Grace, a License to Love

I want to say this about the kinds of people saying this; in spite of the cliches, they may be sincere. Sincere people, we love and tolerate, but often sincerity, as described above, is without accuracy. Let’s think about the statement; “you are using grace as a license to sin.”
 

In the charge is a loophole. Perhaps a person is ‘using’ grace as a license to do well and not as a license to sin. I’m joking. The word “use” is the definer. This means that the real problem is not “grace” but somebody’s self fabricated lie about what they think grace is. See the license of grace is lumped in with the other excuses of my own mind to encourage what comes natural to my old man—sin!  

Friends, I’ve seen people do well, and other people sin who never even heard about grace, and do not carry a license of any kind. My point is, who needs a special license? My true license is really my sin nature’s ability to rationalize it’s right to sin. It’s been doing this for years.

I suppose the opposite of a license is to impose a prohibition. Nice idea, but does a prohibition work? Again, I have seen some with prohibition still living in sin and others doing good deeds. My point here: I work with addicted people and when I tell them about a prohibition they don’t stop, and when I tell them about grace they still don’t stop.

See, I have learned that most don’t beat an addiction by grace-licensing or prohibition-restricting because they see behavior change happening in a simple kind of way —as relating to their own will-power only. The critics usually seem to think others can do all by will-power also. This is because many of them have run wild at some time in their life and have come under the restraints of some structured limits and it helped them not run wild any more. Thank God for this, but they feel this is the big and only answer for sin. They see grace as leniency and the opposite of self restraint.

Many are stuck in will-power orientation, but don’t have any of it’s oomph, and are condemned.The events of life crush some people and because some are more will-empowered, they handle things better, but criticize the rest.

Did you think that God made everybody alike? No, the will is involved in behavior, but also a whole lot more is needed. “Hey let’s follow the Law and master it, and if we do we will be accepted by God.” they say. “I think I can do it. I think I can attain to righteousness by my effort.” Are we brain impaired? If righteousness comes by the law, Christ died in vain, is the Bible verse.

Some people get their thinking from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil of Adam and Eve’s garden. Ah, were getting close to the real problem! This “moral” thinking, man adopted when he ate from that tree in the Garden of Eden, and frankly, we all, (saved and unsaved), inherit the same limited roots for our thinking.

Grace neither promotes nor discourages thinking with mere good versus evil premising. Grace has nothing to do with that tree. Grace liberates a man from all of that tree’s influence to establish us at the Tree of Life.
 

“Grace as a license” is only a twisted and limited self-interpretation of God’s intention for grace and God’s work of grace. This is finite thinking, but grace is infinite. With “grace”, we are talking about no mere permit on a piece of paper, but we are referring to the very plan of an All-knowing, All-powerful, Everywhere present Savior and God. His plan is a plan of Grace! Because I don’t understand how it works yet is not an excuse to discard it, or label it wrongly.
 

Indeed, grace also opposes lasciviousness, but not by self-inhibiting discipline or self-denial in that way. Instead grace applies the cross of Calvary to the root of the Old sin nature of a man and liberates him from it there. Then, it teaches us to stand fast, (here is where we discipline ourselves), in that liberty from self, and this is what Galatians 5:1 says, read it.

So, in a nut shell, we apply God’s once and for all judgment on sin by His own Son’s dying and shedding of His blood. This gift of God we receive. We never forget it. This is grace.
 

The sticky question I have for the accusing types is this; have these precious people ever really experienced healing? So, they have this disciplined life, and great self restraint; they stay clear of sin by holding strict allegiance to a set of rules. This is great, but does it necessarily require God? Some people are gifted with great discipline and never set foot in a church.

Yes, many people in many churches and in many walks of life are good people and disciplined. But, what will happen 10 years from now? God’s glorious grace is not predicated on toughness and self discipline, but on humble acceptance of total inadequacy to start. This is the way to a mended soul.
 

Finally, “we shouldn’t take what we don’t deserve and flaunt it in God’s face.” they say. True, true. We should not. But can I not do this? Folks the problem with man is not the laws around us or the grace given to us. These are just the externals.
 

The problem with man is sin and folks have no idea the extent of it. In Romans 5:8 it makes us an enemy of God. It is described as a sick head and a faint heart, deceitful and desperately wicked. Finally, “who can know it?” Sin is not an act only, it is a condition. It means the head, heart, emotions, conscience, volition, and consciousness are all tainted with the disease.

Instead, I say, lets lean on grace heavily and care not what the accusers say. I say use grace and bask in it and love it and be who you are by it. Don’ t fall for the trick that you can make it alone without grace. You are too wicked and don’t know your own heart and neither do I. Grace was made for sinners of whom I am chief, so said Paul. Let’s make grace a license to fall in love with our glorious loving Advocate. Jesus Christ the Righteous. Amen