Confessions of a Recovering Pharisee

God has really been teaching me a lot about Grace. I’ve posted before how I believe churches do a good job of offering “Grace” at the moment of conversion but a poor job afterwards. It is like a “bait and switch” tactic.

It is always interesting how God makes me learn from 1st hand experience. Sometimes I wish I could just read a book or go to a conference but it doesn’t work that way. Recently I have been forced into several situations that caused a crisis of belief for me in regards to Grace. Probably as far back as 6 months ago or less I would have reacted differently. But I’m learning that when I show the grace that God has given me to others it softens them up. At first they don’t know how to react because it wasn’t always my way.

I know that some well meaning Christians feel that “grace” is a license to sin. That can’t be further from the truth. What God’s grace does is offer us what is already ours. The moment we accept Jesus we are in the family. Family members have don’t have to earn privileges in their family, they receive them because of who they are in their family.

It is the same with God. He offers for us to join his family and when we do we have privileges not because we have performed but just because we are his children! So recently when I was faced with confronting some sinful behaviors I had to remind these people that they were not being true to who they were in Christ. When we are truly God’s we will act like it.

What was interesting when I and others who were in this with me approached it from this perspective, the walls came down and not only did the persons realize that they weren’t acting as if they were God’s the dialogue opened to talk about other areas! Cool!

I guess the saying is true: ”

Boy do I have a lot more to learn.

What do you think?

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