Journey towards grace

Over the past several months, I have been on a journey towards grace.  It began in earnest when I received “The Ragamuffin Gospel” by Brennan Manning last Christmas, although I believe God had already been preparing me for this road. When I read the book, I realized I would need to read it a few times in order to truly process it.  I knew the message was true but it was in opposition to how I function at the core of my being.

Even though I have heard about God’s grace all my Christian life, I don’t understand it.  There is a message supported by church culture which opposes God’s pure message of grace.  I’ve heard sermons preached on devotions, prayer, service, etc.  They were preached in order to help people become ‘better’ Christians.  In this is the lie.  When we start to believe that by doing certain things we can somehow make ourselves ‘better’ Christians, we invite legalism to enter in.  The more we live in this lie, walk it, breathe it, preach it, the further removed we are from an understanding of the true gospel of grace.  In this framework, it is difficult, if not impossible for us to understand what God’s grace truly is.

Legalism is so subtle.  Everything preached can be supported by scripture, however when the message becomes “do these things in order to be a ‘better’ Christian”, it distorts the message of the gospel.  It denies the whole reason why God had to send Jesus to die on the cross.  Because no matter what we ever did, there would be no way we could make ourselves ‘good’. 

As I have been on this journey towards grace I find myself having less and less motivation to follow the ‘old code’.  My longing to be stripped of the trappings of legalism so I can know what God’s grace really is has overridden that.  I have no desire to do things because that’s what I’m ‘supposed’ to do as a ‘good’ Christian.  I’m finding it takes far too much effort to try to ‘be good’ and do the ‘right’ things.  I just want to follow God because I love Him, but I realize there is a lot that I do as a Christian where that is not the main motivating factor.  Rather I am compelled to do certain things because they make me ‘good’ in the eyes of my fellow Christians.  Does it make me ‘good’ in the eyes of God?  As Isaiah says, “…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags…” (Isaiah 64:6).

I have deliberately chosen to step back from the things once considered paramount to being a ‘good’ Christian because I wasn’t doing them for the right reasons in the first place.  I feel I need to do this for a time in order to better understand God’s grace.  It hasn’t been easy.  Guilt and condemnation want to creep in telling me what an unfaithful, ‘bad’ Christian I am for neglecting these things.  Even though I feel the twinges of guilt, it also re-enforces the fact that I have been bound by legalism.  Why would I be feeling guilt for not ‘doing’ certain things when we are all saved by grace through faith?  If I truly believed this in the depths of my being, I could accept myself as I am just as God has accepted me, through Christ’s work alone, not through anything I do or do not do.

My soul cries out to know God’s grace.  I don’t want to live in bondage to rules and expectations anymore.  I want to be free to follow God because I want to, not because I’m supposed to.