13: The Mixture

Today nobody in the church preaches pure law. What they preach is a mixture, and it goes something like this:

“Try to be as kind and loving and patient and faithful and disciplined as you can, but if you fail, remember that God still loves you. Now get back up and do better. Here are seven steps to help you. Come back and report on your progress next week.” After you fail and come back, you hear, “God still loves you and He WILL forgive you if you ask Him to. Now get back up and try again. Here’s a book to read and a conference to attend and a Bible study to join and a few more folks to keep you accountable…”

 It’s the ministry of defeat and condemnation!

 Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?  (Galatians 3:3)¹

The “flesh” is referring to our self-efforts to be made perfect before God. Wherever there is the very deadly cocktail of law and grace, we will operate in the flesh, and there are a few things it will produce:

•  Hidden sin (It’s there! You just can’t see it!)

•  Self-righteousness (People striving to “get right” with God.)

•  Pride and arrogance

•  Burn-out

•  Competition and comparison

•  Loss of love

•  Patch-work theology (Messages that take a little of the old, out of context, and mix it with the new, out of context)

•  Feelings of rejection from people and from God

However, at the same time because of the mixing of the law with grace, in the church we have been hearing and even saying wonderful things such as the following:

•  Jesus came to shine a light in our darkness, not on our mistakes.

•  Jesus came to set you free, not to make you sorry.

•  Jesus came to say that He’s enough, not that we aren’t good enough.

•  Jesus knows you and loves you anyway.

•  Jesus didn’t come to make bad people good; He came to make dead people alive!

•  Jesus came to remove sin, not to expose it. (The problem was that we thought Jesus was removing our sins progressively, one sin at a time as we confessed them!)

•  Religion is spelled “do,” Christianity is spelled “done.”

Our spirits cry, “YES! That’s the truth!” But what do we mean? How radical is grace after all? Why doesn’t our experience line up with those glorious statements? It’s because of the mixture of law and grace.

(from pages 47-49 of Unveiling Jesus)

Want more from Tricia Gunn? Check out excerpts from the Unveiling Jesus 20-part series!

Unveiling Jesus, by Tricia Gunn, is a verse by verse study of the pure gospel of grace. It’s an amazing journey of love, identity, and freedom in Christ.

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¹ All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New King James Version. Scripture is taken from the New King James Version®.  Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.  Used by permission.