Why Grace Is The Point
Some Stories Say It All
In the summer of 2025, a Coldplay concert gave the world more than a light show.
Mid-song, mid-sway, the jumbotron landed on two people who immediately froze because they weren’t just coworkers. They were in the middle of an affair.
Turns out, the guy was a tech CEO. The woman? The HR exec. And they were at Gillette Stadium, where people literally get paid to play games for a living.
The irony? That night, the real game was happening off the field: on social media. The game of public shame. Of moral outrage. Of keeping score with other people’s failures.
And we were all watching. Again.
Two Options. Both Bad.
Here’s what hit me: we still don’t know what to do with grace.
Because as a culture, and even more so as “Christians,” we’ve only been handed two ways to respond to moral failure:
Condemn it – Disgusting. Fire them. Divorce him. Divorce her. Excommunicate.
Condone it – Who are we to judge? Maybe it’s more complicated than we think.
Those are the options.
Stone them or shrug it off.
But grace doesn’t do either.
That’s the scandal of it.
Grace Refuses to Play
Real grace doesn’t excuse what happened.
And it doesn’t accuse you into exile.
It simply says something no one else will:
“Even at your worst, you’re still mine. And I’m not going anywhere.”
That’s not weak. It’s otherworldly.
And formalized churches? They don’t know how to handle that.
Because grace like that can’t be managed.
It can’t be monetized.
And if it can’t be controlled, it can’t be allowed.
But We Still Want the Law
That’s why much of what goes by the name “Christianity” plays the same game as the crowd. We just do it with nicer language.
But Jesus didn’t.
As I unpacked in All A Lark, Matthew 5 captures a moment where Jesus is speaking to a group that prided itself on sexual purity. He says:
“You’ve heard it said, ‘Do not commit adultery.’ But I tell you—if you’ve even looked with lust, you’ve already done it in your heart” (Matt 5:27–28).
And just to shut down the moral scoreboard altogether, a few verses later:
“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48).
Not “make progress.”
Not “do your best.”
Be. Perfect.
One Man Tried. And Failed.
Remember the rich young ruler in Matthew 19?
He came to Jesus and said, “What good thing must I do to inherit eternal life?” And he thought he was close. Moral. Devout. Winning.
In response to his resume, Jesus replied: “Keep the commandments.”
“Done,” the guy said.
Then Jesus added, “Okay, go sell everything you own, give it to the poor, and follow me.”
And the man walked away… sad. Because that’s what the Law does when you think it’s the point.
It doesn’t boost your confidence.
It undoes your delusion.
Playing the Law Game
This isn’t just theology for me. It’s personal.
Years ago, I planted a formalized church on the south side of Asheville, North Carolina. A couple years in, one of my closest friends, an elder, started spiraling. So I confronted him.
Eventually it came out: he was having an affair.
And the church he was now part of?
The one I led?
It had no place for real grace.
We had a restoration plan.
A performance checklist.
A timeline to win back approval.
It didn’t work.
He left his wife.
He later tried to fix what he broke.
And when he couldn’t, he ended his life with a revolver.
Because when grace becomes the starting line instead of the whole story, the Law game eventually destroys the people trying to play it.
What Jesus Actually Does
So what does Jesus do with people caught in sin?
Let’s go to John 8. Where a woman is caught in adultery—literally in the act.
The Law says she should be stoned.
The crowd drags her to Jesus.
“Teacher, what should we do with her?” (John 8:4-5)
He kneels in the dirt.
Writes something no one can read.
Then looks up and says: “Let the one without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7).
One by one, the rocks hit the ground.
Then He turns to her and says: “Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more” (John 8:10-11).
Let’s be clear on the Greek here.
“Go” (poreuou) is simply the word for leave. He’s not issuing a moral contract. And “sin no more” (hamartane mēketi) literally means, “Don’t keep walking that same path.”
So Jesus isn’t threatening her. He’s freeing her: “You don’t have to live like this anymore. There’s a better path for you.”
That’s not softening Jesus’ words. That’s refusing to turn His mercy into another performance contract.
What Grace Really Is
This is where we begin to see grace for what it really is.
Not soft on sin.
Just stronger than sin.
Not permissive.
Not punishing.
Just… present.
Grace doesn’t excuse.
It doesn’t accuse.
It embraces.
Because grace is the air we breathe as frail humans, not a backup plan for human failure.
Paul says we are “saved by grace through faith” (Eph. 2:8–9), and that in Christ God was “reconciling all things to Himself” (Col. 1:20).
So grace isn’t the exception to the story. It’s the point of the story.
And when you trust it?
You stop hiding.
You stop striving.
You stop performing.
You start resting in the fact that you are the “righteousness of God” because Jesus has already made His home in you (1 Cor. 1:30; 2 Cor. 5:21; Gal. 2:20).
And from that trust—not fear—you begin learning to walk in what is good, beautiful, and life-giving, leaving behind the paths that were never giving us life to begin with.
Where Grace Led Me
Seeing this is why I stepped away from leading what’s been labeled “church.”
Because grace like that cannot be branded, measured, or controlled. And if it cannot be controlled, it does not survive inside the system.
To keep the machine running you need popularity. And popularity thrives on outrage or applause. Which means you need the crowd that condemns or the one that shrugs.
But grace plays to neither.
It exposes both.
And it does so with open arms.
So if you are tired of the Law game, tired of hiding, striving, failing, and pretending, grab a copy of All A Lark below.
It is a short tour through the scandalous possibility that the God Jesus revealed is far kinder than the one we learned to fear.