The basics about grace and hyper-grace.
As Christians, we are saved by God’s grace, not by our good works, and stay on in this journey of faith because of His grace.
Like the penitent tax
collector, we constantly need God’s grace and mercy (Luke
18:9-14). *
In fact, we need lots of His grace and mercy.
The poet Robert Frost
penned that “all you really want in the end is mercy.” I think he was spot on there with this one-liner.
As we look at our own
lives, weigh our brownie points against our sin, we will definitely conclude
that a fair judgment on God’s part at the end of our lives here on earth would
be this—‘guilty’.
For we have all sinned
and fall short of God’s standards. If not for God’s mercy,
where will we be?
Grace is about getting what we don't deserve; mercy is about not getting
what we deserve.
Yes, there is nothing
wrong with a teaching that emphasises grace provided …
- it (grace) leads to transformed lives.
- it (grace) is not misused as a licence for sinning.
- personal responsibility is being emphasised to the same degree as grace.
Most of us are
familiar with the account of the woman caught in the act of adultery (John
8:3-11). The crowd gathered around her and wanted to stone her.
But Jesus said, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a
stone at her first.”
Finally, when the
crowd dispersed, Jesus asked her, “Woman, where are those accusers of
yours? Has no one condemned you?”
She said, “No one,
Lord.”
And Jesus said to her, “Neither
do I condemn you; go and sin no more.”
This short account has deep theological implications. The recipient of God’s love and mercy ought to show evidence of change in thought and behavior. In other words, the sinner has to repent.
We tend to emphasise
God’s love and mercy towards sinners. The need for sinners to bear fruits that
befit repentance—personal responsibility—is often not emphasised to the same
degree.
Like
all good things, grace can be abused.
Human
nature is such that we want to emphasise what
God's grace can do for us and downplay what we need to
do on our part.
We all love a God whose image fits our
expectation of a benevolent being. We prefer preachers who portray God as loving and
forgiving, patient with our sins and deficiencies—rather than those who dwell on judgment.
The respected theologian A. W. Tozer says:
"Much of our difficulty as seeking Christians stems from our unwillingness
to take God as He is and adjust our lives accordingly. We insist on trying to modify Him and
bring Him nearer to our own image.”
As long as our perception of God is coloured by personal preferences, our concept of grace will be distorted.
Varying emphasis on the role of grace in the
lives of believers has caused Christians from different camps to hold divergent
views on the issue of grace.
The camp that overemphasises grace—hyper-grace—states (in blue) that:
The truth is you are saved by grace and you are
kept by grace. It’s grace from start to finish! Don’t let anyone frighten you
into doing dead works, but rest secure in His finished work. Just as you did
nothing to earn salvation, there is nothing you can do to lose it.
God has
already forgiven all the future sins of believers and, as such, we should put
the ‘sin issue’ behind us and banish ‘sin consciousness’ from our lives. So we no longer need to confess our sins. When God looks at us, all He is going to see is
Christ’s blood, not our sins whether it is past, present or future. We merely
rest in the "imputed righteousness of Christ".
More: http://www.gotquestions.org/hyper-grace.html
Satan
rejoices when believers rest in a false sense of security that all is well,
that all their sins have been dealt with once and for all at the point of
conversion—that they can therefore afford to banish sin consciousness in
their lives.
This condition reminds me of the frog which finds great delight
sitting in a basin of warm water. Finally, when water temperature reaches
boiling point, it is too late to jump out of the water.
"Faith
is good only when it engages truth; when it is made to rest upon falsehood it
can and often does lead to eternal tragedy." – A. W. Tozer.
The following are some posts
that shed light on grace and hyper-grace using references from the whole Bible.
RELATED POSTS
THE FIVE FACES OF GRACE
Grace is much more
than God’s unmerited favour towards sinners. There is grace that sustains,
grace that empowers and more …
FIVE MISCONCEPTIONS
ABOUT GRACE
GRACE: CAN WE HAVE TOO
MUCH OF A GOOD THING?
WHAT IF A BELIEVER SINS
REPEATEDLY?
ONCE SAVED, FOREVER
SAVED?
IS REPENTANCE MERELY
CHANGING ONE’S MIND?
ARE OUR FUTURE SINS
FORGIVEN AT CONVERSION?
DOES GRACE MAKE THE LAW OBSOLETE?
SHOULD WE GET RID OF SIN
CONSCIOUSNESS?
ARE GOOD WORKS UNNECESSARY
WHEN WE EMBRACE GOD’S GRACE?
http://bit.ly/GXjZKb
NO NEED TO CONFESS SIN?
HOW TO QUICKLY ACCESS PORRIDGE
To access similar articles, type 'Porridge' in the search box
of http://christianitymalaysia.com/wp/
or type ‘Lim Poh Ann’ in the search box of http://www.asianbeacon.org/
* FOOTNOTES:
To some who were
confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else, Jesus
told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and
the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: ‘God, I
thank you that I am not like other people—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or
even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I
get.’ “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to
heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a
sinner.’ “I tell you that this man, rather than the
other, went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will
be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.”
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