Grace is terrifying

There's a Christian cartoon I like, that shows the feet of Christ ascending, and His Disciples calling out, "Wait, Lord, you haven't told us all the details yet."

We are a creature that enjoys details, by and large. We like to know the who, what, where and when, not to mention why, of what we believe and what we do. Matters of faith especially fall into this gaping need of ours; we want to button up every question, every piece of doctrine and make it just so.

Christians have been arguing about the details from the beginning.....heck, the Disciples even questioned Christ about who would sit where and get what authority, and when! And it has only gotten worse throughout history.

This struggle with our human nature and need for order especially lends well to our argument for legalism; as much as the average Christian may decry legalistic tendencies, we hold onto at least some of them. (And some denominations revel, absolutely revel, in legalism. They pride themselves on their rules, regulations and "better than thou" status.)

Though the majority of Christians may say, "I don't want to be that Pharisee," we cling to rules because they are comforting. They give us, in our minds, a footing....somewhere to stand in relation to God. We like the feeling of "well, if I do step A, B, and the C, I'll be okay because I did just what I was supposed to, and then God has to accept me." Armed with our checklists, rules and patterns, we so often reject grace in favor of what we view as stability.

Because grace is terrifying.

Grace takes all control away from us and leaves our fate in the hands of Christ alone.

And we hate not having control.

Grace shows us how helpless we are; that we are drowning in our own sins. miseries and addictions.

We hate being helpless, don't we?

Grace takes our power away. We can no longer tell someone else that unless they live by how we interpret the rules, they're in big trouble.

We love a sense of power and the smugness of righteousness.

Grace says that Christ is going to meet each true believer, whatever denomination (you mean we can't even tell others how to worship, Lord? Where's the fun in that?) right where they are.

Grace says that Christ is going to clothe each true believer in a robe of white for His name's sake....not ours.

Grace says that Christ's love wins out, not our rules.

Grace says that Christ takes the broken, the weak, the suffering, and heals them in His own way, by His own power, and doesn't bother to check with the rest of us to see if we think those people are worthy.

Grace says Christ gets to decide who really loves Him. We're not on the selection committee. Grace says Christ knows His sheep, even if we can't see them.

Grace says that Christ can open doors no matter how hard the rest of us try and shut them.

Grace says that the Cross and the Blood of the Lamb are enough; our rags of righteousness can do nothing to earn salvation.

We so badly want to box Christ up sometimes, make Him conform to how we think faith should be run; that He should only love and save the people we think are worthy, and that He must hate those we hate. But Christ can't be contained by our feeble grasp; if death itself was defeated by Him, what hope do we have in being boss?

As much as we want to be self sufficient...even in matters of our salvation, God decrees otherwise. God is delighted to save us through His own methods, and for His own cause. The grace given unto us through Christ is so deep it cannot be measured, so rich we can only bear the merest taste of it, so unfathomable that we can spend our lives wrapped in it and never explore it all.

Grace means instead of trying to burden down others with rules and regulations they cannot keep perfectly, just as we cannot, we should instead introduce them to the God that loves them enough to have died on the Cross for them, and then give them our own feeble love as well.

Grace means that even as broken and flawed and horrible as we can be (and I don't know about you, but I can be, and often am, quite wretched), that Christ loves us anyway. That He calls to us, woos us, heals us and loves us, though we deserve none of it. Grace means that all we can do is trust with childlike faith and love and walk hand in hand with our Savior, knowing He will guide us home.