It is neither white nor black but grey. What is grizzly grace? It is taking advantage of the grace of God. It is committing sin, trusting in God’s grace.
It is nothing new to us, because 2000 years ago the same problem existed in the church. “Certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a
licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord,” writes Jude (v4). They are not a separate sect. They are right among us. Shouting, “Grace, grace” they go over- board. They find loopholes in the grace of God and violate God’s
laws with impunity.
It was not unknown in the Old Testament. So many sacrifices were prescribed for sinners. But anyone who knew God and His laws, who sinned deliberately was punished, having no sacrifice for forgiveness. “Any one who sins defiantly, whether native born or
foreigner, who blashphemes the Lord, must be cut off from the people of Israel. Because they have despised the Lord’s word and broken His commands, they must surely be cut off; their guilt remains on them” (Num 15:30,31).
A simple illustration will make you understand grace abuse. A boy gave Rs.
20/- to the pastor and said: “Pastor, this is my sin offering, for the three mangoes I stole. For each mango I am giving Rs. 5/-. The Pastor was surprised. He asked, “Why
then are you giving me Rs. 20/-? You should give only 15/-.” The boy gave a lightning reply, “Pastor, the other five rupees is for the mango I intend to steal tomorrow”!
A poor man needed eye surgery. I told him to go to the hospital, complete his treatment and bring me the bills, promising to pay. He came back after a month. I asked for the bills. He said he had lost them. This is clearly grace abuse. Of course I did
not pay him.
While touting the merits of grace, we should not forget that grace is free but not cheap. When those invited for a wedding did not turn up, the king sent his servants to bring in the crippled, blind and maimed. In the Old Testament they were not allowed
into the sanctuary. But in the New Testament they were invited for the wedding (Lk
14:21). That is grace. However one man was not wearing the wedding dress. He was thrown into the darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 22:11). In a palace wedding, it seems all would be supplied with wedding garments. So, this is
clearly brazen grace abuse.
Beware. Sin is deceitful and cunning. It makes you think, “I want to commit this sin. I know it is wrong. But I can commit the sin and ask God for forgiveness.” We delude ourselves into believing that it is for just once; but it doesn’t stop there. God
has forgiven our past present and future sins. When you know that the sin you will be committing tomorrow will be forgiven,
how do you behave? God took a great risk in telling us that He has forgiven our sins of three tenses. Does this encourge you to lasciviousness or responsibility? Is it taking God for granted or love for God? You can hear your inner voice telling you what
to do. Do not silence that voice within. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Nip trouble in the bud.
Somebody prayed, “Lord, make us masters of ourselves that we may be servants of others.” If you cannot master yourself, how are you going to serve others? If you refuse to change, it will be the last nail on your coffin. So, confront the issue head on,
recognizing it as an aberration.
Mr. Philip Yancey’s friend decided to leave his wife for a younger and prettier woman. He asked Philip, “Do you think God can forgive something as awful as I am about to do?” Mr. Yancey contemplated the issue for a long, long while and then replied, “Of
course; God will forgive. But there is no guarantee that you will ever repent and come back to God asking for forgiveness.” After several months, the friend made his choice and left his wife and three children. He never repented but moved further and
further away from God. Don’t think you can repent later; you may not be able to repent tomorrow. It is God who grants repentance (2 Tim 2:25). If you turn your back on Him when He is pleading with you, how can you expect Him to grant you repentance when
you want? He may harden your heart like Pharaoh’s.
Backsliding is different. It is leaving God. But abusing God’s grace is taking His grace too far. It is saying: “My God is too gracious to punish me. He is a good God. He is good to me no matter how I am.” Remember, our God is a righteous God too. If you
take this stubborn attitude, after some time, you wouldn’t know which side of the fence you are in.
The author of Hebrews serves a stern warning: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the
enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an
unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge His people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the
hands of the Living God” (Heb 10:26-31).
Pharaoh saw many miracles, proving the living God. First, Pharaoh hardened his heart to his own detriment. Then God hardened his heart. It became impossible for Pharaoh to repent. When he saw there was respite, he hardened his heart. This what we do. We
sin. God punishes us. We repent. When the situation eases we conclude it wasn’t God’s hand and sin yet again. A time
will come when we will be drawn into the sea of our sins and never be able to come out. That will be our tomb. Aren’t you living your life backwards when you do things which you were doing before your salvation? You can fool others; you cannot fool God.
People who abuse grace will get disconnected from the Lord. For a while they’ll be jumping around like the cut off tail of a house lizard. They may be used of the Lord also. So what? That doesn’t prove anything.
Why did Moses’ parents hide him only for three months by faith and not for six months? When the time came, they knew they should do something instead of chanting, ‘Grace, grace, grace’ (Heb
11:23). Grace carries responsibility. All epistles talk about being holy and becoming holy. All these were written to believers and saints, not unbelievers. See how Paul balances grace and responsibility in 1
Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect.No, I worked harder than all of them — yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Peter admonishes us to set our hope on the grace to be brought to us when Jesus Christ will be revealed at His coming. In order to underscore the need for watchfulness, he doesn’t stop with that. He continues, “As obedient children, do not conform to the
evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: Be holy, because I am holy”
(1 Pet 1:13-16). We are to live in reverent fear (v17). If you are abusing God’s grace, the bad news is, you are going to hell. The good news is, you don’t have to go to hell. It is never too late to turn around your life.
Paul, an ardent proponent of grace writes, “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Rom 5:20). But he doesn’t leave his readers in the dark regarding the question that is sure to follow his argument. He is quick to write, “Shall we go on
sinning that grace may increase? By no means” (Rom 6:1).
Note why grace increased where sin increased. Grace increased so that we may learn righteousness and inherit eternal life (Rom 5:21). You are under grace, not the Law. So, sin cannot be our master. Shall we sin because we are not under the Law but under
grace? By no means! We were slaves to sin indeed. But now we are slaves to righteousness leading to holiness (Rom
6:14-18).
The absurdity of your claim, “I have committed my life to Christ; I am saved; I am baptized; I am filled with the Holy Spirit,” is absolute if your life doesn’t match your words. These are just religious jargon if you don’t obey the commandment of God.
“You can sin and get away with it,” said the false prophets of Israel; assuring, “All who follow the stubborness of their hearts, no harm will come to you.” These are the people who once outrightly condemned sin. Now they, sing a different tune. When
you depart from the time honoured wisdom
of the Scriptures and disregard the God of the universe, you cease to make sense.
“They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good” (Tit 1:16).
Why did Israel go after idols is spite of having an Almighty God? Because it was easy religion. They could have a tangible god to worship and live as they pleased.
It is true you can run to God any number of times in repentance, and God will embrace you with His grace. But, make no mistake. If you are tempted to think, “I have sinned 7x70 times and God has forgiven me. Why not sin another time and ask God for
forgiveness?” that is the dangerous hairpin bend of your life. That is grace abuse. That is the devil within. If you continue in this lifestyle you will be a casuality in spiritual warfare.
It is one thing to fall in sin and another thing to deliberately sin. Grace abuse is a stealthy killer. Beware. At a certain point it will become an unstoppable tide that will take you to the depths of hell. You will get nowhere. You will hit absolute
bottom. All your past glory will go down the drain. Is it worth it? Dear brother, sister, there’s a hole in your bucket. It is only a matter of time until the house of cards that you are, falls apart.
What in the solution? Nobody needs to be alone with a cataclysmic problem. Spiritual help is out there waiting to be tapped. You can be delivered, though it will be a long slow climb out of the shadows.
You have to fight the fight yourself. If you are careless, the problem will get out of hand. Don’t cry over spilt milk. Start a new life. There is no overnight quickfix as much as you would want it. You have the inner resources and the grace of God to
beat the habit or sin. Postmortem each incident and try not to get trapped in a similar situation. This period of grace will not go on indefinitely. Even now we are living on borrowed time. This war is definitely winnable if you are vigilant. Get up,
shake yourself off and move on.
I am not dictated by a set of rules and regulations. I am free to live as I please. But I love my Lord who gave His life for me and therefore I choose to live to please Him.
(Recommended reading — What’s so
Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey)
Dr. Lilian Stanley
13 Church Colony
Vellore 632006, India
+91 9843511943
lilianstanley@gmail.com
Blessing Youth Mission
13 Church Colony
Vellore 632006, India
+91-416-2242943, +91-416-2248943
hq@bymonline.org
www.bymonline.org
Click here for more options
To buy books written by Dr. Lilian Stanley, kindly reach to us in the follwing address
Blessing Literature Centre
21/11 West Coovam River Road,
Chintadripet,
Chennai 600 002, India.
+91-44-28450411, 8806270699
blc@bymonline.org
It is neither white nor black but grey. What is grizzly grace? It is taking advantage of the grace of God. It is committing sin, trusting in God’s grace.
It is nothing new to us, because 2000 years ago the same problem existed in the church. “Certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people who pervert the grace of our God into a
licence for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord,” writes Jude (v4). They are not a separate sect. They are right among us. Shouting, “Grace, grace” they go over- board. They find loopholes in the grace of God and violate God’s
laws with impunity.
It was not unknown in the Old Testament. So many sacrifices were prescribed for sinners. But anyone who knew God and His laws, who sinned deliberately was punished, having no sacrifice for forgiveness. “Any one who sins defiantly, whether native born or
foreigner, who blashphemes the Lord, must be cut off from the people of Israel. Because they have despised the Lord’s word and broken His commands, they must surely be cut off; their guilt remains on them” (Num 15:30,31).
A simple illustration will make you understand grace abuse. A boy gave Rs.
20/- to the pastor and said: “Pastor, this is my sin offering, for the three mangoes I stole. For each mango I am giving Rs. 5/-. The Pastor was surprised. He asked, “Why
then are you giving me Rs. 20/-? You should give only 15/-.” The boy gave a lightning reply, “Pastor, the other five rupees is for the mango I intend to steal tomorrow”!
A poor man needed eye surgery. I told him to go to the hospital, complete his treatment and bring me the bills, promising to pay. He came back after a month. I asked for the bills. He said he had lost them. This is clearly grace abuse. Of course I did
not pay him.
While touting the merits of grace, we should not forget that grace is free but not cheap. When those invited for a wedding did not turn up, the king sent his servants to bring in the crippled, blind and maimed. In the Old Testament they were not allowed
into the sanctuary. But in the New Testament they were invited for the wedding (Lk
14:21). That is grace. However one man was not wearing the wedding dress. He was thrown into the darkness where there was weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mt 22:11). In a palace wedding, it seems all would be supplied with wedding garments. So, this is
clearly brazen grace abuse.
Beware. Sin is deceitful and cunning. It makes you think, “I want to commit this sin. I know it is wrong. But I can commit the sin and ask God for forgiveness.” We delude ourselves into believing that it is for just once; but it doesn’t stop there. God
has forgiven our past present and future sins. When you know that the sin you will be committing tomorrow will be forgiven,
how do you behave? God took a great risk in telling us that He has forgiven our sins of three tenses. Does this encourge you to lasciviousness or responsibility? Is it taking God for granted or love for God? You can hear your inner voice telling you what
to do. Do not silence that voice within. You have to be brutally honest with yourself. Nip trouble in the bud.
Somebody prayed, “Lord, make us masters of ourselves that we may be servants of others.” If you cannot master yourself, how are you going to serve others? If you refuse to change, it will be the last nail on your coffin. So, confront the issue head on,
recognizing it as an aberration.
Mr. Philip Yancey’s friend decided to leave his wife for a younger and prettier woman. He asked Philip, “Do you think God can forgive something as awful as I am about to do?” Mr. Yancey contemplated the issue for a long, long while and then replied, “Of
course; God will forgive. But there is no guarantee that you will ever repent and come back to God asking for forgiveness.” After several months, the friend made his choice and left his wife and three children. He never repented but moved further and
further away from God. Don’t think you can repent later; you may not be able to repent tomorrow. It is God who grants repentance (2 Tim 2:25). If you turn your back on Him when He is pleading with you, how can you expect Him to grant you repentance when
you want? He may harden your heart like Pharaoh’s.
Backsliding is different. It is leaving God. But abusing God’s grace is taking His grace too far. It is saying: “My God is too gracious to punish me. He is a good God. He is good to me no matter how I am.” Remember, our God is a righteous God too. If you
take this stubborn attitude, after some time, you wouldn’t know which side of the fence you are in.
The author of Hebrews serves a stern warning: “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left but only a fearful expectation of judgement and of raging fire that will consume the
enemies of God. Anyone who rejected the Law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses. How much more severely do you think someone deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an
unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified them, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know Him who said, ‘It is mine to avenge; I will repay,’ and again, ‘The Lord will judge His people. It is a dreadful thing to fall into the
hands of the Living God” (Heb 10:26-31).
Pharaoh saw many miracles, proving the living God. First, Pharaoh hardened his heart to his own detriment. Then God hardened his heart. It became impossible for Pharaoh to repent. When he saw there was respite, he hardened his heart. This what we do. We
sin. God punishes us. We repent. When the situation eases we conclude it wasn’t God’s hand and sin yet again. A time
will come when we will be drawn into the sea of our sins and never be able to come out. That will be our tomb. Aren’t you living your life backwards when you do things which you were doing before your salvation? You can fool others; you cannot fool God.
People who abuse grace will get disconnected from the Lord. For a while they’ll be jumping around like the cut off tail of a house lizard. They may be used of the Lord also. So what? That doesn’t prove anything.
Why did Moses’ parents hide him only for three months by faith and not for six months? When the time came, they knew they should do something instead of chanting, ‘Grace, grace, grace’ (Heb
11:23). Grace carries responsibility. All epistles talk about being holy and becoming holy. All these were written to believers and saints, not unbelievers. See how Paul balances grace and responsibility in 1
Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect.No, I worked harder than all of them — yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”
Peter admonishes us to set our hope on the grace to be brought to us when Jesus Christ will be revealed at His coming. In order to underscore the need for watchfulness, he doesn’t stop with that. He continues, “As obedient children, do not conform to the
evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as He who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: Be holy, because I am holy”
(1 Pet 1:13-16). We are to live in reverent fear (v17). If you are abusing God’s grace, the bad news is, you are going to hell. The good news is, you don’t have to go to hell. It is never too late to turn around your life.
Paul, an ardent proponent of grace writes, “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Rom 5:20). But he doesn’t leave his readers in the dark regarding the question that is sure to follow his argument. He is quick to write, “Shall we go on
sinning that grace may increase? By no means” (Rom 6:1).
Note why grace increased where sin increased. Grace increased so that we may learn righteousness and inherit eternal life (Rom 5:21). You are under grace, not the Law. So, sin cannot be our master. Shall we sin because we are not under the Law but under
grace? By no means! We were slaves to sin indeed. But now we are slaves to righteousness leading to holiness (Rom
6:14-18).
The absurdity of your claim, “I have committed my life to Christ; I am saved; I am baptized; I am filled with the Holy Spirit,” is absolute if your life doesn’t match your words. These are just religious jargon if you don’t obey the commandment of God.
“You can sin and get away with it,” said the false prophets of Israel; assuring, “All who follow the stubborness of their hearts, no harm will come to you.” These are the people who once outrightly condemned sin. Now they, sing a different tune. When
you depart from the time honoured wisdom
of the Scriptures and disregard the God of the universe, you cease to make sense.
“They claim to know God, but by their actions they deny Him. They are detestable, disobedient and unfit for doing anything good” (Tit 1:16).
Why did Israel go after idols is spite of having an Almighty God? Because it was easy religion. They could have a tangible god to worship and live as they pleased.
It is true you can run to God any number of times in repentance, and God will embrace you with His grace. But, make no mistake. If you are tempted to think, “I have sinned 7x70 times and God has forgiven me. Why not sin another time and ask God for
forgiveness?” that is the dangerous hairpin bend of your life. That is grace abuse. That is the devil within. If you continue in this lifestyle you will be a casuality in spiritual warfare.
It is one thing to fall in sin and another thing to deliberately sin. Grace abuse is a stealthy killer. Beware. At a certain point it will become an unstoppable tide that will take you to the depths of hell. You will get nowhere. You will hit absolute
bottom. All your past glory will go down the drain. Is it worth it? Dear brother, sister, there’s a hole in your bucket. It is only a matter of time until the house of cards that you are, falls apart.
What in the solution? Nobody needs to be alone with a cataclysmic problem. Spiritual help is out there waiting to be tapped. You can be delivered, though it will be a long slow climb out of the shadows.
You have to fight the fight yourself. If you are careless, the problem will get out of hand. Don’t cry over spilt milk. Start a new life. There is no overnight quickfix as much as you would want it. You have the inner resources and the grace of God to
beat the habit or sin. Postmortem each incident and try not to get trapped in a similar situation. This period of grace will not go on indefinitely. Even now we are living on borrowed time. This war is definitely winnable if you are vigilant. Get up,
shake yourself off and move on.
I am not dictated by a set of rules and regulations. I am free to live as I please. But I love my Lord who gave His life for me and therefore I choose to live to please Him.
(Recommended reading — What’s so
Amazing about Grace? by Philip Yancey)
Dr. Lilian Stanley
13 Church Colony
Vellore 632006, India
+91 9843511943
lilianstanley@gmail.com
Blessing Youth Mission
13 Church Colony
Vellore 632006, India
+91-416-2242943, +91-416-2248943
hq@bymonline.org
www.bymonline.org
Click here for more options
To buy books written by Dr. Lilian Stanley, kindly reach to us in the follwing address
Blessing Literature Centre
21/11 West Coovam River Road,
Chintadripet,
Chennai 600 002, India.
+91-44-28450411, Mob:8806270699
blc@bymonline.org
