There are those who are so grace filled that when confronted with truth, they would say something like, 'Well, we believe in grace'. They may indicate that anything concerning truth involves legalism. Then the other group is so set on truth, that they never allow for God's grace to serve others or even themselves. Many fall into sin and then throw the towel in on Christianity because they think it doesn't work or is not real.
I remember learning a story, I believe Ken Sande told. It involved a woman who was part of a Bible believing church who had committed adultery. The church went through the process in Matthew 18, and eventually the woman chose to stay in adultery, and was asked to leave. She went to a church down the road. The pastor of the Bible believing church called the pastor of the church she was now attending. The new pastor responded by telling the first pastor this; 'We believe in grace here'. What do you think happened months down the road in this church? Take a guess. She committed adultery again in that church.
The second church believed in God's grace, but ignored God's truth. I think of another situation where a pastor held an extremely high standard of what he believed true Christians should always exhibit. In fact, he ended up believing that only a handful of churches in America were 'true' churches. This man had little experience or understanding of God's grace for sinners. According to him, if I understood correctly, he thought Christians were toast if they fell into sin. Guess what happened to this man? He was found guilty on charges of child molestation and went to jail.
We have to ask , what went wrong? The answer is simply that there was not a correct understanding of the correlation of God's truth and God's grace. In both situations above, one or the other was valid while the other wasn't valid or necessary.
Grace basically says, 'I am going to heaven when I die'. Truth says, 'I am going to hell when I die'. In our logic, either one or the other is true. If we believe in a grace-filled God, we could falsely believe we are going to heaven. If we believe in a God of truth, but don't understand His grace, we could become hopeless. Grace and truth must always work together to make sense of this scenario.
Grace really says what is true, then gives hope. Grace says, I will go to hell forever when I die, but God... Truth has to be brought in. Truth says, I will go to hell forever after I die, but God.... God in His mercy and loving kindness, provided a way out of hell for us. We can't skip over the truth part, and we must go through the truth in order to get to the grace part. It can't be one or the other. It is both truth and grace working together.
No comments:
Post a Comment