THE WILL TO LOVE - Vital Christianity

82“Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance,baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolutionwithout personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, gracewithout the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” 4(Emphasis added)God’s grace is costly. What He requires is not cheap grace but costly obedience.Profession without reality is not enough. Praise without practice is not sufficient. Faith that doesnot result from in works is dead faith, not living faith. Verbal confession is too often camouflagefor disobedience.The story is told of Mark Twain’s encounter with a man who gave the appearance ofpiety yet was corrupt in business practices. “Before I die,” he piously testified, “I mean tomake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I will climb to the top of Mount Sinai and read the TenCommandments aloud.” “I have a better idea.” responded Twain, “Why don’t you just stay rightat home in Boston and keep them?”Faith becomes saving fath when validated by obedience, and saving grace is God’s freegift only to those who do God’s will. As Jesus put it:“. . . only he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven . . . will enter thekingdom of heaven” (Mt 7:21).A few years ago I talked with a man who was an active member of a church. Soon Idiscovered by his own admission that he was living a life of open immorality. He claimed helived a life by faith due to God’s grace and it didn’t matter how much he sinned since a lovingGod would generously forgive and thereby manifest His unsearchable riches of grace. But the“grace” about which he spoke was a cheap grace that denied the holiness of God and the life ofobedience God requires of those who call on His name.The apostle Paul answered this question once and for all:“. . . where sin increased, grace increased all the more, so that, just as sin reigned indeath, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life throughJesus Christ our Lord.What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so grace may increase? By nomeans! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Ro 5:20-6:2).Costly obedience means being dead to sin. It means being dead to our selfish desires,ambitions, opinions, plans. And it means being alive to what God wants us to do.Faith without obedience is disobedience, and disobedience is rebellion. Satan—theinstigator of all rebellion—and his cohorts know the truth but do not obey it. James points out: