Throughout high school I did Tae Kwon Do. I enjoyed it on most days, but I came to dread Fridays, sparring day. I feared the sweaty sticky pads, the humid and thick atmosphere, but the thing I feared most were the kids who would block with their elbows. It was inevitable that my feet would feel like they had been through Rocky's meat fridge.
I believed that the sins I committed that week were being stored up and saved for a righteous unleashing upon my feet on Friday. The more I sinned, the worse sparring day would be. Grace to me, was when elbow-blocker skipped a Friday or if we practiced forms instead of spar. I was trapped in a works mentality, old testament version of grace. I was the guy that chose a blackberry instead of the iPhone 5. I was the guy who upgraded to HD cable but didn't have an HD TV. As C.S. Lewis so aptly writes, I was the kid who chose the "mud pies" instead of the "holiday at the sea."
Grace in the Old Testament is merely a postponement of judgment. The Israelites followed rule after rule and sacrificed their offerings in an attempt to stay the wrath that was inevitably coming. Exemplified by King Josiah, repentance did not cancel out judgment on Israel, but was pushed back. (2 Kings 22:20). Even King David, the man after God's heart, the man who took the sacred bread and ate it without repercussion, was not immune to this flavor of "grace". While he deserved death for killing Uriah, his punishment was postponed. (2 Samuel 12:13). Instead, David's child dies and his future burdens with Absalom are foretold. This is Old Testament grace and this is what I lived in - is it any wonder then that I struggle with the notion that God has truly redeemed me? That I am a royal priesthood, an heir to the throne, a prince, a bride, an adopted son of God! How can I believe those things when my heart is utterly oppressed by an obsolete notion of Grace?
So when we sing "there is freedom in this place", to me it isn't an in-the-moment freedom, but it is Romans 8 come alive, "For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry 'Abba! Father!'" (15). As I seek to take a hold of the gifts and blessings of God, my heart's victim mentality must change. As Paul writes, "Likewise, my brothers, you also have died to the law through the body of Christ, so that you may belong to another, to him who has been raised from the dead, in order that we may bear fruit for God." (Romans 7:4). The chains of old grace must be broken "in order" for fruit to rise.
Therefore we must believe that this "new" grace (which is actually real grace), is not just a postponement of judgment, but a complete pardon. That Christ's death on the cross was not just for our old sin, but for all sin throughout all time - and we must live that out. This grace is of utterly no use to us if we don't live it out. We need to stop bringing our ineffective offerings to a broken alter, the veil was torn and the temple sundered when Jesus died. And instead the promises he made to a Samaritan women have come true and we all have an eternal spring within us - we no longer bring our works as offerings, but our entire bodies! We no longer worship and serve to store up and save for judgment but rather we worship now in spirit and in truth.
So take a hold of your sonship O my soul. Come up from the grave of self-despair and put on the crown of grace. We are called to an eternal harvest, a divine banquet table, a royal wedding - lets take a hold of that promise and be free from the bonds of sin!
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