Free Pass

We have misunderstood grace and made something of it that it has never been.  The idea that grace is a "free pass" is foreign to the scriptures...especially when you read much of Paul.  Grace is not that God lets things go as if they don't matter much to him.  Under that sort of grace, the new birth would be unnecessary...he could just turn away from all the evil we have absorbed and pretend it is not there.  We are born again not so that we can keep on as we were before but to be completely changed and for that to happen, the effect of sin in us must be addressed.  Like a surgeon whose mission it is to explore the torn ligaments and do something about them, the Lord takes on the full effect of sin and cuts at it in every point.  We cry out to God for mercy and wonder why we suffered this or that.  We moan about the trials we face and wish we hadn't lost our temper, stared long at the actress partially dressed, given up on a ministry we started.  The two go together and cannot be extricated from one another.  I argue too much and God works at that, cutting apart my self-assurance through failure.  I am not contented and God cuts at that too, taking even the holy things from me until I see the joy of simple trust in Christ to make my day right and good.  We have been hurt badly by the sins of others but that does not mean the universe is out of control and that the Lord has left us to fend for ourselves.  He is, in it all, building a perfect saint who is cleansed in entirety of sin and whose hatred of all things idolatrous still there within knows no bounds.  The past is not a plague unless we say it is so.  God has taken the worst Satan has thrown your way to strip your soul of all love for the world and to remake you into the perfect bride of Christ.  You cannot love your neighbor completely unless you despise each tie to sin you find in yourself and then you will be able to truly welcome him as your brother.  The circumstances in your life...both what you define as good and bad...are being used each in its own way to break off every bit of evil attached within you and in the end, the grace of God will have done its full work and your joy will be without limits.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers , whenever you face trials of many kinds… James 1: 2