Taxing the Grace of God
My last blog post was prompted by a series of four messages preached in March and April of 2021. These messages were from the last part of 2 Thessalonians chapter 3 entitled Order in the Church. Primarily, our focus was church discipline and the importance of the holiness of God’s people. Discipline is a tough subject and one that most churches strenuously avoid. The lack of commitment to it is the driving impetus behind the shameful lives of many of their church members. Not only does it affect members personally and individually, but every bad practice in the church can be linked to someone’s failure to address sin with a biblical response. Whether we speak of the sin of unholy worship, of heresies in the pulpit, or sin in personal lives, it stems from bad discipline. Sin is not abstract, but rather all sin is committed by someone. It is concrete refusal to heed God’s word in any area.
I believe failure of church discipline is failure to recognize God’s viewpoint of sin. This is a serious illogical error by anyone redeemed by the grace of God. Dr. R.C. Sproul was fond of calling sin “cosmic treason.” And yet, I think very few see their sins as a terrible affront to God’s holiness or see that it constitutes turning their back on the extreme payment made through Christ our Lord to satisfy the penalty of sin.
Before we came to Christ, we were in the darkness of sin not understanding its consequences. We were not motivated to forsake sin because we had not been enlightened by the Holy Spirit to the danger of it nor to the cost of God’s provision of grace to save us from it. While there are many who profess salvation but do not possess it, the only true believers are those who before their salvation were enlightened to their fast track to the awful fires of hell. They realized they were guilty before God and justly deserving of it. The truth of our condition is that God’s kingdom was shut to us. The door was locked and could not be pried open. It was our sin that shut us out of God’s kingdom. Once we are saved, the heinous nature of sin does not change. In fact, for those enlightened to the gospel, sin after salvation should incur more punishment because we are more stubborn in consideration of our knowledge of what God did for us. The only way eternal punishment is averted for those who know Christ is by Paul’s declaration that “Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.” In other words, when we sin, we impose more upon God’s grace after we are saved than we did when we were lost.
Now consider that we should have a church filled with people who are so callous about God’s work of redemption that they continue to live in sin. How do we judge ourselves superior to the worst criminal on death row? I think this helps us understand why Paul was distraught with sin in the church. In his own life, he said he beat his body into submission to keep from hindering God’s work.
When the church practices discipline, I hope you see it is a sincere desire not to be judgmental, but to do as Romans 12:2 commands. We are not to be conformed to the world but transformed by the renewing of our minds. A pure heart is the same as a renewed mind, and Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” Thank the Lord He does not reward us according to our iniquities. Otherwise, no child of God would survive the taxing of God’s grace.
Pastor V. Mark Smith