Do You Know the Difference Between Costly Grace and Cheap Grace?
Good Morning Friends,
When there is a living and incarnate Christ at work in our lives we are not only called to follow but to obey. If we love it is an easy yoke but if our love of God and others is weak it is a constant struggle. Grace must be sought again and again each and every day until we submit. But words rarely do justice to the topic of our relationship with God the Father, the Body of the church, Jesus and the Spirit that binds us together on this journey. The hope though is that however we express this love, that this gift, this miracle might produce in us something that builds up the body, the church. It is though grace not judgment, transformation not information, joy not fears that we experience this universal love. However today’s devotional is a testimony to the reality of grace in the Holy Spirit that still convicts us and condemns sin and calls us to follow the Shepherd.
We must recognize our need of redemption, the price of redemption but also the ultimate plan for redemption to fully enjoy the results of redemption. Do You Know the Difference Between Costly Grace and Cheap Grace?
Scripture: What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it? Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore, do not let sin exercise dominion in your mortal bodies, to make you obey their passions. No longer present your members to sin as instruments of wickedness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and present your members to God as instruments of righteousness.
Romans 6:1-13 (NRSV)
I am the gate. Whoever enters by me will be saved, and will come in and go out and find pasture. The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
John 10:9-10 (NRSV)
When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest not on human wisdom but on the power of God.
1 Corinthians 2:1-5 (NRSV)
Message: In today’s devotional we begin to see how believing in Jesus, repenting, confessing, and being baptized are all expressions of one faith. Just as the Sun that sets and the Sun that rises is still the same Sun so too the sacraments of our life are linked as one expression of the grace of God in the Whole Gospel of Christ. And here as we contemplate today’s question we do so in part in the memory of Detrick Bonhoeffer who was hanged by Nazi Germans, for taking a stand against evil. For he not only coined the phrase “cheap grace” in his book, The Cost of Discipleship, but also gave witness to the reality that real grace is extremely costly.
And so today we too are convicted of the misery of it all and the deliverance we so desperately need and the gratitude we most certainly need to express in the face of challenges.
The mystery of it though boggles the mind and no amount of human wisdom seems to help. It is so counter intuitive. Maybe the problem is that we were raised to be independent and self-sufficient. Maybe we are sneaky and unrepentant. Maybe we would like to find a cheap covering for our sins…recognizing Christ as our Savior but not our Lord. But what is the point of that? If we are seeking the abundant life, we must also be seeking God’s forgiveness for the two are related. Only if we are willing to repent of our ways and follow the Jesus way is the abundant life available to us. But here is the deal…accepting the costly grace of God may not be exactly what we expected. And settling for a cheap grace leaves us in such a funk. The world is filled with unhappy and dissatisfied people looking for answers to their emptiness inside because they have settled for cheap grace. And it is our job to encourage them to come through the gate, to come to the door that opens when we confess that Jesus is King and Shepherd and Savior. In this experience of discerning grace we become as sheep together seeking a pasture filled with good things…a life free from bad things to harm us. But we are still maturing if we want to do this on our own terms not God’s. If we are wrestling with principalities and powers but failing to master them through Jesus Christ, God has more work to do in us. It is hard work to be filled with faith, hope and love. It is hard work to put aside anger, greed and guilt, envy and revenge. And we cannot do it on our own. We need the support of the Savior. We need to realize that success does not make us and failure does not break us. Oh, to be smart sheep, to discover the abundant life found in Jesus and nowhere else. Oh, to be united with Him in death so we might be united with Him in life. Enter the door. Enter the gate to the Shepherd’s Way to a full life of salvation by grace and unto good works. Just as the Gospel declares truth and exposes evil before God’s judgment so too must we. And here discover that ultimately one cannot take advantage of the work of Christians without committing to seek wholeness where there is brokenness. Friends, we are to live out a missional identity. Anything short of that is cheap grace. Friends, life at its best is a journey of faith and fellowship into the newness of life found in our experience of God in the knowledge of the price of redemption but also experienced when the Spirit’s purpose is served in acts of faith and hope and love and unity. Friends we too are on a journey of obedience, salvation, remission of sins, receiving of the Holy Spirit, and being clothed with Christ in a new life that began in our youth at our baptism and is renewed each day as we die to self, sleep and rise up to meet the new day…as we die with Christ on the cross and are raised with Him into the new mercy and mystery of grace.
Pray we have obedience of faith in the Gospel. Pray we realize that salvation is free but not cheap. Pray that when we encounter God’s grace it changes everything. Pray we realize that grace does not give us the right to keep on sinning. Pray we realize that when we follow the Jesus Way we must die to our old way of living and be raised to a new life. Pray we make peace with the past but are focused on the present and optimistic about the future. Pray we realize that God is inviting us to an abundant life, a life worth living, but not necessarily a life of comfort and ease, and certainly not something that comes quickly and easy at others expense. Pray that when we hear Jesus call we follow and trust and obey in a lifestyle of sanctification. Pray we realize that there is no justification of sin without justification of the sinner. Pray we bring together both quantitative and qualitative dimensions that arise from the story of God’s redemption of all of creation. Pray we embrace a Gospel that creates a new reconciled humanity in the one family of God. Pray the Gospel in us produces ethical transformation. Pray we believe in the cosmic power and the mighty working of the Holy Spirit. Pray we realize that there is a tension between what is and what will be. Pray we realize that for there to be peace it must begin with each of us.
Blessings,
John Lawson
Daily Devotionals 