus is in the Father and in you, then you’re in the Father - not because you had faith but because that is how reality works.
if Jesus became sin, then living in sin - which is unavoidable for all of us - is exactly where you’ve been redeemed.
The myth is that you can be and indeed are separated from God because of your sin. The religions people architect assuming this to be true truly dehumanize the entire world. It is a writhing lie to be regarded as the origin of sin and ought to be forgotten in the black hole of Jesus’ death.
If there is “one Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all” (Ephesians 4:6), then please tell me, who is not a child of God? Who is this Father not in?
GRACE TURNS EVERYTHING UPSIDE DOWN
The tectonic shifts in the way we see God after letting this mean what it means may feel like a magnitude 10.0 earthquake to you. It does for me and for many others. But, anything else makes a mockery of the scriptures and the Jesus they reveal to us.
When we’ve lived our entire lives as if our acceptance into the kingdom of heaven is hanging in the balance of the veracity of our faith, we live and die in the hell of fear.
When we’ve lived our entire lives as if our acceptance into the kingdom of heaven is hanging in the balance of the veracity of our faith, we live and die in the hell of fear.
We miss out on “the assurance of things hoped for” and “the joy that cannot be taken away.” We never experience “the peace that surpasses understanding” or the do-not-worry-about-tomorrow-life. We believe “the love that surpasses knowledge” to be a fairy tale and the finished work of Jesus to be a baton he handed us.
When you realize there is “one Father of all, who is in all” (Eph. 4:6), your perception of people will change from potential converts to children of God, from others to friends.
This means the pressure is off about getting them out of one bucket into another. You and they both get to enjoy and revel in and pass on the astounding reality and reject the atrocious lie.
This, friends, is church. This is the life of faith in the throes of grace.
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