Heb 12:15 “See to it that no one falls short of the grace of God.”
This stopped me in my tracks because it seems contradictory. Isn’t that the point of grace, that it makes up for our “shortfall”, for our “falling short”? In the picture of the runner falling short, doesn’t grace make God redraw the finish line under the runner, so that he has in fact made it, or doesn’t an angel come and lift the fallen runner over the finish line?
In my Bible verse #3 I was struck by the paradoxical phrase “grace in place of grace” (John 1:16). It’s paradoxical because it seems wasteful; why replace grace with grace? But, like powerful underground springs and overhead waterfalls that keeps filling and displacing existing pools of water, it’s not wasteful… just powerful and abundant.
But again, this idea of abundance can feed a false, magical, wishful, “all dogs go to Heaven” kind of thinking. A blank cheque of zero condemnation for the whole human race, in other words.
Of course, that is what Hollywood and popular culture have preached for decades… but then, after all, dreams and good feelings are what they are selling (to an all too eager market).
Getting back to the Bible and its wonderful fullness of truth (a complex fullness that can appear strange, paradoxical and even contradictory to the spiritually unfit, the way a gym instructor’s training can seem like cruel torture to the physically unfit…but hang in there); it says many things about God’s dealings with humankind, which are always acts of grace, such as the following:
Grace seeks us out and finds us, but it invites us to pursue it – Php 3:12 “Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me.”
Grace is a free gift, but it costs us all we have – Mat 13:44 “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again, and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field.
Grace comes to us in our sin and weakness to deal with it, not to sweep it under the carpet – Tit 2:11-12 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. (12) It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age,
Similarly, grace actually changes our very nature and behaviour, much like a powerful magnet attaching itself to (“embracing”) a dead, non-magnetic piece of metal produces (duplicates) magnetic properties within the metal -Php 2:13 “for it is God who works (energeō) in you to will and to act (energeō -see the duplication in the original Greek) in order to fulfill his good purpose.”
False forms of grace have always and will always compete with God’s true grace (kind of like junk food and empty calories compete with nutritious food) – Jud 1:4 For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord.
I don’t want God to redraw the finish line under me – I couldn’t rejoice in that cheap “victory”.
