Thread by @theboyonthebike

The gospel of grace is shocking, scandalous, & offensive when rightly understood. Nothing drives me more bananas than when people try to water down the scandal w/moralism—or my MOST hated move—create some binary w/grace & something else, as if grace is just one end of a seesaw.

The most “Biblical” sounding way people do it is to use John 1.14, which describes Jesus as “full of grace and truth.” This is taken to mean “well you need grace on one hand BUT you need to BALANCE it with truth”—which doesn’t get the construction right at all.

The idea is more that the truth of Christ is grounded in grace, that his truth IS gracious; that grace is the only truth there is. There is no binary here that allows you to moderate or temper grace with moralism.

Another version of this is when people bluster that there’s too much concern in the Church now for justice (a bizarre claim), & that there’s not enough emphasis on “righteousness.” NEIN!

Any astute reader of Scripture will see that as the story of God & God’s people unfolds, the righteousness that God has called for all along IS a life of radical mercy and justice. This has ALWAYS been the essence of “holy” living!

It's the long dispute between priests & prophets, the former emphasizing purity codes, ritual cleanness, institutional self-preservation; the prophetic critique maintaining that God was NEVER interested in sacrifices, showy fasts, religious festivals—but justice for the oppressed

Jesus DECISIVELY sides with the prophetic tradition over against the priests, & even where Jesus himself is described as our high priest according to Hebrews, upends the role by being a PROPHETIC priest who reinterprets the role of the priest in a radically prophetic way.

Jesus consistently scandalizes the religious, & insists (via Matthew 25) that judgment will not be be based on whether or not we’ve been naughty, but whether we’ve been compassionate to our neighbors.

God IS love; & the love that God is, is wild and fiery—it can feel like it might incinerate you from a posture of pride & resistance. But make no mistake: the definitive revelation of God in Jesus of Nazareth, is that God IS Love.

There’s no balancing that.