How do you make good choices for your life?

I’ve started trying to be very conscious of the choices I am making day by day since my awakening to grace. It’s been such a transformation in the way I see the world that I feel like I need to bring everything into right alignment. The old man definitely has a way of showing up in my thoughts and attitudes but I thank God for he who is in me is greater than he who is in the world (1 John 4:4). For 21 years, religion was drummed into me – externally from others and internally by myself – so I expect that it may take a while to correct some perceptions I’ve carried for more than half my life. If I say something way off, please pardon me. I’m still an infant in grace. So why not wait until I’m a little more versed in the gospel of grace before putting up public blog broadcasts about my experience? If you’ve experienced the gospel of grace, the radical love of God through Jesus, you know why I can’t! In any case, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world. ² By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, ³ and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God. (1 John 4:1-3).

 

In recent days - getting back to choices - when I encounter a truth, a thought, an idea or just any commonly held norm, I’ve started to ask myself whether it conforms to the gospel of grace or what it would look like if it did. For example, what would a grace approach be to my finances, managing my time, my job at the office and what I do when spending time with my wife and daughter? Keep in mind that the gospel of grace is all about coming into the realization of our true identity as followers of Christ. The gospel of grace is the scandalously good news that we are forgiven, redeemed, and free from the power of the enemy that had enslaved us to sin, guilt and condemnation. The gospel of grace is the good news that God is not mad at us and that he loves us unabashedly. The gospel of grace is the good news that a fulfilled life is not found in following principles, steps or keeping commands but in allowing ourselves to rest in the finished work of Christ who nailed our transgressions to the cross (Col 2:14). Principles, disciplines and commandments are all good but they don’t make you right with God or even impress Him in the least! Doing good and living right is a result, or fruit, of who we are in Christ, and happens without effort when we walk in the Spirit and not the flesh. We are not made right with God by what we do; we are already right with God, so we do what is right! The gospel of grace is the good news that we are no longer under the old covenant where God dealt with us according to our keeping of the law; God himself fulfilled the righteous requirement of His own holy law, redeemed us in the process, and restored us as sons of God (Rom 6:14).

So, now that I know I am a son (or child) of God, I should operate and interact with the things of this world as such, right? Let me try an illustration: At my job, we are provided with access key cards and codes to allow us, as rightful employees, to access the office space and everything in it. This is true during normal working hours as well as outside those hours. I can literally come into work at 12am on Christmas night (which I won’t!) if I so choose. This analogy falls short but in the same way, I have all the rights and access privileges to the heavenly throne of grace as a child of God - 365, 24/7. How do I know I am a child and have these inalienable rights? That word alone, inalienable, is a whole other feast but for now, let us consider Romans 8:17 which tells me I am a child of God and a joint heir with Christ. This means that what Christ has, in terms of His inheritance, I also have! I know it’s scandalously radical but that why it’s such good news - I dare say GREAT news. What is Christ’s inheritance? Without even looking up verses, can we safely assume it’s everything great, whole and awesome? I think so. Romans 8:17 goes on to say that we are joint heirs provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. What does all that mean? Well, we can be assured that where Jesus is right now, he is not in torment, right? So Paul cannot be talking about an ongoing torment, but Christ did suffer death so that he could pay a price! I suggest that what Paul is saying is that our faith and belief in Christ imputes on us the righteousness he earned in suffering. We essentially receive the benefit or outcome of Christ’s suffering through faith. I would love to further explore this in a later blog but I wanted to include that section of the verse to allow for context, understanding and full disclosure.

Like most men, I’m pretty visual and my imagination is always on overdrive. Since our minds have been renewed in Christ, I am beginning to really enjoy my imagination under grace. In thinking about what it means to be a joint heir with Christ, I picture myself walking with Jesus and coming up to paradise - the place from where Adam was led away to prevent him from eating the tree of life (I am tempted to explore this as well but…another day) – and, as we approach, we meet up with the Cherubim that God set there to stand guard with a sword. God build this place so we could have perfect fellowship with him, the Father. The first Adam messed it up but Jesus restored us by paying the full debt and cancelling our sins and our consciousness of the same so that we are no longer enslaved by it (Romans 6:6). The Cherubim knows Christ but he has not met me yet and therefore, he asks for my pass/id/proof of entry, and before he can even finish asking, Jesus interrupts him and says, “He’s with me. He’s a joint heir with Me.” Angel Cherubim apologizes for asking, I tell him it’s all good and we enter into the garden. The first thing I’m looking for is God, the Father, but I can’t see him. “BOO!” He pounces at me from behind the closed door and we laugh for eternity. We forget he is a happy, jolly God. He created you, and me, and clever pranks too!

I did not intend to get away from the primary question of how to make good choices as children and joint heirs with Christ, but as I’ve been writing this, I feel a lot better about the outcome of the choices I will make now that I’ve re-affirmed my identity in God. Don’t you? When I accepted Christ and received the gift of grace, He came into my life and took over my heart – it belongs to Him and yearns to please Him. This is why we are pleasing to God; it’s not because we’re good, cautious and mindful of our ways and choices but because He lives in and through us. My mind is in Christ and my choices are guided by the Holy Spirit in me. So what is my part? Am I on some sort of Holy Spirit auto-pilot mode? No, I have work to do – believe (John 6:29). This is not always easy and it takes time to get good at walking in the Spirit (grace) and not in the flesh (law/religion). But what does all this walking in the Spirit or in the flesh mean in relation to making choices in life? Well, the apostle Paul answers that question but we seem to have missed it, so stay with me as I try to break it down. 

Until recently, I believed that walking in the flesh meant succumbing to temptations of the flesh like lust, greed, anger, malice, laziness, selfishness and all sorts of debauchery = sinning. However, walking in the flesh is not that at all. Walking in the flesh is being sin conscious. In other words, walking in the flesh is allowing ourselves to feel condemned even after God has called us righteous. Another word for the flesh is the law of sin and death.

Romans 8:7(ESV) - For the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God, for it does not submit to God's law; indeed, it cannot. ⁸ Those who are in the flesh cannot please God.

Paul is saying that those who operate their lives based on God’s law cannot please God! What? Why would God give men laws they cannot keep, why would he set people up for failure? Well, he did not. He gave us the law to point us to Jesus. The entire word is about the Word and if it’s not pointing to the Word then we must be misreading the word. Get it? You see, Jesus did not come to get rid of the law but to fulfill it on our behalf. God is holy and so are his laws. If we could keep them to perfection, we would never need a savior. But we couldn’t, could we? In fact, Jesus raised the stakes every time the law came up. Why did he say things like (paraphrased) it’s not enough to not commit adultery - if you so much as look at a woman with lust in your heart, you have committed adultery. It’s not enough to not kill your brother, if you so much as have hate in your heart towards another person, you are a murderer. We can try and live under these extreme conditions but we can’t. I admit that I can’t but I grew up believing I should, or should at least try my very best. I got saved when I was about 13 or 14 and until recently, the song has been do good and God will be good to you, do bad and God will… not be so good.

So, if living in the flesh is being sin conscious, what is living by the Spirit? Resting in your identity as a redeemed, cleansed, forgiven, overcoming child of God. More than anything, this is what the enemy is after in his schemes against believers – your ID. If he can cloud your mind and heart and cause you to second guess your identity, he can frustrate your efforts no matter what choice you make. Even good choices! Oops. Think about it; if you start a business or take a job to support your family, isn’t that a good choice? Absolutely. However, if the deceiver persuades you that you really didn’t deserve it in the first place because of your past life and how miserable you are at keeping God’s commandments, what is the likelihood that you will keep that job or business running when things get tough? “I knew it was too good to be true. I should just go back and work at the minimum wage job and just be happy with that.” There’s absolutely nothing wrong with a minimum wage job but there’s something wrong with believing that you don’t deserve to be successful because of past sins. God doesn’t keep a record of sins and neither should we; against our brother or ourselves. 

It takes time, at least in my case, to allow the good news of the gospel of grace to sink into our minds and permeate every corner of our lives. When you’re hungry and are presented with a savory meal, it tastes great the moment you take your first bite but it takes a while for the nutritional value to permeate your body down to the cellular level. Similarly, the truth about the gospel of Jesus is so deep and wide and colorful and flavorful and all things awesome. Once you start receiving it and repent (repenting is not feeling deep remorse over sin but changing you mind, in this case, walking in grace and not the law), it will steadily take root and change you from the inside out. So perhaps the question is not how do I make good choices for my life but who am I and who’s am I?

The hyper/radical-grace message in a word - Jesus.

The song Your Grace Still Amazes Me by Phillip, Craig & Dean comes to mind when I think about this new found sweetness that has taken over my body, soul and spirit. This part especially rings true;

It's deeper, it's wider
It's stronger, it's higher
Than anything my eyes can see
Your Grace...

When I read articles of people warning about this radical or hyper-grace thing being preached and taught, it saddens me because when you have tasted the sweet liberation that comes with grasping the beauty of God’s grace, you just want everyone to know it like you know it.

So I feel compelled to say this out loud; simply because you don’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not real. This very evening, my wife and I decided to order pizza; I had just put my daughter down for the night and my wife was working on some online classes, so needless to say, we didn’t feel led to cooking. In any case, it was approaching 9pm, so there were plenty of reasons not to cook. Apparently, my wife had found quite the pizza deal a few weeks back in an online coupon; one large pizza with all the toppings you want for $8.99. Now, if you don’t live in the US, trust me when I say this is a really awesome deal. We’ve been ordering online and the last two times we’ve done so, we’ve found this same coupon. It’s not exactly hard to find but it’s buried with so many other coupons and very easy to miss. In fact, we had ordered from that site many times before but never saw it before. It wasn’t being advertised so we never thought to look for it. Usually, in my part of the country, large pizzas with all the toppings you could have cost upwards of $20 when delivered, so when I would find one for 15 bucks, I considered that a steal and often ordered that. Based on the regular cost, I never thought to look for anything cheaper, certainly not one for $8.99. That’s how easy it is to miss out on the radical grace of God. I missed it for 20 years though it was right there under my nose; a deal too good to be true, but I couldn’t see it.

My metaphor is anything but deep or profound, it’s actually kind of cheesy, but I hope that it at least makes sense to you. Back to the warning against hyper-grace articles: What these writers or preachers don’t seem to understand, through no fault of theirs, is that when you finally see it, when Grace finally hits you square in the face, it changes everything. Everything! When you find this treasure and your eyes are opened, you cannot get enough of His sweetness; you want to talk about Jesus all the time, you want to read the Word every spare moment you have, you want to do a tap dance in the most inappropriate places and times, you want to find and connect with other people who have found this nectar and just hug them, you want to babble on and on about Him and it seldom occurs to you that you might be irritating some folk, you feel like you’re on a bit of a high…it’s like a buzz that never really fades. You see, I said the sinner’s prayer 20 plus years ago but it wasn’t until last week that I saw Him and everything He did for me really crystallized. This is not to say that I was not really saved before, no. Grace was at work even while I was blind. I knew Jesus loved me but I never experienced what that really translated to in my everyday life. I saw and knew Him as Protector, Friend, Counselor and Lord but He often felt unreachable, mysterious, distant and sometimes even spooky. I cannot say I ever had a personal encounter the way other saved people described it. What kept me going was an understanding that feelings had nothing to do with His love. That much I knew, but boy, I wanted more. That said, I learnt to very effectively suppress those feelings and enjoy what I had, which wasn’t much, but sufficient nonetheless. What I did not know then that I know now is that I had been living under the law mixed with grace, and that the law is only good when you don’t break it. This is how I see it; the law says don’t speed in a school zone or you’ll get a ticket. Everyone can agree that speeding in a school zone is not good and getting a ticket stinks. What is the reward for keeping this law? Well, you get to keep your hard-earned money. That’s it. The law does not give you a reward for keeping it, it does not give you the inner ability to obey it and it certainly does not have the power to make you good. Notice however that the law does sort of reward you by not demanding a fee or penalty if you are careful to keep it. This, I argue, is a sort of fruit of the law. Some may even go as far as calling this a blessing. Is it? I say this to illustrate why someone can be saved for many years and not give up on his or her salvation. If all they ever hear through sermons and teachings is how to live a holy life, how to avoid sin, how long their skirt hems should be, how far to go on a date, how many days they should fast, how often they should witness or how much they should give, they can hang on to their salvation. Besides, they’re working out their salvation with fear and trembling, right?

I’ve jumped around and touched on a few different things without expounding so please pardon me. I started off grieved at the idea that someone could hear about this message of grace-on-steroids and warn people against it and this is what I hope you come away with; God loves you as you are, not as you should be or if you act right. Look to Jesus, listen to Grace. I’ve also read that they warn that hyper-grace or radical-grace theology/teaching will lead you straight to a life of sin unhindered, where you won’t care what you do because Jesus is obligated to love you anyway, and He paid a permanent price for all your sins and you can basically indulge in your fleshly desires worry-free. Nothing could be further from the truth. NOTHING! If indeed there are people who have done this, then I can safely say Grace did not find them. They may have been looking for a license to live a consequence free life and abused the message of Grace, I really don’t know nor care, but they did not see the Truth. Without saying much about this, we can all agree that people abuse good things, right? Does that make the good thing bad? Like I said earlier, when Grace finds you and you see the Truth, it changes everything; it completely consumes you and you can’t get enough of it. I make it sounds like an addiction or something similar but I don’t know how else to describe it. Another hyper-grace warning I’ve heard of is that some who are listening to this message are ending up in clubs, drinking and so forth. Well, I don’t know much about clubing, but if someone who has truly seen Grace ends up in a club somehow, I imagine them taking over the DJ booth, grabbing the mic and preaching about Grace, then mixing up a grace groove! Yap, it’s that crazy! I’ve only been drinking from this well a few days but I can tell you with certainty that God’s way of dealing with sin is replacing your appetites for sin with a new ravenous appetite for Himself; a process that has NOTHING to do with you or your efforts at being good and holy. Imagine being thirsty and never being quenched – in a good way. I’m not talking about a scenario where your thirst drives you to find unfulfilling things to fill it; I’m talking about water so sweet you can’t get enough of it. When you’re busy gazing at Love, talking to Him and about Him, your mind and heart get consumed by Him and leaves room for little else. In other words, His Grace is all-consuming. My wife and I use that word, all-consuming, to describe how we sometimes feel when dealing with our little girl. She is 13 months old but taking care of her is sometimes all-consuming. If you’re a parent, especially a new one, you feel me. Taking care of my daughter does not leave much room for other pursuits; she consumes our time and energy with such efficiency, it sometimes leaves us dumbfounded. However, and this is key, it’s worth it. She is worth it. That analogy does not even begin to describe the Grace of God through Christ. Here’s an example; I really enjoy listening to public radio on my drive to and from work, and when I get home, I watch two news shows as I unwind. I’ve done this for a long time and I’ve guarded these few moments well because I enjoy relaxing. Lately though, these moments have been over-thrown by this rabid thirst for all things Grace: As soon as I get into my car, I set up my stereo so that I can listen to scripture on my drive, I spend my lunch hour at the park reading about Grace and I spend my evenings writing about this high I’m on that won’t fade. You may argue that I feel as I do because it’s a new revelation for me and there’s merit to that. But I have a reference point – I’ve been married almost 9 years and I’m still deeply in love with my wife. My love for her has grown over the years and I’ve experienced different shades of it and it’s all beautiful. I like what Paul Ellis says on one of his blog entries (paraphrased); when you first see the marvel that is Grace, it’s like looking up at the sky and gazing at the stars. You imagine how wide, expansive and endless the universe is but your eyes can see a small part of it. Is it Apostle Paul who prays that we would come to know how wide, long, high and deep the love of Christ is? Yes, it’s like that.

In the last few days, I have had at least one major distraction (some would say an attack) that really got me off this high momentarily. After I gained back my focus, I understood what Paul really meant when he said to work out your salvation with fear and trembling. This was not an instruction to assert or apply oneself in some form or fashion; this was an instruction to stay firmly in Grace and not allow anything to get you to look away. When Jesus, in Matthew 13, talked about seeds scattered on the ground and being snatched up by the cares of the world and the pursuit of riches, this is what He wanted us to be on the watch out for. For me at least, this is the where most preachers and teachers miss the mark. Salvation has everything to do with gazing into the eyes of Jesus like a lunatic and nothing to do with focusing on being a good Christian. You may argue that focusing on what Jesus has done and doing things for Him is one and the same thing but it is not. Our obsession will have its effects on us whether we want to or not, the fruit will pop effortlessly. It’s this obsession, this addiction for Grace that causes people to witness to strangers on a bus. As a leader, if you want your congregation to spend more of their free time witnessing, is it more effective to talk to them about witnessing techniques and goals or to tell them about the divine exchange that took place when Jesus switched spots with us so that we might become His righteousness? If you go with the first option, you will certainly see fruit. The Law has its benefits and it definitely produces results, but not lasting fruit.

As I wrap this up, let me borrow an analogy from my wife to illustrate one of the ways the church, in my opinion, seems to have missed another mark with the questions (or conundrum) of sin; if I say to you, “don’t think of a pink elephant with purple socks.” What is immediately planted in your mind? A pink elephant with purple sox. Similarly, if I tell you not to sin in this way or another, I am doing two things – giving you the knowledge of what that sin is in detail, and I am planting condemnation in your heart if you even fall short by a hair. This is why Christians live a yo-yo life; sometimes we win against sin but most times we lose, and when we lose, we feel like…wait for it…losers. Do you want to know the secret to winning against sin every time? Here it is; accept that you are powerless, unholy and you will never please God of your own ability or strength. Never. This is not only true when we initially get saved but also as we live out our salvation. But don’t despair. Look up and notice Jesus is right there with arms open wide. He beat sin before it even had a clue there was a fight. He paid the price for all your sins, short-comings, weaknesses, waywardness and every nasty little thing you ever did or will ever do. Accept His victory and receive the trophy you never earned. This is Grace. He died for you so you could live free from guilt, condemnation and the power of sin over you. If this realization causes you to sin even more, you have not encountered Jesus. No way! Imagine a kid at the play-ground being bullied, and how quickly and easily they flinch when the bully attacks. But as soon as their big Brother shows up, their chests inflate and they look twice as tall. They feel invincible and untouchable because they know that if the bully were to even think of coming after them, they would be pounced on in a fraction of a second and smashed. This is what happens when you let Grace take over; you’re no longer focused on the bully but on enjoying the playground because it’s safe to play without a . When radical grace teachers talk about not worrying about sin, this is what they mean. For me at least, this is how I see it; this is not a casual approach to sin, it’s a shift of focus away from sin and resting in the presence of you big Brother. The bully is still there but his power over you, especially fear, has been taken away.  In contrast, how weird would it be for the little kid, while His big brother is present, to take on and fight the bully? For one, his big Brother would be a little offended and it’s possible that the small kid could even win the fight. But with time, if the bully (sin) notices that this small boy is not letting the big Brother fight for him, the bully will start winning more often than not since he’s bigger, stronger. All this time, the bully knows that the big Brother is a formidable fighter and would not even dare fight Him but since he is not fighting the big Brother, he is having his way with the kid in a fight that does not even need to take place. In the same way, when we mix Grace with the law, this is what it looks like and it’s ridiculous. We’re engaged in a needless fight against sinful behavior when all we have to do is accept that there is Another one who stands on our behalf and He is a mighty warrior. Sin does not bother with Jesus because that fight was settled long ago on a little hill somewhere in present day Israel. This, my dear friend, is salvation the way God intended. Grace does not need your help. The work was finished. 

The hyper-radical-grace message in a word - Jesus.