Living in Grace or living by the Law?
Some grace plus law gospel upholders
accuse the grace only gospel of leading people to become spiritually
lazy and complacent about their relationship with God. This
guilt-mongering is partially due to the loss of control over people
if they became grace plus nothing living people. The religious
domination, manipulation and fear-mongering tactics would cease to
produce favorable results for them and the religious empires would
crumble in the dust of the deception and confusion it is based on.
Grace is not a license to sin, nor is
it a lazy man's gospel. In fact the exact opposite is true. The
religious emphasis on the cross as sin forgiving to the exclusion of
Christ in you and living through you without any input of human doing
is what really leads to spiritual complacency.
The mixed law and grace gospel produces
believers who are relieved and thankful that they will not be judged
for their sins and have escaped “hell”. But this gospel gives
people no motivation to change their way of living. That is why
preachers in the mixed law and grace gospel play the shame and blame
game with its guilt and condemnation prizes to motivate their
adherents to perform religious hoop-jumping to win God's favor and blessing because they
have deceived people into believing that their identity is determined
by their religious performance and behavior.
However, grace living people are
motivated by the Christ life within based on their identity in Christ
and in that freedom Christ works through them as the Community of the
Redeemed unencumbered by religious rules and rituals. For grace
living people the dominate motivation for living godly is the grace
and love of God...not the wrath of God rendered to people because
they are law and religious rule breakers.
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