God’s Grace is Greater

 Scot McNight

“Cheap grace is preaching forgiveness without repentance; it is baptism without the discipline of community; it is the Lord's Supper without confession of sin; it is absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without the living, incarnate Jesus Christ.”

What does real grace look like when it repents?

Repentance involves lamenting into repentance.

First, we lament and confess truths that implicate us.

Second, we lament and admit our rivalries and tribalisms and demonizing of others.

Third, we understand the direction of peace, justice, and love to which Christ calls us.

Fourth, we take the first step away from where we are and move toward God.

Fifth, we keep walking toward God, and away from where we are.

Over time, the walking will turn our sins and complicities into a past we can barely glimpse in our “rear view mirror.” Over time we will find our eyes fixed on Jesus Christ, on the kingdom of God, and on what our nation, with a church being what the church can be, ought to be. We will discover that we can form and are forming a new culture. One that will be greeted by the affirming nods of Jesus. One that will be welcomed by our God. One that will lead us straight into the kingdom that draws us into its kind of society.

God’s grace is waiting for us.

God’s grace is greater.