Resisting "Cheap Grace"

And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold. Matthew 24:12

In the end times, the greatest hindrance to the work of God among believers will not be the legalism of contemporary religious Pharisees. Jesus says that the one weapon Satan will unleash upon the Church in the last days is lawlessness. It is designed to kill the love and passion Christians have for God. In fact, the Antichrist is called the “lawless one” (2 Thess. 2:8-9).

The concept of lawlessness is encapsulated in a heretical belief system called antinomianism. The Oxford Dictionary defi nes antinomianism as “a belief that Christians are released by grace from obeying moral laws.” Antinomians outrightly renounce the Ten Commandments.

They reject the process of continuing sanctifi cation in a believer’s life. One of the greatest heroes of faith of the 20th century was Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). He was a German theologian, pastor, preacher, radio broadcaster and author. Bonhoeffer’s most famous work is The Cost of Discipleship, fi rst published in 1939. This work is an exposition of The Sermon on the Mount and it calls for radical living if a Christian is to be an authentic disciple of Christ.

Bonhoeffer’s major concern was the concept of “cheap grace,” a phrase he coined. To him, this is grace that has become so watered down that it no longer resembles the grace of the New Testament. Cheap grace doesn’t transform a sinner but instead brings chaos and destruction to his
life. It is the justifi cation of the sinner without the fruit and works that should accompany the new birth.

Bonhoeffer says of cheap grace: “It is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

Cheap grace arises when a sinner desires to be saved but doesn’t want to become a disciple. Can you remember your fi rst conviction at the moment of your conversion? Can you recall your first response to Christ? It was to see a change, wasn’t it? You longed to have righteousness, purity and holiness in your life. If you wanted to remain in sin, you would have remained as an unbeliever and stayed outside the bounds of God’s kingdom. Resist antinomianism today. Warn those who are seduced by it. Don’t ever lose your first love for Jesus.

Humility

And whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted. Matthew 23:12


God promises to dwell “with him who has a contrite and humble spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble” (Is. 57:15). A key determining factor for personal revival is humility.

Pride is seeking independence from God. The result of pride is always rebellion, disaster, grief and sorrow.

In Luke 12:16-21, Jesus talks about a certain rich man who arrogantly boasted, “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build greater, and there I will store all my crops and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years; take your ease; eat, drink and be merry.’” Do you notice how many times this rich man said “I” and “my”?

In a certain sense, he was probably a good man. He must have been sensible, respectable, smart, prudent and a good manager. Just look at the crops he harvested! In our contemporary world, he could well be a churchgoer, an elder or even a benefactor sitting on the finance committee. Yet, Jesus called him a “fool.” And the essence of his foolishness was that he acted as if he were independent from God. God was never in the equation of his balance sheet.

That rich man didn’t take into account that he depended on God for his daily breath. That he depended on God for seed to bring forth a harvest. That he depended on God for his health and strength. And basically, for everything in his life! He was a fool because he didn’t see his dependance on God and he didn’t acknowledge God. The root of his sin was pride.

You need to remember today that your life is dependant on God. The key to continual personal revival is humility. The usual danger of God blessing a Christian is that the person becomes lifted up by the boastful pride of life. Make a decision not to be proud today!

Spiritual Legacy

Now Amram took for himself Jochebed, his father’s sister, as wife; and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of the life of Amram were one hundred and thirty-seven. Exodus 6:20

Genesis teaches us that everything produces after its kind. An apple tree produces apples. An orange tree produces oranges. This is the irrevocable law of creation. Jesus takes it further when He says that you can know the quality of a tree by the fruit it produces (Matt. 7:20). The fruit depends on the stock it came from.

Moses came from a lineage of priests. Moses’ father, Amram, was the son of Kohath, who was the son of Levi (Ex. 6:16,18). They were all Levites. They were all priests unto the Lord. Our spiritual fervency and passion for God can be passed from one generation to the next. Another interesting thing is the spiritual progression in Moses’ family. Miriam and Aaron were Moses’ older sister and brother. Miriam was a prophetess. Aaron was a prophet and a high priest. But Moses was the greatest of all. He became “as God” to Pharaoh (Ex. 4:16). Herein lies an observation: the parents’ spiritual state while parenting the child determines the spiritual state of the child. As the parents make progress in their spiritual lives, the children benefit.

As Amram and Jochebed progressed spiritually, their children became greater and greater in stature. Max Jukes lived in New York. He neither believed in Jesus Christ nor allowed his children to go to church, even when they wanted to. Max Jukes ended up with 1,026 descendants, of which 300 were sent to prison for an average term of 13 years, 190 were public prostitutes and 680 were admitted alcoholics. Jukes’ family, so far, cost the US Government more than half a million dollars to rehabilitate. They have made no contribution to society.

Jonathan Edwards also lived in New York at the same time as Jukes. He loved the house of God and saw that his children were in church every Sunday. Jonathan Edwards ended up with 929 descendants. Of these, 430 were ministers, 86 became university professors, 13 became university presidents, 75 became best-selling authors, fi ve were elected to the United States Congress, two were elected to the Senate and one became the Vice President of America. Edwards’ family never cost the state one single cent but contributed immensely to their society. Your walk with God and love for His house play an important role in the spiritual legacy you leave behind for your children.

Found Faithful

Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro his father-in-law, the priest of Midian. And he led the flock to the back of the desert, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. Exodus 3:1

Whenever God does a mighty work in a generation, He raises up people to whom He gives wisdom, faith and the Holy Spirit. The Book of Exodus is really centered upon one such chosen vessel, Moses, the great deliverer. He led his generation out of the bondage of Egypt into their inheritance, the land God had promised to Abraham and his seed.

Moses’ life can be divided into three parts:

(1) The first 40 years in Egypt, when he thought he was a somebody;

(2) the next 40 years at the back of the desert, when he realized he was a nobody; and

(3) the final 40 years as a deliverer, when he learned that God could take a nobody and turn him into a somebody. To become the person God uses, you must be willing to go through God’s process. As you learn to humble yourself, allow your pride to be broken by God’s dealings and let Him shape and mold you into a “Moses: to your generation. “Many are called, but few chosen: (Matt. 20:16). It is one thing to be called of God, it is quite another to be chosen by God. But Revelation 17:14 says, “Those who are with [the Lamb] are called, chosen, and faithful.: Moses wasn’t just called and chosen by God, he was found faithful in everything he did for the Lord in His house (Heb. 3:2).

Similarly, there will be three distinct divisions in your life. You must have the call of God. Then there will be a preparation period. If you pass that preparation period, there will come a time when God will choose you and put you into a ministry. But for that ministry to flourish and bear great fruit, you must be found faithful in serving God in His church.

Repentence

“They will call on My name, and I will answer them. I will say, ‘This is My people’; And each one will say, ‘The LORD is my God.’” Zechariah 13:9

Zechariah was prophesying about the coming of the Messiah, the One who was pierced. It is amazing how Jesus was sentenced to die by crucifixion even though the Jewish law required Him to be stoned. And when He was crucified, the Roman soldier, though ignorant of the prophecy, pierced him with his spear. The prophecy was fulfilled right down to the very last detail. Jesus Himself testified that every prophecy in the Old Testament would be fulfilled: “Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill” (Matt. 5:17).

Just as the prophecy of Jesus’ death was fulfilled, the conversion of the Jews promised in this same verse will come to pass. Though the Jewish people were guilty of Jesus’ death, the day will come when they will repent and believe on Him. In Zechariah 12:10, it reveals the way this repentance will come to the Jewish people. This is also the same way we experience repentance.

1) Repentance is the work of the Holy Spirit. “I will pour on the house of David and on the inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of grace and supplication.” “And when He [the Holy Spirit] has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment” (John 16:8). Repentance is not produced by our conscience, by terror, or by the persuasion of men. It comes as a gift of grace. It is the work of the Holy Spirit. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

2) Repentance comes by looking to Jesus. “Then they will look on Me whom they pierced.” As we gaze at the holiness and purity of Jesus, we will realize how terrible a sinner we are. When we look at the cross of Calvary, we see the horrible hatred that sin bears toward purity, because it slew an innocent Man, the Holy Son of God. We will realize such is the terrible guilt of our sin that nothing but death can atone for it. Jesus became that sacrifice for the forgiveness of our sin.

3) Repentance is a deep godly sorrow. “They will mourn for Him as one mourns for his only son.” The effect of us looking to Christ is that it makes us mourn in sorrow for the condition of our heart. Paul said that “godly sorrow produces repentance leading to salvation, not to be regretted” (2 Cor. 7:10). This was what happened on the Day of Pentecost, when Peter preached to the multitude. When the people heard the message, those who had a hand in “piercing the Messiah” were cut to the heart, and cried out, “What shall we do?” (Acts 2:37). As a result, there was great repentance.

The Day Of The Lord

“Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and dreadful day of the LORD.” Malachi 4:5

Today you will read the last of the 929 chapters, 23,214 verses in the Old Testament. Congratulations! You’ve reached a significant milestone in your Christian walk … you’ve read through the entire Bible!

Malachi the prophet and Nehemiah the builder were contemporaries, and the problems Nehemiah faced became the basis for the sermons Malachi preached. Years after the restoration from exile, the spiritual condition of God’s people had deteriorated. Again they lapsed into the same sins that brought about their captivity and exile to Babylon. They tithed sporadically, ignored the Sabbath, and intermarried with unbelievers. Their hearts had grown hard and their love for God had grown cold.

Malachi came to remind the people of God’s love for them. Using a question-andanswer approach, Malachi probed deeply into their problems of hypocrisy, infidelity, divorce, false worship and arrogance. For 400 years after Malachi’s ringing condemnations, God was silent. Malachi’s final warning was about the Day of the Lord (Mal. 4:5). The Day of the Lord is a common theme of the prophets. That day signifies the final judgment of God on the earth and the eventual time of blessing and peace. It’s not a literal 24-hour day, but a culmination of God’s plan—including the return of Christ, the final judgments, and the end of history as we know it.

Both aspects—judgment and salvation, punishment and peace—are contained in the Day of the Lord. The Bible says that those who desire the Lord’s coming must know that He requires clean hands and a pure heart (Ps. 24:3-4). The Day of the Lord may be frightening to some, but for the believer who loves God, it’s a day of great rejoicing.

In 2 Timothy 4:8, Paul says, “Finally, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give to me on that Day, and not to me only but also to all who have loved His appearing.” As Christians, we should be longing for the Day of the Lord to come. Jesus says, “And behold, I am coming quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every one according to his work” (Rev. 22:12). Are you ready for the Day of the Lord? Jesus may not return tomorrow, but we should live our lives as if He is. We must seize every moment of our lives and make it count for the Lord.

As Malachi brings down the curtain on Old Testament prophecy, God’s silence is broken in the New Testament with John the Baptist declaring, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2)! On this last day of the year, search your heart before the Lord to see if there are any areas that you need to repent from. Rededicate your life to Jesus, so that He may continue to use you greatly in the days to come!

The Glory Of God

The Spirit lifted me up and brought me into the inner court; and behold, the glory of the LORD filled the temple. Ezekiel 43:5

After Ezekiel had patiently surveyed the temple of God, the Spirit of God lifted him up and brought him into the inner court. Though the temple was very big and magnificent, it was not until the glory of God was manifested that it truly became the holy temple of the Lord.

What is the glory of God? The glory of God is the intrinsic value of who He is. It is His radiance, the brightness of His light and beauty, and the honor that is due to Him. The idols of the heathens have no glory because they owe what you see on them to the goldsmith or the painter. There are two things which Ezekiel observed in this appearance of the glory of God:

1) The power of His Word which he heard. “His voice was like the sound of many waters; and the earth shone with His glory” (Ezek. 43:2). It could be heard from afar and it made an unforgettable impression on Ezekiel. In the book of Revelation, His voice was like the sound of many waters and the voice of loud thunder (Rev. 1:15; 14:2). The sound of many waters and the earth shining with God’s glory speak of the preaching of the gospel message to the world. The gospel will be proclaimed aloud. The report of it will be heard afar off. It will be preached to the ends of the earth and the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea (Hab. 2:14). To some it will be an indication of life, but to others it will be like the thunderous roar of a fearful expectation of judgment and death.

2) The brightness of His appearance which he saw. “The earth shone with his glory” (Ezek. 43:2). This appearance of the glory of God was the same one in the vision which Ezekiel saw when he first received his commission (1:4). God is always the same and His glory has no variation. “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning” (James 1:17). That glory which shone in the temple in the time of Ezekiel is still shining today. God has not changed. The gospel message is as glorious and powerful today as when it was first preached in Jerusalem. It brought the entire Roman Empire to its knees and it too will bring our generation to its knees.