Living with an eternal perspective
https://open.substack.com/pub/randykay/p/living-with-an-eternal-perspective?r=43vew&utm_medium=ios
The Life Review That Changed Everything
When I returned from Heaven, I could remember each moment of my life review, except the times I had failed God. When I asked why, the Holy Spirit answered, “I have removed them as far as the East is from the West.”
East and West never meet. That’s how far God has removed our sins—not just forgiven, but erased from His memory of us.
Even more astonishing, those life reviews didn’t condemn me. They revealed grace. Where I saw weakness, God showed redemption. Where I remembered shame, Heaven revealed love.
In speaking with others who’ve experienced similar life reviews, I’ve seen the same pattern: God shows our lives not to condemn but to reveal the redemption of Christ woven through every moment. Heaven’s reviews aren’t “gotcha” moments, they’re revelations of grace, demonstrations of how Jesus covered every failure and turned every weakness into glory.
This stands in sharp contrast to the legalism many encounter, where failure becomes shame and sin becomes a weapon. Heaven’s message is different: not condemnation, but redemption.
The question that haunted me upon my return was this: If Heaven operates on grace, why do so many of our churches operate on legalism?
The Deception of Legalism
Legalism is grace’s ancient enemy. It disguises itself as maturity, as “preaching hard truths,” or “not compromising.” But legalism isn’t strength—it’s rebellion against God’s plan of salvation.
When we insist that people must earn their way to God, we deny the finished work of the cross. When Jesus said “It is finished,” He meant it. The debt was paid, the chasm bridged, salvation accomplished—not by our hands but by His.
Legalism whispers, “Yes, Jesus died for you, but…” That “but” undoes the Gospel.
The False Authority of Harsh Teachers
Many churches reward harshness. The pastor who pounds the pulpit and catalogues sins is often deemed “biblical,” while the one who emphasizes love is seen as soft. Yet Jesus reserved His harshest words for the religious elite—the Pharisees—because they piled burdens on others while missing the heart of God.
To the woman caught in adultery, to tax collectors, to sinners drowning in shame—Jesus offered grace. Not approval of sin, but unearned love that transforms from within.
God is holy and just, yes, but His holiness and justice are revealed through grace, not against it.
What Legalism Really Does
From Heaven’s perspective, I saw what legalism accomplishes on earth:
It makes salvation about us instead of Christ. When we add conditions to grace, we make ourselves co-saviors with Jesus. This is both theologically heretical and spiritually disastrous.
It produces either pride or despair—self-righteousness or hopelessness. Those who think they’re “measuring up” become self-righteous Pharisees. Those who know they’re failing become hopeless and distant from God. Neither response leads to genuine transformation.
It misrepresents God’s character, painting Him as a scorekeeper instead of a Father.
It prevents the very transformation it claims to produce. Paul asked the Galatians, “After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). We cannot produce spiritual fruit through human effort and religious rules. Transformation comes through grace, received and believed.
Grace Is Not Permission to Sin—It’s Power Over Sin
I anticipate the objection from sincere Christians and legalists alike: “But Randy, if we emphasize grace this strongly, won’t people use it as license to sin? Don’t we need to teach people to avoid sin and live God-honoring lives? Aren’t you removing the motivation for Christians to pursue holiness?”
I understand this concern. It comes from a genuine love for God’s holiness and a desire to see believers live righteously. But here’s what I must tell you: this objection reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of both grace’s power and God’s design for transformation.
Paul himself anticipated this exact question: “Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:1-2). Notice Paul doesn’t say, “Well, let me add some rules to make sure you don’t abuse grace.” He says the very nature of what grace does to us makes continued sinning incompatible with our new identity.
Let me be absolutely clear: I am not removing the call to holy living. I am relocating its source.
The Fatal Flaw of Legalistic Motivation
Legalism believes that fear, shame, and threats are necessary to keep Christians from sin. It operates on this premise: “If we don’t keep people afraid of judgment, if we don’t constantly remind them of their failures, if we don’t maintain harsh standards and harsh teachers, they’ll fall into licentiousness.”
But here’s what I witnessed in Heaven and what Scripture confirms: this approach doesn’t work. It never has.
The Pharisees had the most rigorous system of rules and accountability in human history. They were meticulous about external compliance. And Jesus called them “whitewashed tombs”—clean on the outside, dead on the inside. Their legalism didn’t produce holiness; it produced hypocrisy.
Why? Because you cannot produce spiritual fruit through fleshly means. You cannot guilt someone into godliness. You cannot shame someone into sanctification. You cannot threaten someone into transformation.
Paul asked the Galatians, “After beginning by means of the Spirit, are you now trying to finish by means of the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3). The Christian life doesn’t begin with grace and then switch to human effort. It begins with grace and continues with grace, empowered by the Holy Spirit from start to finish.
What Truly Motivates Holiness
What drives believers to live righteously is not fear—it’s love. Gratitude. The indwelling Holy Spirit.
When I stood in Heaven and felt the fullness of God’s love, I didn’t feel complacent. I felt compelled to honor the One who loved me so completely.
“God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance” (Romans 2:4). Grace precedes obedience—it doesn’t replace it.
Consider the woman caught in adultery. The legalists wanted to stone her—to use fear and punishment to motivate righteousness. Jesus offered grace: “Neither do I condemn you.” But notice, He didn’t stop there. He added, “Go now and leave your life of sin” (John 8:11). The grace came first, creating the motivation and power for the obedience that followed.
Grace Produces What Legalism Cannot
Here’s the truth that transformed my understanding: Genuine grace produces genuine holiness in ways legalism never could.
Scripture still commands holiness—“Be holy, because I am holy” (1 Peter 1:16)—but the power to obey comes from grace, not law. “For the grace of God has appeared... It teaches us to say no to ungodliness” (Titus 2:11–12).
These commands are not suggestions. They are not optional. Christians are called to live lives that honor God, to pursue holiness, to actively resist sin.
But—and this is crucial—the power to obey these commands comes through grace, not law.
Paul writes in Titus 2:11-12: “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age.”
Did you catch that? Grace teaches us to say no to sin. Grace itself is the educator, the motivator, the transformer. Not fear. Not shame. Grace.
Why This Matters So Desperately
To the sincere Christian who worries that emphasizing grace will lead to license, I say this: Look at the fruit of each approach.
Legalism produces: Fear-based compliance, hidden sin, spiritual exhaustion, judgmentalism, pride in the “strong” and despair in the “weak,” churches full of pretenders, and entire generations walking away from a God they perceive as harsh and impossible to please.
Grace produces: Love-motivated obedience, honest confession and healing, joy in service, humility (because we know we’re saved by grace alone), authentic community where we bear one another’s burdens, and a witness to the world that compels them toward a God who loves unconditionally.
Which fruit looks more like Jesus?
The Test of True Grace
Here’s how you know if someone truly understands grace: they sin less, not more. They pursue holiness with greater passion, not less. But the source of their pursuit has changed entirely.
They’re not running from God’s punishment; they’re running toward God’s presence. They’re not trying to earn what they already possess; they’re responding to what they’ve freely received. They’re not white-knuckling their way through obedience; they’re being transformed by the Holy Spirit’s power.
If someone uses “grace” as an excuse to sin, they haven’t encountered real grace. They’ve encountered a cheap counterfeit. Real grace—the kind that flows from Heaven, the kind I witnessed in my life review—is so overwhelming, so transformative, so precious that the last thing you want to do is cheapen it with casual sin.
Paul put it perfectly: “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Romans 6:1-2). True grace kills our desire for sin, even as it kills sin’s power over us.
The legalist says, “Behave, or God won’t love you.” Grace says, “God loves you, and that love will transform your behavior.”
One produces external compliance at best, internal rebellion at worst. The other produces genuine heart transformation.
I am not calling Christians to lower standards. I’m calling them to a higher power—the power of God’s grace working through the Holy Spirit to accomplish what our willpower never could.
The Myth of “Hyper Grace”
Some accuse grace teachers of “hyper grace.” That term doesn’t exist in Scripture. Paul faced the same charge from legalists who wanted to add rules to faith.
There is no such thing as too much grace. Grace is God’s nature, Christ’s work, and the Spirit’s power. You cannot have an excess of God.
The Rich Young Ruler’s Fatal Error
The legalists who coined “hyper grace” are making the same mistake as the rich young ruler in Mark 10. Remember him? He came to Jesus confident in his personal accountability, his record of obedience. “Teacher, I have kept all these commandments since I was a boy,” he declared.
He thought he was good enough. He believed his personal righteousness, his strict adherence to the law, his accountability to religious standards made him acceptable to God. He had checked all the boxes.
Jesus’s response shattered his self-righteousness: “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone” (Mark 10:18).
This is the heart of the issue. The rich young ruler—and every legalist after him—operates on the premise that human beings can achieve enough goodness, enough accountability, enough righteousness to warrant God’s acceptance. They believe in personal merit as a component of salvation.
But Jesus demolished this foundation. No one is good but God. Not the rich young ruler with his perfect track record. Not the Pharisee with his meticulous rule-keeping. Not the pastor who preaches hard truths. Not you. Not me.
The rich young ruler walked away sad because he couldn’t accept grace. He wanted to earn his salvation. He wanted his goodness to count for something. Sound familiar? This is precisely what the “hyper grace” critics are defending—the right to add human achievement to God’s grace.
False Teachers? Look in the Mirror
When legalists call grace teachers “false teachers,” the irony is staggering. Let’s examine who’s actually teaching falsely:
False doctrine says: You are saved by grace, but maintained by your performance. Biblical doctrine says: “He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion” (Philippians 1:6).
False doctrine says: Personal accountability is what keeps you saved. Biblical doctrine says: “No one can snatch them out of my hand” (John 10:28).
False doctrine says: We need to balance grace with law. Biblical doctrine says: “For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace” (Romans 6:14).
False doctrine says: Too much emphasis on grace leads to sin. Biblical doctrine says: “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20).
Who is teaching falsely? Those who proclaim the scandalous grace of God as revealed in Scripture, or those who add human conditions to divine salvation?
The legalists who warn against “hyper grace” are the spiritual descendants of the Judaizers Paul confronted—those who said, “Yes, faith in Christ, but also circumcision. But also keeping the law. But also your personal accountability.”
Paul’s response to them was fierce: “As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!” (Galatians 5:12). He didn’t mince words because the stakes were eternal. Adding anything to grace isn’t just wrong theology—it’s “a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all” (Galatians 1:6-7).
The “Personal Accountability” Deception
The “hyper grace” critics love to emphasize “personal accountability.” It sounds spiritual. It sounds mature. But here’s what they miss: true accountability in the Christian life flows from grace, not despite it.
When I stood before God in my life review, I wasn’t held “personally accountable” in the way legalists mean. I wasn’t graded on my performance. I was shown how grace had covered every failure, how Christ’s righteousness had been credited to my account, how the Holy Spirit had been working even in my weakest moments.
That experience didn’t make me less accountable—it made me more responsive to God’s love. There’s a profound difference.
Biblical accountability means:
Confessing our sins to one another in loving community (James 5:16)
Bearing one another’s burdens (Galatians 6:2)
Encouraging one another toward love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24)
Living in the light as He is in the light (1 John 1:7)
The Scandal of Unearned Love
Grace offends our sense of fairness. We want to earn salvation, to contribute something. Grace says, “You bring nothing but your need. God brings everything.”
This is scandalous. It means the murderer on the cross enters Heaven based solely on faith. It means we stand alongside repentant prostitutes and tax collectors in God’s kingdom. It means our decades of church service don’t make us more saved than the person who turns to Christ on their deathbed.
If this offends you, good. It should. It offended the Pharisees too. But this is the Gospel.
Living in Grace
So what does grace-centered Christianity look like in practice?
It calls sin what it is—without condemning the sinner. Jesus was both full of grace and full of truth. We don’t ignore sin, but we point people to the Savior, not to religious performance.
It creates communities of radical acceptance. Our churches should be hospitals for sinners, not museums for saints. The broken should feel more welcome than the “put-together.”
It produces holiness through love, not fear. When we truly grasp God’s love, we want to please Him—not out of obligation, but out of gratitude and relationship.
It silences the harsh voices. We stop celebrating the condemning teacher and start celebrating those who lead people to the throne of grace.
My Message from Heaven
I didn’t return from Heaven to add to people’s burdens. I returned to remove them. The message from the other side is clear: You are loved beyond measure, and that love is not dependent on your performance.
Legalism says, “Try harder.” Grace says, “It is finished.”
Legalism says, “You’re not enough.” Grace says, “Christ is enough.”
Legalism says, “Maybe if you’re good enough.” Grace says, “You are already beloved.”
The harsh pastor who crushes spirits in the name of truth is not operating in God’s power—he’s operating in opposition to it. The legalist who adds conditions to salvation is not being more biblical—he’s being less.
Grace is the scandal at the heart of Christianity. It’s unfair. It’s unearned. It’s unlimited. And it’s the only thing that can truly transform a human heart.
Having stood in Heaven and experienced the fullness of God’s love, I can tell you with certainty: God’s grace is bigger than you imagine, freer than you’ve been taught, and more powerful than any religious system man can construct.
Stop trying to earn what has already been given. Stop praising those who add burdens to the Gospel. Stop operating in legalism when God has offered grace.
The question isn’t whether we’re good enough. The question is whether we’ll accept that in Christ, God has already declared us righteous—not because of who we are, but because of who He is.
That’s grace. That’s the Gospel. And that’s the message Heaven burns in my heart to share.
- Randy Kay
