Some time ago, I listened to a colleague in ministry give his testimony, and came away amazed that he had ended up a pastor—and in fact, amazed that he was even a Christian. He had come to Christ when he was six, but the church he attended was extremely legalistic, so much so that by the age of ten, they had him firmly convinced (and completely terrified) that he was going to Hell. He described his adolescence and early adulthood as a process of holding God as far away as he possibly could while still holding on enough to keep from going to Hell, which was his overriding concern; at one point as he was talking, he wondered if he might not have been better off “just going prodigal for a while,” though he knew he’d been too afraid to do so.In the midst of all this, though, God was at work on him, reaching out with his grace by his Spirit, slowly peeling away the layers of fear around his soul “like an onion” which that church had left there, calling him first back into the church, and then into the ministry; gradually, gradually, God has been setting him free from that fear, teaching him to trust—and teaching him to share that healing with others, to preach the good news of Jesus Christ so that people may live.I’ll never forget him looking at us and saying, almost pleading, “Preach grace, brothers. Preach grace.” I do, or at least that’s my intent and desire, and I think I can say that’s true for all the others there; but I don’t think I’ve ever been reminded so powerfully, or had it sink in quite so deeply, just how crucial that is. I’ll never forget it.
That’s such an important thing to try to keep in balance! How to teach that there is a hell, that there are consequences to sin, and yet the overwhelming grace of God is there for all of us. How to stand in awe of God’s holiness, to be humbled by our human flaws, and yet know that he loves us to exptavagantly.
Use the bad news to show the greatness of the good news, I think; if we preach the grace of God in light of the seriousness of our own sin, it just makes his grace that much brighter. It seems to me that the key is never to preach the bad news without following it with the gospel. (That’s the Reformed paradigm, anyway; granted it’s how I was taught to do things, but it always made sense to me.)
That’s the right approach, I think. Fortunately, that’s the kind of preaching I have always had the privilege of hearing.
Unfortunately, preaching grace deprives us of the right to be judgmental, sour old biddies. It gives us no place of importance and no way to claim a superior seat in the kingdom if the “sinner” slinks back on his knees.
Grace smells bad to the legalistic mind. It isn’t fair and it isn’t fun. “Good” people who have toed the line should be able to say, “I told you so” with a holier than thou smirk.
Grace took me a lot of years to grasp, and the abuse of it is one of the things that gets me angry the quickest.
It also gives us no right nor room to claim credit–if it’s all by grace, then the credit is all God’s. You’re right, grace is an offense to pride; the elder brother was more lost in Luke 15 than the younger one.
Joyce, thanks for the affirmation, and I’m glad to hear that. I wish everyone could say that.