Sometime ago my wife and I participated in our neighborhood yard sale. We had high aspirations for the day, anticipating making a few extra dollars and unloading some trash to be recycled as someone else’s treasure.
Before the day officially began, my wife Jessica had an amazing idea to lure in the yard sale shoppers. She suggested that we offer miscellaneous “free” items and place them in a basket towards the end of all of our items. What she had in mind was attracting anyone who came to walk through all of our “for sale” items as if these free items were bloody steaks and the customers were carnivores (well, the latter is true in certain parts of the state).
Anyways, to make a long story short, no one picked-up one free item! At this my wife was dumbfounded, “How could one item not be picked-up?” “How did the ’bait’ fail to lure in and snag our prey?”
I said something along the following lines to my wife, “Items without cost are items without value.”
So I went back inside and made a sign that read, “ALL items 25 cents” (What a cost!) And go figure, nearly all of the items that were in the basket were snatched up and paid for within an hour, whereas no items were picked-up for free in the previous 3 hours!
In the same way that yard sale items are not valued without cost, so too is grace not valued without cost.
What is grace?
Within Christendom grace is commonly known as “God’s unmerited favor.” However, this view of grace is just one side of the coin. Yes, grace is “God’s unmerited favor” in reaching down to all of us who are “helpless, trapped in sin and incapable of pleasing God or winning his favor” (Encyclopedia of Words, 320) in His Son Jesus Christ. But grace is also a way of life.
For instance, we read in Titus 2.11-12,
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age.
What we see is that God’s grace not only “brings salvation,” but it also instructs us to do two different things.
One, deny ungodliness and worldly desires and two, to live sensibly, righteously, and godly. Grace instructs us to not only say “no,” or, “Don’t do this and that,” but grace also instructs us to say, “Yes,” to what brings glory to God. Basically grace empowers us to get rid of our old, stinky, sin laden ways of life and begin new practices that fall in line with our new life in Jesus Christ (see Ephesians 4.22-24).
Jerry Bridges in his book, The Disciplines of Grace, provided this analogy to help us better understand getting rid of and beginning new practices to the two blades of a pair of scissors,
We readily recognize that a single scissors blade is useless as far as doing the job for which it was designed. The two blades must be joined together at the pivot point and must work in conjunction with each other to be effective. The scissors illustrates a spiritual principle: We must work simultaneously at putting off the characteristics of our old selves and putting on the characteristics of the new selves. On without the other is not effective (85).
Grace ultimately conveys the reality that God graciously and mercifully saves us from our sins through the life and deeds of His Son Jesus Christ. His grace does not stop there, it cannot be separated from our pursuit to live for Christ as His disciple by getting rid of our old ways and doing what pleases Him.
In quoting Jerry Brides once again, “Another truth we see in Titus 2.11-12 is that salvation and spiritual discipline are inseparable. The grace that brings salvation to us also disciplines us. It does not do the one without the other. That is, God never saves people and leaves them alone to continue in their immaturity and sinful lifestyle. Those whom He saves, He disciplines” (ibid., 80. Also see Philippians 1.6 and 2.12-13).
Cheap grace versus costly grace
After reading through the sobering truth about grace, would you say that you have a “cheap” view of grace, in that you only trusted in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, yet you have not gotten rid of your old lifestyle and began practices that Jesus Christ taught us to obey (see Matthew 28.18-20)? Or do you have a “costly” view of grace, in that you not only believed in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, but God’s grace has empowered you to live a new way of life, a life that follows hard after Jesus no matter the cost, no matter what your friends say, no matter what your boyfriend or girlfriend says, no matter what the world or your employers say.
How much do you value the grace of God? Cheaply or costly? Either way, do you know the price that was paid in providing for its availability?
The price paid for the availability of grace was no small fee and was not purchased at a discount or layaway. Its availability is not stored away in some undisclosed bank in the sky or from the works of our family. The cost that was paid in providing for the availability of grace was the voluntary sacrifice of the life of Jesus Christ upon a cross. An understanding of grace that overlooks Jesus, overlooks His pain, His agony, and the cross is grace that is none other than CHEAP (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Cost of Discipleship, 47)!
Cheap grace is comparable to a gift that one receives and heeds it no attention or appreciation because they have so many other things, so it is simply stuffed in the closet or under the bed. Cheap grace is comparable to a priceless item that is sold in a storefront in the mall at break-neck reduced prices. Cheap grace is comparable to an infinite amount of money that can always be withdrawn from the bank without limits, boundaries, or effort (rephrasing of Bonhoeffer, 45). This is grace without appreciation, value, limits, and most importantly of all, price. In quoting Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “Grace without price; grace without cost!” (Bonhoeffer, 45).
If God’s grace has brought you “salvation,” yet you do not continually put off sinful practices and incorporate the ways of God in your life as found in His written Word, the Bible, then you need to ask yourself, “Have I really ‘believed’ in Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of my sins?” “Have I devalued God’s grace?” “Do I live my life with a cheap notion of grace?” If so, then you need to humbly and prayerfully seek the LORD and ask that He would forgive you, and empower you to live a life of continually repentance.
In the end…
It is amazing to think that God could have taught me so much about His grace by simply having a yard sale in WV. Who would have ever “thunk?”
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