Out of Balance

Many Christians say they understand grace, but that “grace teaching” needs to be balanced. In other words, if people believe that they’ve really been forgiven and made righteous and that it has nothing to do with them, then they’ll rebel and engage in sin, since there will be no consequences. So, grace teaching, they argue, must be balanced by teaching about how to live a holy lifestyle.

But grace, by its very nature, is unbalanced. When God cut covenant with Abram he alone walked through the pieces of the sacrifices meaning that only He was bound to uphold the covenant. It didn’t rest on Abram at all. (Genesis 15) When Jesus died on the cross it wasn’t to get something from us, or make us act in a moral way, it was an act of grace born out of love.

Divine Enablement

A few years ago God spoke this to me, “let me be supernatural.” I think sometimes as humans we are so focused on cultivating our own capability that we push God out of the way. We don’t realize we’re doing it; we think we’re called to handle things ourselves and be good little soldiers in God’s army, but we’ve missed it. We’re called to dependence, not capability. There is only one man who was ever capable of living the Christian life. His name is Jesus and He fulfilled the righteous requirements of the law on our behalf, because we couldn’t do it (Romans 8:3-4).

But, if humans are anything we’re stubbornly persistent. We want to keep trying to do it on our own. “This time,” we tell ourselves, “I’m really going to buckle down. I’m going to be in the Word. I’m not going to let any angry words come out of my mouth. I’m going to think of others first and love everyone with God’s love. I can do it!”

That usually lasts all of a day or two, maybe even up to a week, and the longer it lasts the worse off we are because the more we’re convinced we can do it on our own. But where does that leave God? The creator of the Heavens and Earth who wants to live His life through us patiently stands on the sidelines where we’ve placed Him while we try to do it ourselves. He watches us fail time and time again, just waiting for the day we’ll give up and let Him come work through us.