February 25, 2025

Hi Friends,

Tim recently found himself trying to arbitrate a dispute between his two eldest daughters. Despite his well-honed arbitration skills (he’s a lead pastor, after all), his daughters were having none of it. Things went sideways rapidly. They shouted angrily at each other. Tim lost his temper a bit and yelled at them. The girls stomped off to their respective rooms. Elly, the youngest, who had observed the whole thing, commented drolly, “Well, that was a an overreaction!” It was all Tim could do to exit the room without busting a gut in laughter.

Last week, I wrote about the importance of learning to understand grace and to live from it. Sadly, in the history of the church, teaching about the freedom of grace always leads to an overreaction. I recently talked to a diaspora church leader who told me that one of the main problems facing his immigrant group in this country was their cultural Christian heritage. Their tribe suffered much (and still suffers) at the hand of government because of their Christian faith. They maintained it despite persecution and many have fled to Canada over the years. However, my colleague bemoaned the lack of vision for growth or outreach in their churches. I asked what he thought the problem was. His immediate answer was, “They think that, because they are Christian, what they do or don’t do makes no difference. It doesn’t matter. They are already saved.”

Dallas Willard used a phrase to describe this understanding of grace among Christians. He said that people who were relying on God to do all the work were “paralyzed by grace.” And, that is an overreaction. Eugene Peterson, commenting on the same problem, said, “Grace is meant to preserve us, not to pickle us.”

Grace is a manifestation of God’s loving power. It is able to change anything but it never removes responsibility. We abuse grace when we think we can decide who should receive it and who should not. Equally, we abuse it when we abdicate responsibility for working out the salvation that has been so graciously and freely extended to us.

God doesn’t want us to feel like we have to do something in response to his love. He wants us to want his way because we have come to believe it is the best way for us to live a full life. When we use “saved by grace” as an excuse to live beneath our dignity, we are “paralyzed by grace” — experiencing no internal change and having no eternal impact on others.

Sometime later that same day, Elly was being disciplined by her Dad. She tried the “overreaction” line again. It didn’t get her off the hook. Her Dad held her responsible for her actions. And God does the same for us. Take a look at your New Testament (and the Old as well) and find out just how often we are instructed to respond to grace in a responsible, active way, doing something in order to be changed.

Friends, the influences of world systems hold great danger for us all. But being “paralyzed by grace” holds an equal danger in that it leads to a misrepresentation of God in and through our lives. Let’s receive grace freely like we should but let’s also live it out responsibly.

Blessings!

Doug