Love and Grace

Grace is a polarizing topic and it is easily misunderstood. On the one hand, you can be someone who says they believe in grace, but you still feel like God is keeping a "good works tally" on you so you better be doing the right things. In essence, you still kind of feel like you have to earn your salvation. On the other hand, you may be someone who feels like grace is the best news ever and that you can get by with some little sins here or there because God has to forgive you. 

Growing up, I definitely fell into the latter category. I treated grace as as a license to sin, which means I truly didn’t understand it. I’m not sure if I knew Christ at that time or if I was just in a really slow sanctification process. Either way, the Spirit gave me eyes to see the true beauty of grace. In knowing that beauty, I want to obey the Lord because I’m grateful to him for saving me. 

Packer sums up my previous attitude well when he says, "Those who suppose that the doctrine of God’s grace tends to encourage moral laxity (‘final salvation is certain anyway, no matter what we do; therefore our conduct doesn’t matter’) are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about (136)." Simply put, I had no idea what I was talking about. 

A true comprehension of grace spurs us toward holiness, not away from it. We want to look more like our Savior and not less. We want to be like the One who would so lovingly lay down his life so that we might be with him forever. Packer goes on, "For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure." Our obedience to God gives him delight or pleasure. 

Obeying God doesn’t do a thing to earn our salvation. When we obey, we aren’t ensuring our salvation. When we sin, we aren’t drifting from salvation. However, out of love, we want to obey God. We want to draw closer to him. We want him to enjoy us and we want to enjoy him. Grace is beautiful because it has joined us in a loving relationship with our Creator.