Grace Tension

Grace:    Unmerited favour or goodwill towards someone or something.

Work:     Exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something (labour, toil)

Tension:  Two balancing forces causing rigidness and stretching.

If grace is the one end of the tension balance, then what is the other end? Works, of course. Before you stone me, know this: Grace is the biggest part of my Christian walk and is infused into every area of my life (read other posts on this blog).

We are born again by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:9) and we are called to walk our Christian lives in the same way (Colossians 2:6). Grace is His favour extended to us and faith is us taking hold of this favour; believing it and receiving it.

It’s quite clear that there is God’s part and that there is our part. The problem comes in, as we walk out our Christian life, that our part gets reduced to a bunch of activities we perform, in order to try and earn God's favour. Anything that we do to try and earn God's favor is legalism, it's a works-based faith that has fueled religion (not in the good sense) for centuries. Bottom line, we cannot earn God's favour by what we do, it is all about what He has done, through Jesus, on the Cross. However there might still be some work involved, but it's not the kind we immediatly conjure up in our heads; let's take a look.

If grace is just receiving what God has done, how do I receive and understand fully, what God has done for me and apply it to my life? This is where the tension comes in: I like to call it positioning. We need to position ourselves to fully comprehend His grace in and through our lives. It doesn’t just happen, it takes intentionality and purpose. We have to intentionally and purposefully position ourselves in such a manner that we receive everything that God has for us, everything that Jesus made available through the atonement. How do we know if we have access to something if no-one has told us, or if we haven't read it or seen it? We will never know.

Sometimes grace takes work; we have to work at understanding it. This is the tension, the paradox if you will. Two, seemingly opposite, truths and passions, raging alongside one other, both being exceedingly necessary to make sense of what we believe. It is across this tension-bridge that revelation knowledge, relationship and trust can be delivered, flowing from the cross, flowing from Grace, flowing from Jesus to us.

Let’s not underestimate the work it takes to be fully submerged in grace. Organised religion tries to sell us a works based Christianity. But, instead of trying to earn His favour through good works, let’s strive to understand that His grace is sufficient for us (2 Corinthians 12:9) and rest (Hebrews 4:11) in the knowledge that, we labour into Jesus and not for Him.