I don’t like grace…

I don’t like grace.

I know that sounds bad, but honestly, the older I get, the more I am starting to realize that I don’t like it. I like not sinning/messing up. I like not having to pray and ask for forgiveness because I didn’t do anything wrong. I like praying from a place of “I have done everything right and now the Lord has to answer.”

I don’t like the fact “where sin increases, grace increases all the more” like Paul says in Romans 5:20. I would prefer to earn it all myself so I can stick my chest out and profess with confident arrogance, “Look at what I have accomplished.”

And it is in that arrogance that I—and we—misunderstand the gospel. To get it all right is impossible. We didn’t last 3 chapters. Moreover, to think we are alright and can fix ourselves in the very definition of pride, and I fear it is spreading like a cancer in the body of Christ.

In recent months, I have talked to more people who have sat under leaders who cannot admit when they are wrong, who cannot apologize, who wound without fail…and they are Christians, much like the townspeople in Hester’s town. I wonder, if we cannot confess mistakes to the people we can see, how much more are we unwilling to confess those mistakes to a God we cannot?

Ironically, it is a sin to be prideful and not rest in the forgiveness and grace of Jesus.

Yet, where our sin of pride increases…that stubborn grace increases all the more.

It really is amazing…grace.