Too Much Grace

I guess I have been thinking for some time now that there is no such thing as too much grace in our lives, so I was a little shocked last night to hear one of the church leadership say that you have to strike a balance between law and grace and that 'too much grace is a dangerous thing'. The first thing that came to my mind was Ephesians 2:8-9: "For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." (ESV) Since we are indeed saved by grace, to say that there can be too much grace is akin to saying that there can be too much salvation. You could just as well say that 'too much salvation is a dangerous thing'. Get saved to a degree, but don't go overboard.

I know exactly where this thinking comes from. I know that there is an assumption that everyone understands grace and they are sitting around on their 'blessed assurance' saturated in grace and thinking, "I got my ticket to heaven, and I'm just gonna sit here and warm a pew until I'm dead". There are a lot of folks in our churches that are like that. But the answer is not to encourage them to be 'doers of the word' by insisting that 'the Bible tells us what to do - now get up and do it'. Again, the law of Moses was impossible to keep; the Commandments of the New Testament are infinitely more onerous short of God's grace in Christ. Many of our folks are in the state they are in because they have already worked themselves to burnout and are holding on to faith by a thread just hoping they can make it across the finish line with their salvation intact.

There is a reason that Paul calls the fruit of the Spirit 'fruit'. In contrasting it with 'the works of the flesh' in Galatians 5, he could have easily called it 'the works of the Spirit', but he didn't because it is not our work. It is literally the fruit of God's grace in our lives. The more we rely on grace, the more of this fruit we will produce. If it were possible to be completely consumed by grace, everything in our lives would be fruit. Is that dangerous? Only in the respect that Christ was dangerous. C.S. Lewis described the Aslan character (a representation of Christ) in 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe' in this way; ’He isn’t safe. But he’s good'. Likewise Jesus is not safe, but good. Grace is not safe, but good.

I pray that the entire church could trash this pelagian religious notion. We have a Saturday-morning-cartoon idea of Christianity, as if we have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other whispering to us what to do while God keeps score of our good and bad deeds. I've been quoted to from Hebrews 6 "Therefore let us leave the elementary doctrine of Christ and go on to maturity, not laying again a foundation of repentance from dead works and of faith toward God, and of instruction about washings, the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal judgment. And this we will do if God permits." (6:1-3 ESV) The implication is, of course, that the gospel is the basics of Christianity. The thinking is "You are already saved, for goodness sake. Do something". But therein lies the problem. Our doing is not the fruit of the Spirit, but the works of the flesh, and leads to burnout and frustration, lack of generosity as well as extremely poor use of resources for very little Kingdom return. If you see those symptoms in your local church, you can be sure that there is not enough emphasis on grace.

Let me assure you, friend, there is no such thing as 'too much grace' any more than there is a such thing as 'too much Jesus' or too much 'fruit' in your life. Abandon yourself to God's great salvation as fully as you can. Become as grace-saturated as you can and bear fruit for God. Resist the temptation to seek God's pleasure by obedience to temporal 'requirements' which will steal your time and energy, and cast yourself headlong into the depth of this great salvation.

God Bless