How a Helpful Illustration Turned Deadly

I always felt different from the other students in the Christian Studies Division at our school. They all seemed so put together. In truth many of them were.

Not me.

I was a new believer. The wounds from my past rebellion hadn’t even had a chance to heal. Likely because I kept reopening them by engaging in some of the same sins that I did before coming to Christ. I wanted so badly to fit in. To have it together. To be respected as a follower of Christ.

I did what all the other students were doing. I signed up for mission trips. I committed to lengthy quiet times. I swore off dating—or at least calling it dating. I tried doing all the stuff that I was supposed to do as a new Christian and I failed miserably.

The beauty of being simply forgiven was swallowed up by my failure of being a faithful disciple. Hanging my head in shame, I shuffled my feet into one of my many classes on youth ministry. An hour later I’d be darting out of the class with my head held high. What changed?

The Illustration

My professor gave an amazing illustration of grace and God’s unconditional love. He began, “This morning I had an unbelievable quiet time. I spent well over an hour with the Lord in prayer. When I finally opened up my Bible it was a time of sweet communion with the Lord. I called my wife, bought her flowers, and spent a good part of my afternoon serving her. I shared the gospel with three people at lunch. I played with my kids. I did everything that a good disciple is to do today.”

The class collectively rolled their eyes, wondering why this guy was telling us how awesome he was, but also knowing that he probably had some catchy illustration in here somewhere. He continued, “Yesterday was nothing like today. Yesterday I didn’t get out of bed until 10:15. I didn’t bother having a quiet time. In fact I doubt I even thought of the Lord today. I was angry with my wife, I ignored my kids. I yelled at people in traffic. I practically denied the Lord in every one of my actions yesterday.”

We all started feeling a little better about our day. Then he asked the question that would change my perspective and reorient me around grace. “On which day did God love me more”?

He proceeded to show us how the Lord’s love for us in Christ does not change based on our disposition. If he had the quote at his disposal he likely would have quoted John Bunyan:

I saw that it is not my good frame of heart that made my righteousness better, nor yet my bad frame that made my righteousness worse, for my righteousness IS Christ. Now my chains fell off indeed. My temptations fled away, and I lived sweetly at peace with God.

I felt as Bunyan did. Free. Ridiculously free in grace. That illustration was exactly what I needed.

Then it almost killed me.

The Turn

“Quiet times don’t matter,” I said confidently as my delight in Christ dwindled.

“God loves me whether or I obey today or not,” I said as I continued to be cold toward my wife.

“I’m hidden in Christ, every ounce of wrath has been drank by Christ, therefore it’s not such a big deal if I don’t share Christ with my neighbor,” I said in my head because a good Southern Baptist would never say that out loud.

I’d taken that very precious truth and hi-jacked it with sinful laziness. It’s true that my justification is not hinging on whether or not I have a quiet time. It’s also true that in one sense the Lord loves me whether I have a day filled with sin or righteousness.

But that is not all there is to say. God is not pleased with unrighteousness no matter if we are “hidden in Christ” or not. In fact because we are hidden in Christ he’ll likely deal with us as sons and discipline us.

What Samuel Rutherford says is true,

“[they idea that when a justified person] whores, swears, kills the innocent, denies the Lord Jesus, as did Peter, and David, God loves us as much as when they believe, pray,…and God is not a whit displeased with the Saints,…is to us abominable.” (Quoted from Mark Jones, Antinomianism, 84)

I foolishly thought that the Lord’s provision of grace equaled the Lord’s pleasure. It doesn’t. I was sleeping proudly in my justification while my spirit was wasting away. And no amount of telling me, “Look how free you are in the gospel” was going to make me do the one thing necessary—repent and get back to engaging in spiritual disciplines.

While celebrating one precious truth I found myself neglecting another. I was foolishly turning grace into license and I needed to be rebuked and warned.

This is why I’m concerned by an imbalance that I perceive in some of our gospel-centered rhetoric. In the next couple of days I hope to iron that out.