Having Grace With Yourself

Hi Tina,

You asked me recently, “how do I have grace with myself as I grow in wisdom?” I thought this question deserved a whole letter, so here we are. To answer your question, we need to consider two things: first, how should we view our sin (or deviations from wisdom); second, if grace is the correct response, how do we administer it to ourselves?

To answer the first question, we really need to ask how God views us and our sin. This is pretty easy, since he tells us. Sin is worthy of death (Rom. 6:23), it’s abhorrent (Rom. 12:9), he hates it (Ps. 97:10, Prov. 8:13, Ps. 11:5), and it’s worth being barred from heaven for (Eph. 5:5, John 3:16). I could go on, but I think we’re on the same page. Since we want to view things how God sees them, we are not fans of sin. Before we were saved, we too were hateful, abhorrent, and worthy of death. We were unable to be righteous. Now, as Christians, we’re holy with the option to sin. We can repent! God kills the fattened calf (Luke 15) each time we return to him. Through God’s grace, we can get back into fellowship with him.

The overarching goal of the Christian life is to become like God. This necessarily means that we are not like God, and must work in that direction. When we’re young with God, we associate “sin” with BIG sins: murder, rape, theft, et cetera. But as we mature, the sins we consider to be “BIG sins” are ones we wouldn’t have thought of that way in the beginning. Disrespect, white lies, selfishness, bad attitudes–as we become like God, we begin to see these “small” sins how he sees them. To God, they’re all big sins, and worthy of damnation. The list in 2 Tim. 3:1-5 illustrates this well. Sin is sin.

What if whatever you did was a “deviation from wisdom” rather than sin? There are lots of options in this world that are not sinful, but have varying levels of wisdom. What kind of sandwich to have for lunch? Which loads of laundry to wash? Some of these choices have consequences that could be sinful, but the choices themselves don’t have to be. For example, suppose you decided to wash the linens, but didn’t realize your husband was out of socks. Failing to love and serve your husband well is sinful. The simple choice of which laundry load to run was not sinful.

Whether your action was sin or simply unwise, at the end of the day, you didn’t choose what was best. Jesus died for all of our sins so we could learn to choose wisdom. Once we are back in fellowship, how we sinned doesn’t matter. Forgiven is forgiven. All of our sins are covered with the blood of the lamb.

So you may be in fellowship with God, but it’s eleven PM and your husband has no socks. What now? How do you view yourself in light of this? I believe this is what you meant when you asked your original question.

This brings us to our second question. If grace is the right response, how do we administer it to ourselves? First, grace is what God shows us when he forgives us – unmerited favor. We do nothing at all to earn it! God shows us grace completely on his own.

As an aside, does this mean he also has the option to not show us grace? He can choose to damn us for our sin, because he is God. However, he has promised us that our sins are forgiven for those who are in Christ. This means that when you confess your sin, turn away from it and ask to be received back into fellowship, he will always say yes. This is grace.

At this point, you should begin to see the problem with your original question. “How do I have grace with myself as I grow in wisdom?” The question necessitates that the grace you’re receiving comes from you. But if you’re getting grace from God, do you need grace from yourself? Asking this question means you think the grace of God is insufficient!

The only appropriate response to God’s forgiveness is obedience. “Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake.” (Rom. 1:5). We are called to obedience. This means we are to receive forgiveness and say “thank you”, and then set about continuing to be obedient. But what does that mean? “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does God require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8) So in fact, O mortal, saying you need your own grace is idolatry! Are you your own judge, that you can judge your own case? Are you your own ruler, that you can show yourself mercy? Are you walking humbly with…yourself? We are called to accept his grace and move on, not to manufacture our own grace. God’s cooking the fattened calf and you’re over here like “I can cook my own calf, thank you very much!” Yeah, you and what calf?

Tina, you’re building your house out of sand on a foundation of pop psychology. You cannot have grace with yourself as you grow in wisdom, or any other time, because you are not the judge. In fact, you need to repent of the desire to show yourself grace! God is the one who gets to dispense grace, not you. All you can do is receive it.

So, the answer is, you don’t. If you’ve been trying to show yourself grace, confess it as sin, then be obedient and accept God’s forgiveness. You were in fellowship before and you’re in fellowship after, so continue about your work. In a practical context, this means to ask your husband if he’d like clean socks tomorrow or if you may go to bed, and if he says clean socks, go run the laundry with a cheerful heart, rejoicing that you get to be obedient to your husband and to God! Rejoice, I say. Then, on the next laundry day, learn from your mistakes and consider the socks.

Blessings,

Auntie Rachel