I regularly receive many emails from people whose lives are being transformed by God's grace. People often ask me, "Do you get negative mail too?" I do and, though they aren't as many in number as the positive ones, they do come regularly. I decided to post this one just so fellow grace-walkers can see the kind of opposition to God's grace that exists even among other believers. Beneath his note is my response. Some may think it's too harsh, but I typically respond in a similar way as a person writes. If they're gentle, I assume they respond to gentleness. If they are direct, I assume they will only understand a direct answer. I've deleted the name of the sender for obvious reasons.
Subject: "Shame, A Silly Game".
Dear Bro. McVey,
Grace so amazing, Grace so Divine, demands my soul, my life my all. Grace twisted demands to be rebutted. I just finished reading your article entitled "Shame, A Silly Game". How you could twist God's Amazing Grace as you did in this article is also AMAZING.
You stated,Jesus came to free us from the dark legacy of shame and embarrassment left to us by Adam. Thanks to Him, there is no condemnation toward us – none. We may feel shame at times, but it’s only an illusion. “Even if our hearts condemn us, God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything” (1John 3:20). He knows that we are totally forgiven.
Wonderful truth to this point, but then [you write] --The shame-game is over – finished. It’s a silly game we don’t ever have to play again. Once and for all, we can stop fearing some scary god-of-our-own-making who looks at us with disappointment or irritation. It’s an infantile fantasy. There is no divine boogey-man under the cosmic bed of your existence who is going to come out and get you.
We’re all naked, but that’s okay with God. He loves you just like you are. You don’t have to change. You don’t have to be afraid. You don’t have to hide. And you certainly don’t have to be ashamed. Your Father loves and adores you just the way you are. So come out, come out, wherever you are. Somebody is waiting to give you a Hug. He longs to laugh with you. He wants you to feel His embrace and revel in His acceptance for all eternity. Leave shame alone. We belong in the conscious awareness of our permanent place in our Father’s embrace.
Is this the same message Paul preached when he told of how God judged with immediate physical death the sin of his children Annanais and his wife in Acts 5? The Scripture says that great fear came upon all the church. Was that fear caused just by imagination? Paul said in another place, Them that sin, rebuke before all, that others also may fear. Did Paul not understand grace? He told the Roman believers to fear the authorities, because they bear not the sword in vain.
Thank God, through faith in Christ, I am accepted. However, if I sin as a child of God, I should fear because whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. Shame and fear are without a doubt God caused at times, and rightfully so.
Thank God for His grace, but grace never excuses sin. The law of God and the grace of God both hate sin. The law condemns the sinner. Grace condemed the sinners substitute. Grace cost us nothing but it cost God His Son.
Without both sides of the truth it becomes a lie.
A brother In Christ,
MB
M, my brother,
You have missed the whole point. There is no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus. We ARE accepted in the Beloved. Shame is not the work of the Holy Spirit. He lovingly convinces (convicts) us of the love of our Father and creates within us a desire to live in a way that honors Him. THAT is our very nature as believers.
Why would you assume that the death of Ananias & Saphira was an expression of God's anger? Why would you not assume that a loving Father chose to spare them and His church from further harm by taking them home immediately? And you need to study the word "fear." Yes, we are to fear the Lord, but surely you as a child of God don't think we are to recoil from Him in horror, do you? Fear, in the biblical sense, is awe - wonder - such respect that it causes a trembling in the presence of His greatness. It doesn't mean that we cower in the presence of a short-tempered god who is ready to zap us if we mess up. If that were the case, both you and I would have been killed by God a long time ago. Or do you disagree?
I never even hinted that "chastening" isn't a part of our Father's ways, but that itself is an expression of love - not the knee-jerk reaction of the short-tempered god you seem to imagine Him as being. I never minimized sin, but truthfully, your viewpoint seems to minimize the value of the finished work of Christ to me. Did Jesus really "pay it all" or not? I believe that He did and that now we can rest in our Father's loving acceptance. THAT becomes the catalyst for transformation in our behavior, not some shaky fear that He is ready to drop the bomb on us because of our behavior.
Thanks for your thoughts. Please accept my plainspoken response to be intended in the same spirit in which you wrote you email. We are simply two brothers who see this in very different ways.
As you believe about me, I see your concept of "grace" as weak, twisted and so far beyond what Scripture teaches that I imagine it would cause the Apostle Paul to shudder in horror.
Blessings,
Steve McVey
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