Pastor’s Note
What I’m not saying…
I stood in front of the sanctuary last week and received a familiar look accompanied by a familiar question. The look was one of concern, confusion and suspicion. The question was very familiar. It began this way, “I’ve got to ask you a question, are you saying…” I interrupted them, “...am I saying that grace means you can go out and do anything you want to do, throw caution to the wind, embrace debauchery and live with a perpetual “hall pass” to do whatever you want, whenever you want?”
They smiled and graciously said, “well I wasn’t going to ask that exactly, but…” I interrupted again, “...but you were going to ask whether I believed that as Christians we are to put off the old man and put on the new man, participate in the mortification of the flesh, run the race with perseverance, buffet our bodies, die to sin and live to righteousness?” They smiled again. I got it.
I’d heard that question before, probably several hundred times. So why is this question so regularly coming my way? I’d suggest to you that the reason is fear. It is fear that my preaching is giving people license to sin, license to do “whatever they want” and license to ignore the clear teaching of Scripture that in Christ we’ve been “unshackled from slavery to sin and shackled to righteousness.” You need to know that far from finding such accusations insulting, I actually find them quite encouraging. It thrills me! I’m being heard—heard to be preaching grace deep enough, wide enough and high enough that in Christ there’s nothing we could do to make God love us any more OR anything we could do to make Him love us any less.
Nothing we could do to make him love us any more or any less? Being heard? Is this making your brain hurt? Okay Larroux, stop the double speak! YES or NO—Are you actually saying that you can go out and do whatever you want? Are you actually saying that the Gospel gives us permission to sin? Are you actually saying that we have a “hall pass” to do whatever we want? No, I’m not actually saying any of those things. Final answer.
Do you feel relieved? Can you finally exhale? Well, before you open the champagne make sure you hear this: I am NOT saying any of those things but what I am saying is much more scandalous. In Christ, neither our greatest performance or our worst failure has any defining power for us at all. You heard me right: neither performance nor failure defines us. The final verdict is cast about me without regard for me at all.
There is NOTHING, nada, not one-single-thing, not one-single-action, no intention, no inclination or smallest glimmer of our most minute desire that recommends us to God. I’ll even up the ante one further: I actually believe that the very BEST things we’ve ever done—the most pious, most religious, most holy, most selfless acts of obedience, with the purest motives we could possibly muster on our best days, if rightly accounted for, would be in the debit column of our lives, NOT the credit column.
Are you still breathing? I hope you so. I hope you are actually breathing easier. We should be because only grace this free, deep, high and wide has any hope of transforming our lives and truly setting us free.
We need to be set free from ourselves: set free from our disobedience by the finished work of Christ on the cross and set free from our obedience by the perfect life of Christ on this earth. When we see that and embrace it we are changed. Our motives are transformed from a myriad of frantic self-atonement efforts to “make up” for our failures to a restful response by adopted children who are secure in the arms of their loving Father. I can now HATE my sin, because I am no longer HATED. I can now LOVE holiness, because I am now LOVED. This is the reason I preach grace.
Am I saying that we’re not changed? Not at all. Actually, if you’re listening, you’ll hear me saying that this is the ONLY thing which has any hope of changing us at all.