Grace has earned a pretty broad definition and use throughout the years of Christianity. For me grace entails anything that we’ve been given that we haven’t earned, which when I look at my life covers just about everything. The shortage of grace in the church has never been about the amount of grace extended, but rather the amount of grace received.
For centuries, satan has been trying to take away our ability to freely receive grace. He can’t stop God from offering His grace, but he has done a pretty good job of stopping us from receiving it. As a result of this, we live in societies where nothing is free and where everything must be earned.
As I experience a Thai culture that is inseparable from Thai religion, I see the effects of a Karma driven society. There is no undeserved gift and no unmerited calamity. Promotion at work… karma. Earthquake… karma. Six year old girl in prostitution… karma. What you deserve is what you get. And as foreign as the idea of karma is to us westerners, I wonder how much it has invaded our culture. In Christianity, we so often read our Bible or go to church to earn brownie points with God. We would never say that’s why we do it, but I would challenge you to re-evaluate why you do what you do. Do you read your Bible for God? Or do you read your Bible with God? Do you feed the homeless for God? Or do you feed the homeless with God? It may seem like a simple change of wording, but I think it signifies a change of mindset. One is based in performance; one is based in grace-filled relationship.
In a performance (or Karma) based mindset, I don’t sin because I don’t want to deal with the consequences. I find a lot of times I try not to sin to avoid the guilt that comes with it. That is a very performance-based approach to sin. I won’t let God take away my guilt, because my guilt is my motivation not to sin and if I let go of that, what will keep me from sinning. Grace transforms how we approach sin because grace totally eradicates sin.
When we begin to truly accept the grace that God extends to us, we begin to focus a lot less on what we are or aren’t doing and a lot more on the face of Jesus. At the cross, God took away your Karma scale. He didn’t just take everything off of the scale and promise to help you build up your good Karma, he completely destroyed Karma. Grace trumps Karma. Life trumps death. Jesus trumps satan.
Don’t ever settle for your understanding of grace, because you will never know the fullness of what God did at the cross. So when you think you get grace, ask God to show you more. Scientists thought they understood the universe until the telescope. I just see God chuckling as He hands over the telescope to the human race. May God smile on you as He hands you the telescope to look into His grace.
“You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” -God
