The Simple Answers… To Life’s Most Important Questions.
Bible Study Course Lesson 1 – 7
Everyone understands exactly how grace works – except when they read the Bible! They believe grace means favor, kindness, forgiveness for sins, and all sorts of things they know it doesn’t mean if they just think about it!
Your electric bill is overdue! You have thirty days grace before it is shut off! You understood that, right? Because you’re thinking! But for some reason people turn off their brains when they read the Bible, and play a religious-sounding tape instead!
Does the electric company’s grace mean you don’t have to pay your debt? Does it mean you don’t owe them EVERY cent you ever owed them? No! Their grace is meant to buy you time to pay your bill in case it was an honest mistake! Why is that so hard to grasp? Why can’t people understand God must do the same thing or we’d all be killed “in the day that we first sinned”!
FORGIVING SINS
Here again, everyone understands this everywhere except in the Bible. If your child steals, will you forgive him? Certainly! But will you forgive him without talking to him? Without making sure he understands what he did was wrong? And most importantly, will you forgive him before he is sorry??
Parole boards search for signs of remorse before they consider paroling a criminal. A wife requires an apology (and perhaps a gift) before forgiving her husband for forgetting their anniversary. Why, in all the world does everyone understand that before forgiveness, there must be an apology? And yet no one understands that God is the same way?
Luke 17:3 (BBE) Give attention to yourselves: if your brother does wrong, say a sharp word to him; and IF he has sorrow for his sin, let him have forgiveness.
Everyone knows that you’re supposed to forgive a sinning brother “seventy times seven times”! But why does no one notice the “if” that Jesus plainly said along with that??
Luke 17:4 (GWV) Even if he wrongs you seven times in one day and comes back to you seven times and says that he is sorry, forgive him.”
To be forgiven seven times for seven sins, he must apologize seven times – or old-fashioned English, he must REPENT seven times to be forgiven! This is exactly how you would treat your own children – what do they learn, if you see them steal and “forgive” them on the spot, without them learning not to do it again?
Or worse, how are they helped if you tell them “stealing is wrong” and they respond “I hate you; I’ll do whatever I want!” How are they helped if you forgive them while they refuse to repent? According to the Golden Rule, he who obeys God is happy, and he who obeys his parents is blessed (Ephesians 6:2-3). So, wouldn’t you want your parents to correct you so you can be happy and blessed?
Therefore, denying correction to your children – forgiving them before they change their ways – is breaking the Golden Rule? Proverbs 13:24, Proverbs 3:12. Thus, if God were to “forgive” you before you change your ways, before He punished and corrected you, it would mean He hates you, not that He loves you! (Hebrews 12:5-11).
OVERLOOKING SINS
But correction is not easy to take, and if God corrected you all at once for every sin you were, even now, committing, you would be overwhelmed. So, God must prioritize what to correct first, while ignoring – for now – other sins. This is grace. And, again, this follows the Golden Rule, and you already understand what it means.
Let’s say you adopt a troubled teenager. Helping them be a good person and treat others according to the Golden Rule is a big job. It will not be done in a day, even if they really want your help – which, at least, on the surface, they certainly won’t.
Can you really tackle all their emotional problems at once? Can you really try to attack the way they dress, the friends they have, the music they like, their hair, the smoking, the drinking, the shoplifting all at once? They would be overwhelmed and assume you hated them.
So, you would prioritize the most important things – things that actually break the law, like shoplifting – and work on fixing those first. Meanwhile, you would overlook their devil-music, their baggy clothes, their grammar. You understand this, right? This makes sense, this is how anyone would do it! So why is it so hard to understand that’s what God does with us?
This doesn’t mean that they don’t have to stop smoking, stop hanging out with questionable friends, and start improving their grades. Those things have to change, but not today! So, for now, you give them grace for those sins! Buying them time, because you believe they are sincere and want to be a better person and don’t know how!
THE EVIL OF SIN
The problem is, that troubled teenager has heard stuffy, old do-gooders tell them that sex, drugs and rock and roll are bad, but he doesn’t believe it! He believes that these are arbitrary, out-dated rules that don’t mean anything to him. He doesn’t believe, or really even understand, that these rules are there to protect him from ruining his life.
Most people today have the attitude that rules are made to be broken; that rules are there to keep them from having fun. They see rules and laws as a fence behind which the pleasures of life are kept, and they believe the fence only exists as a cruel test for the devotion of believers. Rather like drawing a line in the sand, placing a steak on one side and a hungry dog on the other – then telling him not to cross the line. Because you said so.
This aptly sums up how people view the laws of God, and by extension all other laws. God placed them there as a test, to see if you love God more than you love drugs; more than you love sex; more than you love having other people’s stuff. And then God eagerly punishes those He catches. Thus, everyone’s goal is to cross the line and grab the steak while He’s not watching!
But the laws are not there to keep you out of the joyous realms of pleasure, they’re to keep you inside where happiness already is! (Psalms 19:9-11). The danger of sin is not being punished by God someday, somehow (Proverbs 5:22, Proverbs 1:15-19). The real danger of sin, and the only reason God gets involved is because sin hurts people, especially the person who sinned!
People who aren’t trustworthy cannot trust others. People who steal are always worried about theft, and never trusted by others (Proverbs 11:3-6). Sin rewards people for their deeds all by itself; God doesn’t have to do anything! (James 1:15). Those who harm others are in turn harmed by others (Psalms 7:15-16).
If God despairs of your salvation, He simply doesn’t bother correcting you, and lets sin do it for Him! Hosea 4:12-19. If God corrects you, it is because He has hopes for you, and knows that HIS correction is far gentler than the heartless correction of the natural result of sin!
Again, let’s tie this back to common sense. Do you punish your rebellious teenager for smoking weed because you hate him? Because you know it’s a lot of fun, and you don’t want him to have it? Or because it’s illegal (or leads to illegal things) and grounding him for a month is a lot better than spending a month in an actual jail someday!
You punish him because you love him, so your punishment, unfair as it might seem to him, will be far better than the punishment the law will give him! So, if YOU can keep Him from breaking the laws at home, the police and the courts won’t have to do it later!
And that’s exactly what God does for you. Better His correction, brief, to the point, done with love – with a clear goal of making you repent so you can be forgiven – than letting “the sins of the wicked take himself”, than having you “fall into the trap you laid for others”, or letting you “live by the sword, and die by the sword”! (Matthew 26:52, Revelation 13:10).
WHAT IS GRACE?
Like everything in the Bible, all this is common sense, and stuff you already know, just somehow forget when you read the Bible. To summarize what you’ve learned so far, “grace” simply means giving you time to correct a sin without being punished now.
By extension, it can also mean an attitude God has towards you, meaning that He would be willing to overlook sins you might commit! Remember, though, “overlooking” does not mean “forgiving”! Overlooking means postponing judgment for another day!
When a sin is forgiven, it is forgotten – put as far away as the east is from the west (Psalms 103:12). When a sin is overlooked, God pretends He didn’t see it… for now. Someday, the debt will have to be dealt with properly, and in full. But for now – because of grace – God will pretend that the sin does not exist, and that you are in fact righteous. Now let’s use this understanding to explain Romans 4:4.
Remember: try not to hear the tape in your head. Listen to what the words actually say. If you work for someone, you get a reward because you worked. That reward was owed to you – it was a debt. If, however, you get a reward you didn’t earn, that reward came through grace.
Think about that: Why would someone give you a reward – not a gift, but a reward – for something you didn’t do? A gift can be given to anyone, for any reason – or no reason. But a reward is specifically given for doing something right. Why would anyone give you a reward when you were doing something wrong? Doesn’t that defeat the point? Now read Romans 4:5.
This is confusing double-talk until you clearly understand what grace is! Grace is overlooking of SIN. Sin is unrighteousness (1 John 5:17). What is righteousness? Deuteronomy 6:25. So, then the work being spoken of is righteousness – keeping the law, doing good, loving your neighbor!
But Romans 4:6 speaks of a way to be righteous without actually keeping the law! In other words, to have God treat you as if you were righteous even though God knows you’re not! And of course, that way is grace. Because God pretends not to see those other sins, for now, you can be righteous in His eyes without actually being perfectly righteous!
NOT OF WORKS
But what does that mean, exactly? Go back to our sullen teenager. When he, baggy pants, dog-collar, chains, and all, comes to you and says that he has left the gang, how do you react? Do you say “uh, good I guess, but go get a haircut, you freak”? Of course not! You hug him and tell him you’re proud of him!
You take this small success of his and, for right then, you don’t mention all the other things he does you’re still not proud of! You treat him as if he were righteous for a few days, even though he really isn’t! Thus, the celebratory dinner you give him is given by grace, not of works!
It’s not “of works” because, while he did one thing right, he’s still only slightly more righteous than he was yesterday and hasn’t yet justified all the effort you’ve put into him! He still has bad grades, a bad attitude, and a bad wardrobe. So, he can’t come to you – you who adopted him, invested money and countless hours into him – and say, “I’ve EARNED this love, time, and money you’ve given me!”
Can he? Does not doing something wrong pay you back in any way? No! It only proves that there is hope that one day he will justify your faith in him! But he can never “earn” it, because you gave it to him while he was unrighteous, and unworthy! Romans 5:8-10.
He did not earn it because it was a free gift, the gift of overlooking his current nature and seeing what it COULD be, with correction and love! The gift of grace! (Ephesians 2:4-9). So, he, when he is older, better behaved, and more righteous, cannot come to you and boast, “it was because I was smart, and good, and kind, that you adopted me!”
If that were the case, you would have been adopting him by works, not by grace (Romans 11:6). By grace, you knew that although he was the least righteous person there at the time (1 Corinthians 1:26-29), if he could be taught the truth, he would be the most righteous person later (Luke 7:47). So, God chooses us out of the world – “elects”, or “calls”, as some versions put it – and adopts us into His family by grace (Romans 11:5), not by works. Not because of our righteousness, but rather because of our unrighteousness, “lest any man should boast”! All these are from writings of Paul, who should know! For by his own admission (Ephesians 3:7-8), he was less than the least of all saints – a murderer, no less – yet he was, by the grace of God overlooking his sins, made a minister of the gospel.
THE EXCUSE OF IGNORANCE
Remember, you aren’t ignoring your teenager’s dog-collar because you like it, but because it’s not important enough to deal with until you get him to stop smoking. Likewise, God isn’t overlooking your sins because He doesn’t care about them; He does it because He hopes you’ll change once you get over these other, more obvious sins!
How does God decide which sins to ignore, and which to address? Acts 17:30. How did Paul receive forgiveness (not grace, but forgiveness)? 1 Timothy 1:13. God ignored Paul’s sins for a long time, and when he later repented, God forgave him because he did it ignorantly, in unbelief – which allowed his sins to be overlooked!
And since grace exists to cover sin, then the more sin there is, the more grace there must be – the more God must avert His eyes from your actions? Romans 5:20. So then, we should sin all we can – to get as much grace as we can, right? Romans 6:1-2, 15.
The purpose of grace is to overlook sins. Does that mean we can sin freely, because “we’re under grace”? Does doing evil (sinning) cause good (grace) to come? Romans 3:8. Literally the entire Protestant world believes that it does, yet Paul – our primary source for EVERYTHING about grace, the one who wrote the book on grace, says “God forbid!” You give your son grace to help him overcome his sin, not to teach him that the laws don’t apply to him!
Jude 1:4 (Weymouth) For certain persons have crept in unnoticed… ungodly men, who pervert the grace of our God into an excuse for immorality, and disown Jesus Christ… What parent willingly raises a child to believe that he can steal, and not be held accountable? What parent wants his child to grow up believing he can beat people up and not be at fault?
Why then, do so many believe God does that? Galatians 2:17-18. If God gave you grace so you could ignore “love thy neighbor”, then God is that parent who raises His children to be above the law, beyond the law, and therefore without the law! If that were true, then Jesus is a minister who enables His children to sin freely without consequence, and is in fact a creator of evil – not a destroyer of it!
The purpose of grace is to help you conquer sin, without being killed for your sins as you’re struggling with them. But if you “build again that which you destroyed”, and if “you are found a sinner”, sinning freely by grace in Christ’s name, then what have you learned? After you’ve invested years in your adopted teen, and watched him transform into a decent, respectable youth who has justified your faith in him, you expect more from him, do you not? (Luke 12:48). Because he has become so righteous, it is easier to see smaller mistakes, they’re more noticeable now – like how a stain is invisible on an old rag but glaring on a new shirt.
So, if after years of gradually improving behavior he were to do something – say, smoke pot again – which was conquered long ago, how would you react? You’d be furious, tremendously disappointed because he had come so far! Why? Do you love him less now? Why would you have been more patient at the beginning, when you hardly knew him, than now, after he has been with you so long? Because you expect more from him now!
He had reasons to sin before. His life was hard, trouble was all he’d ever known, and you understood that and gave him tons of grace for his many sins. But you’ve shown him a good life, and set him on a course to great success, and to watch him throw that all away would be a huge disappointment.
So, you see, he has less grace now, because you are not willing to overlook as many of his sins as you used to! Remember, grace abounded while there was abundant sin! But as his sins decreased, so did your willingness to overlook so many sins, because you know – he has proved – that he is better than that!
All those things he did fresh from the shelter, which you overlooked without even realizing it back then… any one of those would be immediately noticed now, and would be – and should be – immediately corrected! Because they were all wrong. They all needed to change. You just had to put them off until later.
The goal was always for him to completely conquer all those bad habits, and to love his neighbor as you have loved him. Grace was only a tool you used to help him do that. And so, if he conquers those sins, and you see him grow into a better person, you know he can do it. And for as long as he doesn’t get it you keep trying to help him understand, because you believe that when he does truly understand, he will gladly change! But when he DOES understand at last, you will then expect him to change!
REJECTING THE SPIRIT OF GRACE
But what if, after years of living with you, knowing you, seeing his own life improve, what if he decides that he doesn’t like you. He doesn’t want to be like you. He doesn’t want to live by your rules. You would certainly try your best to correct him, and help him see why you’re right. Explanations, punishments, you’d try everything you could. But what if he simply won’t do it your way? What if he insists on hurting others, and reverting to that same troubled teen he was when you found him? Can you keep on giving him grace, overlooking his now-willful and rebellious sins?
Can you really? When your wife is afraid of him, your neighbors complain he steals from them, the police catch him doing things… can you keep saying “I love you, son!”? Can grace really cover that much when he has no desire to change at all? That’s not what grace was for! Grace was for covering honest sins of ignorance! (Hebrews 10:26-29). Remember, you didn’t adopt him because you liked him as he was! What is there to like about a rude, obnoxious, selfish teenager? You adopted him because you loved what he could become! But if it turns out you were wrong, if it turns out he doesn’t want to be a better person, never wants to change, never wants to be like you… sooner or later, won’t you accept his insistent wish and leave him be?
After all isn’t that what the Golden Rule requires you to do? Treat him as you would want to be treated, and if you are absolutely opposed to the idea of being like God, and nothing He does can change your mind, shouldn’t He – mustn’t He – respect your wishes?
And, again by the Golden Rule, mustn’t He judge you for your sins for the sake of your neighbors, whom you would hurt even more if you’re not restrained? For wouldn’t those innocent people want, and deserve, protection from your committed selfishness – your evilness?
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
There is much more to be said on grace, in a few lessons. For now, it’s enough to know that you already understand it; it already makes sense. Like everything, it’s not complicated at all, and is simply God treating you exactly as He would want to be treated, and exactly as you would treat an adopted child who has a lot of bad habits. Most of the world believes that they have grace instead of law. When they really have grace so they can keep the law better. The idea that grace is an excuse for sin really boils down to this:
“We are SO special, and God loves us SO MUCH, that we don’t HAVE to keep the rules. We can hurt our neighbor any way we want, do anything we want, and God will make it OK because He loves us!” That, in a nutshell, is the Protestant belief about grace. This idea has been taught for a long time – even back in the time of ancient Israel.
Read Malachi 2:17. Isn’t saying “grace means God loves you, even when you sin” the same thing as saying “EVERY one that doeth evil IS GOOD in the sight of the LORD, and he delighteth in them”? How is that statement, so thoroughly condemned by God, different from the modern teaching on grace? There is an almost identical thought in Jeremiah 7:8-10. The priests were teaching that because God LOVED them so much they were DELIVERED from the law! They could now break commandments 8, 6, 7, 9, 1 and 2 and God would overlook their sins! How familiar is that!
Look at how Calvin translated that last verse: Jeremiah 7:10 (Calvin Bible) And come and stand before me in this house, Which is called by my name, and say, “We have been MADE FREE to do all these abominations?” And your preacher tells you that you have been MADE FREE FROM THE LAW! While standing in a house CALLED BY GOD’S name! Even in the time of David, they were “making void the law”! (Psalms 119:126). And how did Paul answer that? Romans 3:31.
The irony is that everyone on earth understands grace today – EXCEPT where it applies to religion! hey properly apply it to overdue license plates and water bills and library books, but somehow fall short of applying the same simple logic to the workings of God. Don’t follow their example – follow common sense and the word of God instead.