In Him Only: Cheap Grace

Cheap Grace

By Richard Maffeo

We embark today on a series of messages I preached 18 months ago, during the summer of 2019. I feel it important to revisit those messages, especially now. Those who were here last week will remember I spoke of the soon return of Jesus, and how Christians must prepare ourselves for persecution.

The subject of preparation is far too vast to adequately cover in just one message, and so I will spend the next several weeks focusing on God’s provision for us in the darkening days in which we now live.

Some time ago I read a story about a pastor who received a call from a funeral home director. The man asked the pastor if he would please speak at the graveside of a young man who’d recently died. The director told the pastor, “You’re my last hope. All the other pastors I’ve called have declined."

When this minister asked why they’d declined, he was told that the deceased had died of HIV/AIDS.

When the pastor arrived at the funeral home, he discovered that the attendees were all men, and he realized many, if not all of them, were gay.

When he finished his words in the pouring rain at the gravesite, the men stayed and asked if he would read various Bible verses which they’d remembered from their childhood. Nearly two hours later, the men thanked him and said it was the first time they could hear Bible verses without a sermon of condemnation accompanying it.

I understood his point about story’s point about the pastor’s kindness in reading the men’s favorite childhood passages. But it appeared from the story that that is all the pastor did.

And THAT is the problem in a growing number of churches today. Clergy quote the happy verses and ignore the judgment verses. They give people false and damning hope by focusing exclusively on what people want to hear and not what they need to hear.

To do that is NOT an expression of Christ's love, who calls all men and women to repentance, to turn from their sins and live holy lives. What we do – what priests and bishops and teachers and other church leaders who do what this pastor did – what they do is help the sinner go happily on his or her way to an eternal hell. That is certainly one reason the Holy Spirit impelled Paul to write these words to young and timid Timothy:

I solemnly charge you in the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who is to judge the living and the dead, and by His appearing and His kingdom: preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfill your ministry. (2 Timothy 4)

The Lord Jesus warns us that the path that leads to life is a very narrow one, and consequently, only a few find it. But the road that leads to an eternal hell is a broad one – and lots of people are on that road.

Part of the reason so many travel that broad road is that they hear from pulpits and read in so-called Christian books what is known as cheap grace. Cheap grace is based on a cross-less Christianity, a Christianity exclusively focused on God’s love and rarely if ever on His multiple warnings and examples of His justice and His judgement.

At the end of the 19th century, William Booth, founder of the Salvation Army warned of cheap grace this way: “The chief dangers which will confront the coming [20^th] century will be religion without the Holy Spirit, Christianity without Christ, forgiveness without repentance, salvation without regeneration, politics without God, and heaven without hell.”

In his book, The Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer referred to 'cheap grace this way: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves. Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession...Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”

I will add, cheap grace is when people call Jesus their savior, but they do not follow Jesus as their Lord of life and lifestyle. Cheap grace is that grace which costs us little, or nothing. It allows us to go to church, to sing, to read, to kneel, to stand, to receive Holy Communion – but there remains no change of heart, no inner conviction by the Holy Spirit, a demand of conscience toward full and undiluted obedience to the message of the Scriptures.

Cheap grace tells us that as long as we make a profession of faith, we are saved. But salvation is so much more than simply mouthing the words “Jesus is Lord.” It is so much more than being baptized. It is so much more than praying the Sinner’s Prayer or signing a book or walking an aisle.

We are saved by a living and active faith that manifests itself in repentance, obedience, and love for God and our neighbor. As the Lord Jesus said, “Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” And there is good reason the apostle Paul, in his letter to Titus, refers to good works no less than six times in those three short chapters.

Remember too, holiness itself is a manifestation of our faith and obedience to God. Living a life of holiness is a work to imitate Jesus Christ – and if anyone doesn’t think THAT is a work – to imitate Christ, then they’ve never tried it. Holiness means putting on Christ, living as Christ – in growing obedience to the Father’s commandments.

Hear what the apostle John wrote: “By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” (1 John 2:3-4)

In fact, this is one of the verses I often quote to people who excuse themselves from being a Christian because of hypocritical church-goers. Yes, I tell them, such hypocrites are liars who may fool themselves, but they do not fool the Great Judge. Furthermore, such hypocrites in the pew and in the pulpit are nothing less than Satan’s Fifth Column in the ranks of the Church.

For those of you who do not know about fifth columns, a fifth column is a group of people within a larger group and who undermine the larger group from within. The activities of a fifth column are often secretive, clandestine, and involve in sabotage and disinformation with the ultimate goal of destroying the larger group.

Satan’s Fifth Column dates back easily to the first century. St. Paul talked about them in his second letter to the church at Corinth: 2 Corinthians 11:13-15 For such men are false apostles, deceitful workers, disguising themselves as apostles of Christ. No wonder, for even Satan disguises himself as an angel of light. Therefore it is not surprising if his servants also disguise themselves as servants of righteousness, whose end will be according to their deeds.

God help us to not fall prey to the fifth columns in our political and educational structures – and even in some of our churches! Like pastors and priests and other church leaders who tell people what they want to hear and not what they NEED to hear. Who walk arm in arm with those who persist in living in sin and calling it normal, who call evil good and good evil, who substitute darkness for light and bitter for sweet.

Do you think that is not happening in many of our churches across America today? Then you are not paying attention.

And oh, Lord! Keep us all here from becoming ourselves fifth columns, spreading that scandalous heresy of cheap grace, teaching others and being content ourselves with a one-time confession of faith, but never praying and agonizing to make Jesus not only our savior, but our full-time, and all the time Lord, King, Ruler, Master over every nook and cranny and corner of our life. Oh God! Please help us! Please shake us up. Please remove the chaff from our hearts that we may live fruitfully for you, bringing honor and glory always to you.

Salvation is not a transaction; it’s a transformation. Here is what the Holy Spirit tells us through St. Paul:

“I beseech you, therefore brethren, but the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living and HOLY sacrifice to God which is your reasonable service of worship. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind . . . . (Romans 12:1-2)

As I prepared this message, I thought of an incident I had years ago with a spider’s web. I didn’t see the web until I nearly ran into it. The thing was virtually invisible. If sunlight hadn’t suddenly glistened off its strands, I would have walked right into it. So, there I stood, inches from the biggest, ugliest, hairiest spider I’d ever seen. I was glad I wasn’t a hapless bug flitting through the air, totally clueless about the spider’s trap in front of me.

But like a spider’s web, in the world of the supernatural, Satan’s subtleties are often invisible to the natural eye – which is why it’s so incredibly easy to get caught in his web. And most of the time we don’t even realize we’re in his web until he has devoured our health, wealth, homes, and families.

Sometimes even our lives.

There is no better way, there is no surer way, to avoid Satan’s web than to see the light of God’s word glisten off its strands as a warning: Danger! Don’t go any further.

That’s why the Lord Jesus, I am sure, said this during His Sermon on the Mount: (Matthew 7:24ff) “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

Whether or not we obey the prophets and the historic exhortation of the Christian Church, each of which exhort us to know God’s word, Satan remains patiently waiting in his web. Problem is, we won’t see it unless God’s light glistens off the web.

So, what will we each do with this message? I hope at least five things:

1. Pray that the Holy Spirit will give to you a hunger to obey God in every nook and cranny and corner of your life. The grace of God that sent Jesus to pay the penalty our sins deserved was not cheap grace. That grace required of God an immeasurable cost. And our response to His grace must also cost US something – that being ever-growing obedience to His commandments, even and perhaps especially when we don’t want to obey.

2. Be quick to repent and turn from your sins when the Holy Spirit gets your attention about something you have done or not done.

3. Determine again to faithfully read God’s word, to be single-minded in your pursuit of Christ and to seek godly and Christ-honoring teachers to answer your questions as you seek Him through His word.

4. Hide God’s word in your heart – even if it is a verse here and there. Hide it in your heart so you will know when the fifth columns all around us whisper their subtle lies in an attempt to sabotage your eternal soul.

5. And do not neglect the spiritual armor of God provides for our protection.

Spiritually dark days have fallen across our land and over the Church. That is why we will spend the next several weeks looking at that spiritual armor spoken of in Ephesians chapter six.