In A Place of Cheap or Free Grace

“ImageMy grace is sufficient for you…” is a powerful verse. Although easily said, it’s tough living the scripture when life doesn’t seem smooth or when our preference is not God’s provision until one truly understands grace. When God blesses us, despite the fact that we do not deserve it; that’s grace.  When good things happen to the unworthy, that’s grace. And it’s free. Free to those who believe in Jesus Christ. Hence God’s daily bread for our life is ample.

Imagine a moment when you were in a place of free grace? Scriptures illustrate these characteristics of those blessed by God’s grace: fruitful and grow, Genesis 1:22, happiness and prosperity, Genesis 22:16-18, build you up and give you an inheritance, Acts 20:32.

However these blessings come only with obedience to God’s commands. Repeatedly from Old Testament to New there are if then clauses: If God’s people obey, change, seek, love…, then He will provide, increase, protect…you get the picture.

So why would one want cheap grace? In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book The Cost of Discipleship, cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance. Baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, the cross, and without Jesus Christ, living and personified.

And living with cheap grace gives us unholy rest.

I don’t know about you, but I want free grace. I don’t want to claim to follow Christ, yet live my life my way: no rules, no discipline, no structure, no Bible, no prayer, no  church, wanton and crazy. I’ve done that, too.

Are you in the place of free or cheap grace?

7 thoughts on “In A Place of Cheap or Free Grace”

  1. Hello Ang, I hope you dont mind if I add one thing, our response to grace doesn’t change the cost to God, He paid the highest price imaginable whether we respond or not ~ the difference I have found is that it is not until I yield my entire existence to Him do I really grasp what Christ did ~ a life lived without grasping the wonder of Christ is only half a life, we lose-out by holding back, cheers Graeme

    • Graeme, thanks for your response. Agreed, whether its cheap grace or free God love us and cares for us. Yet when walking in his obedience it’s so much sweeter even in the storms.

      • gonna add one more thing, I’ve come to understand walking in the spirit as a life beyond obedience, its the most amazing adventure ever conceived.

        • Walking beyond obedience; I like that concept. Just living each moment for Christ letting go and knowing with a mustard seed of faith God is in control.

          Power! Powerful.

          Matthew 7 comes to mind.

          So glad I stopped by your site. We should follow each other. I’m always asking The Lord is there another living and breathing your Word.

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