James Robinson writes about love and grace in his post: WWJD? Love Somebody, Perhaps?. If there’s one thing that believers tend to do its talk about grace and lay down the law. Surely Romans 6’s talking about walking uprightly is important, but I have since moving to Denver found some really important truths to be a key to an effective walk with Christ.
The Positional Truths
Holly Hills Bible Church is very attached to the Pauline epistles where we learn that our position in Christ is settled. In the heavenlies we are hidden in Christ (Collosians 3), our salvation is secure and no amount of sin can separate us from God (Romans 8:38-39). Here’s the thing about Grace that is really key: it’s inexhaustable. We can in no way find the end of the love of God because He is infinite, and love is one of His perfect attributes. Therefore, His love is infinite as well.
Back to the positional truths. The positional truths are as follows:
When a person becomes a believer their sin nature has been crucified with Christ.
The believers are resurrected with Christ, ascended with Christ and then seated with Christ where we are hidden with him. Positionally we’re secure. I, no matter how much I sin stand confidently before God as one of His own due to the work of Christ. My works are nothing.
Our condition on this earth, as we’re sanctified (setting aside more and more of ourselves unto Christ, being conformed to His image), is never effecting our position. However, our position, because of Christ is being conformed to our position, which is hidden in Christ. The unbeliever’s condition and position are consistent because they are both directed towards the flesh, however, any inconsistencies that we have as beleivers are paid for by the blood of Christ.
I have found myself at times thinking things and realizing that they were not consistent with my position and therefore, as Paul writes, brought them into submission of Christ. My condition is effected by the flesh but not ruled by the flesh – Romans 7 is followed by Romans 8 where we learn of the victory that the believer has over sin through abiding in Christ.
Love Trumps Tolerance
Our pluralistic, relativistic culture touts tolerance as ‘the lord of the ring’ because it sounds to unifying. It’s not, it just allows for separation into categories while looking the other way. In engineering there is what is called a tolerance level that is the amount of error that is acceptable. Tolerance almost always has some limit. For example we can tolerate Christianity in our United States of American culture as long as we don’t have prayers in public places, no “In God We Trust” on our money and promote other religions based on the fact that none of them is actually true. We tolerate Christians, but once they’ve exceded a tolerance level then we must limit and control their practices. Tolerance is not friendly to justice, which is exacting.
Love, on the other hand looks past errors (I Corinthians 13:4,8) and is patient in growth and injustice. However, love is compatible with Justice because it says, “Let justice be done, there are consequences for actions” but is not contrary to still loving the person before, during and after punishment.
God Gets the Glory – No Matter What
One last thing that just recently hit me is that God gets the glory no matter what. If we’re righteous in our lives He gets the Glory of enabling us to be so. If we sin He gets the glory for being so gracious and loving. Ephesians 2:10 says that God has good works planned for believers – we’re going to do righteous things in our lives – we can plan on it. When we do those thing God gets the glory, we get rewards in heaven for it, and we get to be with Him as he reveals His glory to us. Wow! That’s so amazing.
Lord, We Give You Glory
I tried to sum up the concepts in this post two Sundays ago in a song that I’ve written. The lyrics are below and a rough and dirty recording is available to listen to as an MP3 (email me for guitar chords).
Lord we give you glory
Lord we give you praise
You are the first born from the dead
The one with whom we’re raised
Sealing our position
We’re hidden with you
We are your possession
Jesus we love you
Your grace knows no boundary
A gift from up above
Knowing me you found me
And gave me your love
Thank you for sharing this word. I know that this can be a real sticking point for many Christians and I, myself, have had numerous discussions on this point. I appreciate your ability to condense and consolidate this into a clear and understandable manner. Isn’t God great??