Grace Comes First

Name something in your life that doesn't have some sort of conditions attached to it. To read this blog right now, you have to pay someone for Internet access. If you are employed, you have to fulfill your duties according to your contract in order to receive pay. If you have an educational degree of any kind, you had to measure up to the conditions necessary to receive that degree. Most of life is conditional. In most cases, that's necessary.

However, it's not hard to become overwhelmed with the demands all around us to measure up to conditions. Even places of worship often have spoken or unspoken conditions required for belonging..."To measure up, you must look like us, act like us, speak like us, think like us, worship like us, etc. etc." I don't know of any place of worship that intends any ill will in this. Still, when we who are church people put conditions on those who might become a part of us, how are we any different than any other demand in their lives? Why would they want to add one more conditional demand to measure up to already stressed lives?

I don't think many people really realize how radically different Jesus is than all this. Jesus' love, which is known as "grace," comes first, without conditions. It's not, "Get your act together, measure up, then you get grace." Rather, it's, "Grace comes first!" Check it out. Google or do some kind of search of Bible stories for things like, "Zaccheus," or "The Woman Caught in Adultery." Jesus did not withhold grace until these people cleaned up their acts. Rather, his grace came first and life transformation followed.

If it's really true that grace comes first, how would that change how you think, what you believe, and how you live?

I'll see you around the next bend in the river. (Been on several rivers in the last couple of weeks!)