Episode 3

Living in Grace

Living under the grace of God frees us to serve him out of love and not duty. It also frees us to obey and serve him as a loving response. When the magnificent and boundless generosity of the grace of God grips us, we respond out of gratitude and not out of duty. When you serve God in response to his grace rather than the fear of his law, you will feel totally liberated. The joy that accompanies your service will be contagious.  People who serve God out of fear of the law get burnt out easily and their faces do not reflect the radiance of Christ. Think for a moment the difference between serving your spouse out of fear and serving your spouse out of love.

We need healing grace to live out the saving grace of God. Many Christians are crippled in vital areas of growth and hindered in worship because they do not know how to appropriate the grace of God.

Sadly, many Christians begin in grace when they come to know the Lord but along the way fall into the black hole of legalism. What is legalism? Legalism is taking truths and pushing them to the extreme. When we do not live in grace, we are reducing life to rules and regulations. Legalism insists on keeping a set of impossible rules with all the do’s and don’ts. As fallen beings, we can’t keep the standard. On the other extreme, legalism makes you try to be perfect and so you keep on doing things because you feel acceptance is based on performance. Legalism is doing things to please people because you want to be accepted.  ‘Legalism is not just sub-Christian or non-Christian. It is anti-Christian’ (Chapman and Smith 1999:60).

The danger is that rules and regulations replace relationships. Imagine if relationship is governed by law or justice, you and I will have no more friends left. When rules become a substitute for relationship, the joy of serving diminishes. The result? We find that the God we believe or serve is a rigid God with all the do’s and don’ts. You lose the joy because you come to realise that you cannot reach perfection. You can’t even keep one third of the laws. You sin daily.  In the end you get hurt and become disillusioned with God.

On the other hand, if you become so rigid in your faith you can become judgmental of others. That was the problem with the Pharisees. They observed the laws strictly and this led them to judge others harshly. They believed that righteousness could be earned. The Pharisees would ‘strain at a gnat but swallow a camel’. Jesus came to replace the religion of barrenness and rigidity with grace (see John 1:16,18).  When grace and laws are kept in their proper boundaries, everything falls in place.

God accepts us on the basis of who we are and not what we have done. We are right with God not because we do the right thing but because of God's grace. There is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make him love us less.  We don't need to prove ourselves to be accepted. Therefore, be yourself.  Don’t try to be what others want you to be. God created you the way you are. Understanding the biblical concept of grace can have therapeutic effect on our emotional and spiritual healing. Emotional and spiritual problems may be due to our failure to live out God's unconditional grace.

The grace of God is a privilege and not a right to do what we like. God’s grace can be abused, misused or perverted. According to Chapman and Smith (1999:60-81), there are four aberrations of grace. They are greasy grace that is the freedom not to take God seriously; sleazy grace that makes grace a carte blanche to indulge in anything we desire; cheesy grace that is sentimental and shapes God into any form one desires; and measly grace that reduces God’s grace to benevolent assistance in helping us earn salvation.

These perversions assume that grace is a commodity God dispenses to make life more pleasant for us. We do not sin in order for grace to abound. So what does Paul mean when he says, ‘sin abounded, grace super-abounded’ (Romans 5:20)? A few drops of black ink will change the colour of the water. The water becomes black.  However, when you put that glass of black water under a running tap, the tap water flows with such force and will soon flush out the black colour, leaving the glass full of clean water.  The ink ‘abounds’ in its effect on the water turning it black but clean water from the tap super-abounds. It flows so abundantly and with force, it erases all the effects of ink.  As Gaddy (1993:84) correctly notes, ‘An affirmation of grace is not an invitation to licentiousness’.

Grace is not the liberty to do as you please but to do as you ought. To do as you please is to ‘cheapen the grace of God’ (to use Bonhoeffer’s phrase). A good friend Ruth Tan once made a profound statement, ‘Nothing is free in this world. When it is advertised as free, someone has already paid for it’. How perceptive she is. Grace is free but it costs the saviour! Our salvation is free but Christ has to pay the price.

Therefore we should not take the grace of God for granted. Those who have experienced God's grace are filled with gratitude, contentment, humility and forbearance (Col 3:12-14).  A person who has experienced God’s grace will do things to please God, and not out of duty but love! The Bible commands us to love our enemies, to forgive people who hurt us and be tolerant of others (Col 3:13). It is hard yet possible to do those things if we have grace.      

To live by grace is to experience salvation. But that is only the beginning. Look at what it means to live by grace: to place love above law and the individuals over institutions, to offer help when it is needed whether or not it is deserved or requested, to grant forgiveness even before a penitent confession, to cease judging people and to be ceaseless in encouraging people, to find delight in ministry and to see acceptance of failure as a reason for festivity, and to know that the joy of salvation more when shared than when found (Gaddy 1993:93).                                                                                                                                                              

Implications of Grace

1. Grace gives people the freedom and right to disagree because everyone is unique. Anytime a person imposes his will on others or becomes dogmatic in peripheral issues, he/she is not living in grace.   

2. We must see that our status (relationship with God), self-worth (relationship with ourselves) and security (relationship with others) do not depend on our performance. In other words, we do not have to put up a show to impress people. We are God’s children even though we fail. Unfortunately, we live in a world that over-values performance, and this mindset is a virus that needs to be destroyed. No truth is more liberating than to know that our acceptance before God is based not on our performance but our position in Christ.

3. We can take risks in any endeavour and feel free to fail without feeling rejected by God.

4. We have all been saved by grace. Why should we live by the sweat of our performance?

5. To fall from grace means to fall into legalism (Gal 5:4). Hence a person who tries to be saved by works has fallen from grace into legalism and cannot be saved since legalism produces bondage and cannot lead to holy living.  

6. Beware of becoming grace-killers. Grace killers are people who are judgmental, dogmatic, pessimistic and negative to the point of being destructive. Do not let others steal your freedom and joy. ‘It is for freedom that Christ sets us free. Stand firm, therefore, and refuse to submit to the yoke of slavery’ (Gal 5:1).

7. Beware of the ‘elder brother syndrome’ that makes us antagonistic towards those who receive grace upon grace whom we think should not deserve it.

8. When we understand the true meaning of grace, performance takes on a new meaning. Commitment and service take on a new dimension. Service to God will not be out of fear nor guilt but out of devotion and delight.

9. Since we have experienced the grace of God we should learn to enjoy it and practise grace on others.

10. Since we have received ‘grace upon grace’ (John  1:14,16), we have the freedom to disagree without becoming disagreeable.  We do not make it our calling to fire theological volleys at people we don't agree with. Let others be themselves without controlling them. Refuse to play God and dictate to them but allow the Lord to change them. (1492 words)

Discussion Questions

1. Which part of the statement strikes you?  Why?
2. Explain: Grace is not the liberty to do as you please

but to do as you ought. To do as you please is to ‘cheapen the grace of God’ (to use Bonhoeffer’s phrase).

3. Why is this statement important? Since we have

experienced the grace of God we should learn to enjoy it and practise grace on others.