Grace Has a PR Problem
Taking the term back
Every few years, scientists announce a new “superfood” that will change your life. It’ll make you thinner, healthier, more energetic, help your hair grow back—you name it!
So, everybody rushes to include it in their diet regimen. But fast forward a few months, and it seems the promises never came true.
Not only does the world start to move on from the so-called superfood. People start to have a negative view toward it for all the promises it didn’t fulfill, AND they’re tired of hearing about it. They go from the occasional avocado, to the frequent avocado, to the rare avocado, to give an example.
I feel like grace has undergone a similar trajectory.
When you become a Christian, you love grace. It is, as the song says, amazing. But then the exaggerated claims roll in. Grace covers everything. It’s impossible to fall from grace. God doesn’t care if you sin—that’s what grace is for.
Cheap grace is, unfortunately, one of the most popular false doctrines you’ll ever come across.
One of the most egregious examples of this occurs when some big name religious leader has a public downfall, only to emerge a year or two later preaching about “God’s scandalous grace” and how everyone who doesn’t think he should have a platform anymore obviously doesn’t believe in said grace.
Then there are those who talk about how they grew up never hearing about grace in church, and are so happy to know about it now… as they cohabitate, go out partying, and live nothing like Christians.
It’s only natural for such consistent manipulative messaging to make people start to develop an involuntary eyebrow raise every time they hear someone talking about grace.
The overcorrection goes so far that some are nervous to even talk about grace for fear of looking like they are giving sin a pass. You’ll even hear it said, “We don’t want to rely on grace too much.” This well-meaning quip takes aim at cheap grace, but it goes way too far and reveals that we don’t really understand grace.
Rather than avoiding grace or zeroing in on the numerous misunderstandings people have about it, we should be talking about it consistently.
It’s the only way to take back such an important term.
We need to work hard to establish a Biblical understanding of grace among our people so that they can immediately spot a counterfeit, and are not afraid of looking like they’re going “too far.”
Little old ladies who are worried they “haven’t done enough to be saved” need to hear about grace and how it gives them assurance because it is a gift and not a reward (Romans 3:24). The unsaved need to hear about grace and how God will save them no matter what happened in their past, because He loved us even when we were dead in our trespasses (Ephesians 2:4-7). Those in the midst of sin struggles need to hear about grace as motivation to keep going, knowing they can confidently ask Him for help in their time of need (Hebrews 4:16).
Too often grace is treated as the spare change we need to make up for the shortcomings in our good works, but that reveals how deeply we’ve misunderstood it. Because of this, so many Christians I meet live in constant fear and lack the joy that Christians were meant to have. A graceless Christianity is unavoidably a joyless Christianity.
In Romans 5:2, Paul calls it “this grace in which we stand” as we enjoy peace with God through faith in Christ. It’s not the little bit extra we need to put our righteousness over the top. It’s the ground we stand on that allows us to even attempt to live righteously.
The idea of standing also implies a change of status. We once weren’t standing in grace, but now we are. So, to cling to a lifestyle of sin is not standing in grace or “leaning on grace too much” (Romans 6:1-2, 15-16). It’s a misunderstanding of the entire program.
It is impossible to know God’s love without having a good grasp of grace, and that’s why we have to get it right and talk about it often. We can’t continue to let those who would abuse and mischaracterize it for selfish ends rob us of one of the most beautiful concepts in all the Bible.
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Sunday, one of our elders prayed on behalf of a 99 yr old member who felt she hadn’t “done enough”. He told her that was nonsense, but prayed anyway. It was a beautiful prayer.
The mark has been missed on how grace has been taught in the churches of Christ.
God’s grace is far greater than anything you or I can imagine.
For Grace to have any meaning requires admitting that we are all sinners and effectively equal in the eyes of God. From our perspective, there is an ocean of difference between an ordinary decent person and the worst and most violent criminal. From God's perspective, we are all sinners and our differences in achievements and flaws and sins so slight in comparison to an omniscient and omnipotent God to be effectively nonexistent. To believe and appreciate Grace is to admit to yourself how badly you need it. Doing that means understanding how much alike we all are. People being people are often loath to do that. It is better to pretend that we have earned our salivation due to our superiority or efforts.