Good Medicine

My thirtieth birthday brought me the gift of a chronic stomach problem. I’d taken the day off from work, but I woke up feeling bad, and it only got worse as the day progressed. But stomach bugs happen, and I fully expected it to last no more than a day or two and then life would get back to normal. I was wrong. That was the new normal.

I struggled with that condition for years. I spent most of 2006 nauseous. Finally they found a medicine that helped. It didn’t cure it, but it made the symptoms manageable. Ten years or so later, the doctor wanted to wean me off the medication and see how it went. By God’s grace it went well. I still have the occasional flare up, but nothing like the way it began. So the medicine worked. How do I know? I got better.

There are two very unfortunate responses some people have to the gospel. They hear about the grace of God, how he is willing to forgive our sins by putting them on his Son and accept us despite all we’ve done, and both distort it in similar ways.

One response is to reject it. “So you believe a person who’s a Christian can rape and murder and still go to heaven? How is that just?”

The other response is to embrace it. For the same reason. “You mean if I say your sinner’s prayer I can do whatever I want and still go to heaven? That’s awesome!”

Both mistake the grace of God for a “get out of jail free” card. Instead, it’s the cure for what ails us.

Sin is not a bad habit; it’s a chronic, deadly disease. The gospel is not a free pass or a behavior modification plan; it’s a cure for the disease. And how do you know the medicine works? You get better.

The apostle most associated with grace in the New Testament also spends quite a lot of space telling us what a difference it ought to make in our lives. My favorite passage goes like this:

For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say “No” to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. (Titus 2:11-14)

The grace of God makes sinners better. It doesn’t just treat the symptoms, it gets to the underlying cause — a corrupted heart. It gives us new affections that reject the things of this world in favor of something better.

Will we still have occasional flare ups of the disease? Sadly, yes. But our lives should show that the disease is getting better.

Of the two errors I mentioned before, the second is the one that tends to infect churches. Whether these people attend church weekly or just Christmas and Easter, there are sad numbers of people who treat the gospel as a “get out of jail free” card. “I prayed the prayer in church camp when I was 10, so I can live however I want.” These people need the real gospel, the one that renovates sinners.

Our society is full of the other error, people who reject the gospel because it lets “those people” do whatever they want. They need to see the grace of God actively transforming lives. What does that look like? Christians living like Jesus, full of grace and truth, compassion and kindness. And holiness.

Then they’ll see the grace of God is powerful and effective and that they, too, need the cure for what ails them.


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