THE GOSPEL OF GRACE AND REDEMPTION

by Adam Ellis

In my Christian tradition, we recently rediscovered grace (cut us a little slack…we’re a few years behind other groups on a few things).

The results have been interesting as people adjust to different views and opinions.

One segment of “us” dug in their heels because the shift was just too different from what they had always known and retained a doctrine/praxis/motivation-by-exclusion religion (that may sound overly harsh, but it’s a generalization).

The overriding thought seems to be that I have to work really hard and do everything just right. This life and this world are terrible, but one day I’ll go to Heaven and “Won’t it be wonderful there?”

Another segement did a pendulum swing to focusing on grace, almost as an end unto itself. The rightly asserted that grace covers doctrine, morality, and misunderstanding. But the major point seems to be that I can quit worrying because my personal salvation is sure and I, myself will be going to Heaven when I die. I just have to ride out this life and then “won’t it be wonderful there?”

While these positions are overgeneralizations and no one would actually describe themselves that way, they are both catagories that I can honestly say I fit into at different times in my life. But each of them miss the point entirely. The gospel of Jesus Christ is about both Grace and Redemption. The “new” understanding of grace (which is actually quite old) is more accurate, but it simply doesn’t go far enough.

Grace is not and was never intended to be an end unto itself. Grace covers and clenses us so that we might be redeemed. It takes care of our “stuff” so that we can quit focusing on ourselves and begin focusing on God and other people exclusively.

Redemption carries with it the idea of being changed or exchanged for something that is useful or of value. When you are focused on yourself, even on your own salvation, you are of no use or value to anyone else. When you can quit focusing on yourself, you then become useful, not only to God, but to the world. You can be “good news” to them in the same self-sacrificing way that Jesus was.

In a corporate sense, the church could become “of value” to the world instead of something it is coming to resent (imagine what that would do for evangelism). Grace frees us to become a part of God’s vision/mission/dream for this world…that it would be “on earth as it is in Heaven.”

In his book “The Radical Reformission: Reaching Out Without Selling Out”, Mark Driscoll says “…neither the freedom of Christ nor our freedom in Christ is intended to permit us to dance as close to sin as possible without crossing the line. But both are intended to permit us to dance as close to sinners as possible by crossing the lines that unnecessarily separate the people God has found from those he is still seeking.”

Grace alone is only “good news” for me. Grace and Redemption are the Gospel.

-Adam Ellis