Saturday, 28 March 2009

Grace is confusing!

I have been thinking a lot about grace over recent months and have come to the decision that grace is so hard to fathom and grasp. With some people when you talk of grace they instantly go on the defensive saying that preaching grace gives people license to sin and doesn't give the call that people need to walk in holiness. Others radiate a smile and seem to blossom as you talk of grace - they send out this radiant smile as they realise the depth of their sin and bigness of God's grace and the depths He went to for them. The contrasts are startling! The contrasts are extreme - from serious caution, to awesome, uninhibited rejoicing - but yet both people are saved, both love Jesus, both have a relationship with God - it confuses me!?!?!...........

1 comment:

Peter Day said...

People do differ in their reactions and theology in all kinds of ways. There are people who believe in infant baptism and those who believe in believers baptism - and both have a relationship with God. There are those who are calvinist and those who are arminian - and yet both have a relationship with God, too. They may think each other is a heretic, but still they both have a relationship with God.

So the key for us is not what people think or say, but what God says. Even though we might still have questions about lots of things, doesn't God say that we are the righteousness of God in Him? Doesn't He say that He remembers our sins no more? Doesn't He say that He has nailed the written requirements that were against us to the cross?

So, the negative and positive reactions are irrelevant in terms of what we believe - we need to go to the scriptures ourselves. Of course, I must admit that I am drawn by grace-filled people who are reveling in joy because they know they are accepted, and I am grieved that others are enslaved to legalism that they are missing out on grace. But I am gradually learning not to let people make my theology, but let GOD make my theology.