Grace: Where Christianity gets offensive

Photo Credit: Kylene Lynn

I’ve been expanding the breadth of my blog reading for the past several weeks. As I interact on twitter and follow great blogs (especially the community variety), I’ve found many good words that are helpful, inspiring, and beautiful.

But a large minority of my new reading has been troubling — especially among those who extol grace but do not lean into the Bible for clarity.

We cannot know God unless we have experienced grace. And to experience God’s grace, we must know what He says and embrace it with our whole being.

Let’s start with a definition:

Grace according to the Word English Dictionary is the free and unmerited favour of God shown towards man. I will go beyond this definition to say that this “free and unmerited favour” is demonstrated in the perfect life, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ on our behalf. God Himself became man to pay our penalty so we can, once and for all, be made right with him. Grace begins and ends in Jesus.

Wrapped up in this word grace is more than a warm feeling and a sense of peace, there is real action on the part of a Creator God who suffered and sacrificed in my place.

Now that we have that ironed out…

This is where Christianity gets offensive

As a little girl I always heard, “The cross is offensive but you don’t have to be.” I accepted the statement on face value — I hated conflict and didn’t want to be offensive to anyone. But I didn’t understand what could be so offensive about Jesus. In church I learned Jesus loves me, he loves the little children (red and yellow, black and white), and he teaches us how to be good. Jesus died on the cross to save us from our sin. If I believe in him, I’ll go to heaven when I die. What could be offensive about a man who is perfect, helps the poor, teaches about love, and is here for everyone? My 9 year old mind couldn’t see why anyone would be offended by that.

As I grew, I learned a little more about myself and a lot about grace.

There is a truth behind grace that the Children’s church version of Jesus doesn’t always make clear. Read the definition again , “God became man to pay our penalty.”

Penalty? What penalty?

The Bible makes clear from Genesis to Revelation that we are separated from God. The moment Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit, we became at odds with the divine. People have rebelled from God since the very beginning of time.

The Old Testament is an infinite loop of rebellion, consequences, and return. People run after other gods, forget God, seek their own gain, and insist on their own way. And if you read the stories honestly, you will see a bit of yourself in them. The struggle for God’s people hasn’t changed. We seek our own glory, want to run our own lives, and live for our own personal gain.

The New Testament is more direct. Instead of seeing ourselves reflected in historical stories, we read it plainly declared. The first three chapters of Romans is scathing, “no one is righteous, no not one.”

We want to protest. I’m a good moral person. I hold a job and pay my taxes and I volunteer at the food bank every Christmas. I give my old clothes to the Goodwill, I love my family, I save for retirement and I give money to the Winter care program when I pay my electric bill. I certainly don’t try to hurt anybody. You’re saying I owe God something?

This is the offensive part. Yes. You do. We all do.

At its core, Christianity requires we acknowledge a terrible fact about mankind. We were made to know God, to be near him, to walk with him and to worship him. But when we choose to run our own lives, reject his protective hand, and care more about our comfort than His glory, we violate him. We don’t offend him or hurt his feelings or interrupt his power play. We violate who He is. This violation of God is sin.

God does not tolerate being violated.

You may think this unfair or unreasonable. You may reason, if God is so loving and powerful, he should be able to deal with being violated. Surely God’s ego can handle the fact that I want to run my own life. After all, he has the whole universe. I just want to be in charge of me.

But what we so often fail to see is that God has handled being violated. He did it in the person of Christ.

Instead of leaving mankind to suffer the consequences of forever separation from God, He came to live among us. He bore the penalty that was rightfully ours and died for us. He wiped the slate clean, settled the score, tore the veil, and finished it forever.

Our only requirement is that we believe — not in fairy tales, or pixie dust or magical incantations — but that Jesus really was the God-man come to fix our personal brokenness to reunite us with Him.

The song is right, grace is amazing. When John Newton wrote Amazing Grace “to save a wretch like me” was not hyperbole. It was not false humility. He was sharing the truth of where we stand before a holy God. Knowing what He has done on our behalf, that He initiated our rescue from the very beginning, drives us to worship, give, love, pray, and sacrifice. Not because we’re good, but because he has been good on our behalf.

There is so much more to say about grace.

Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved. How precious did that grace appear the hour I first believed. — John Newton

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Is it hard for you to see our need for grace as offensive?
How would you define grace?

Scriptures for reference
Genesis 3, Romans 3:10, Romans 3:21-26, Ephesians 2:8-10, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 7:24, Romans 8:1, Jeremiah 17:9, Philippians 3:4-14