Accepting God’s grace as a new believer is awesome! Most of us are trying to escape something; escape going to Hell; escape our current situation; escape the emptiness the world offers; etc.
As we grow in Christ, we try to apply God’s word to our lives and actions, working out our salvation with fear and trembling. We want to be everything we read about in Scripture, right? We want to be gracious, we want to be loving, we want to be encouraging, we want to turn the other cheek, etc. We want to be more for Jesus, don’t we?
So what happens?
We’re walking with Christ, saying all the right things, acting the right way, doing all the things we know to do, until we don’t. Maybe we snapped angrily at someone, or told a little white lie, or got into a pretty nasty gossiping session about someone at work. Not only did we just fail as a Christian, we failed in front of others. Yep, they saw it…
We’re not the good Christians we thought we were, right?
We go before God and humbly confess our sins and ask for forgiveness; we sigh heavily, that was close. And we go about our day, grateful that we are forgiven. But there is something, a dark little voice, nagging us about our behavior.
But we ignore it, and carry on.
A week later, it happens again! We cannot believe it! We confess, get forgiven, and move on. But that little nagging is a little louder now; we may not be the Christians we want to be or should be. I could keep stacking these, but we get the point so we’ll skip ahead.
At some point, we come to a place where we’re wrestling a little (or a lot) with God’s grace. We’ve dove into Scripture to comfort ourselves with all the Christian cliches, but they don’t seem to be helping. We just keep wondering things like, “How can He keep forgiving me for the same sins?” “Surely He must be getting tired of this routine?” Or, “I don’t think I would forgive myself this many times.” Ouch!
We know our walk is by grace, about grace, through grace, from grace; grace, grace, grace. All of Christianity is built upon God’s grace towards us, right? So why can it be so difficult to accept His grace as we walk on? Accepting His grace was so easy when we were saved, now what is happening?
We are starting to realize the depth of our sin. We have begun to see that we’re not cute and not a little dirty, like a toddler that has chocolate around his mouth and on his cheeks. We’re gross, even offensive. As the light shines in the darkness of our hearts, we start to see something we’ve never noticed before: the true us. Uck!
And the enemy has been waiting! He pounces on us with things like, “You’re too dirty to be a Christian!” “God cannot use someone like you!” Or, “How can you be saved? Look how horrible you are!”
Not exactly the encouragement we were hoping for, is it?
Jesus answered and said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.” (Luke 5:31-32; NKJV). God already knew what we were like when He called us, we didn’t. We are surprised to learn what and who we really are; God is not surprised.
It’s still by grace. We’re just learning how deep God’s grace is. We’re learning that we’re not the spiritual giants we thought we were. We’re just realizing that Jesus talked about us in the Beatitudes: Bless are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 5:3; NKJV). Did you catch the promise? Poor in spirit, kingdom of heaven. Not bad for a sinner, right?
But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
Matthew 19:26 NKJV
Even then sometimes, we wonder how we can be saved. Even His disciples wondered and asked, “Who then can be saved?” But Jesus looked at them and said to them, “With men this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” (Matthew 19:26; NKJV).
It is still a matter of accepting His grace like a little child. The only thing that has changed is our understanding of ourselves, God hasn’t changed; grace hasn’t changed; we are just as saved now as when we accepted God’s invitation of salvation.
When we first get saved, we know we’re forgiven all the external stuff. But as we walk with Jesus, He teaches us that the internal gunk matters to Him as well. It’s like cleaning the living room, kitchen, and bathroom for guests, but leaving the back bedroom (with the door shut) and attic a mess. God doesn’t just want what people can see clean, He wants our whole house clean.
Take a deep breath. Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more (Romans 5:20; NKJV). Praise God! For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is a gift of God (Ephesians 2:8; NKJV). We’re saved by grace! Accept it, it is a gift. If we weren’t saved, we wouldn’t be worried about our filthy sinfulness. We cannot clean a fish until we catch it. We’ve been caught, now God is cleaning us.
Trust that Jesus is faithful to complete the work He started, and “just stand up.”