We should not confuse permissiveness for grace. Grace says, “I love you and forgive you, so you need to stop this sin,” not “I love you and forgive you, so it doesn’t matter what you do.” We are living in a culture that thinks love and forgiveness mean we should permit people to continue in their sin while we continue in our silence. This is not grace, and this is not love. Grace and love will always confront sin, because grace and love are the remedy for sin, not the license to continue in it.
July 29, 2013
Grace is not permissiveness
Posted by Jason Dulle under Hamartiology, Holiness, Theology[9] Comments
Thinking to Believe 
July 29, 2013 at 7:00 pm
How true…Neither is the ‘amount’ of grace determined by the ‘amount’ of sin. “should we continue in sin that grace might abound?”…some might think that sin attracts grace commensurate to its eradication.
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July 29, 2013 at 7:43 pm
Of course but can we determine what sin is really, in others? I think that is a slippery slope nobody should venture upon seeing as how sin like beauty is in the eye of the beholder as Jesus himself observed the way people perceived the sins of others.
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July 29, 2013 at 9:50 pm
Jason –Exactly ! Additionally Titus 2:11 & 12 give a Biblical definition about grace that is nearly always ignored : Grace teaches “us that denying ungodliness & worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously,and Godly in this present world. Thus grace is unmerited favor indeed, but it ALSO is a teacher of righteousness & so couldn’t be any further from being a license to sin as it is often falsely made out to be in practice. We can apply grace’s teaching to others, but only after we have first applied it to ourselves.
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August 1, 2013 at 9:58 am
“We are living in a culture that thinks love and forgiveness mean we should permit people to continue in their sin while we continue in our silence”
I am trying to understand the context of this statement. Are you saying that we need to confront every individual’s behavior, or just those in the Church?
I think in the Church context we need to watch out for others and be there for them to help them if they fall into a some sort of habitual sin. And yes, sin should always be confronted in this context. How you do that should be done respectfully and carefully. I’ve witnessed pastors really botch this up and make a mess of individual’s spiritual health.
On the other hand, I am willing to “permit” unbelievers to keep sinning to their hearts content if they chose to do so. I don’t even like using the word “permit” as it eludes to a type of control. We should not try to control people, even if we have good intentions. My policing of them is not going to make them change their ways, in fact, it will make it worse. As a believer I need to point them to Christ and the Spirit Himself will change their lives.
We need to be paramedics and not policemen.
Naz
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August 13, 2013 at 5:46 am
Hi. Forgive me for coming along and gate crashing one thread with a discussion from another – but, since this is your latest post I’m thinking it might be the one you take a look at soonest.
I’ve been reading your post and the comments on the created-ness of a putatively eternal universe: a contingent being still requires a necessary causal agent (which religions call God) that is (logically) prior to the eternal universe.
I can ‘get’ that intellectually but there seems to be a certain ambiguity in the terminology that requires clarification. I’d be interested in your thoughts:
Surely the ‘eternity’ of the material, contingent and caused universe isn’t going to be of the same (univocal) kind of ‘eternity’ of the necessary being that created it.
No-one (on the whole WWW!) seems to have made that clarification – and yet is seems to be an important one: the eternity of the created universe can’t be of the same nature and order as the eternity of the uncreated cause that is God. There has to be some kind of qualitative difference between the two without falling into some kind of strange panentheistic interpenetration (and I distinguish this from the Thomistic God as continuing cause-of-being of creation – which is a ‘present to’ His creation by immanence etc.)
Thoughts?
Thanks!
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August 20, 2013 at 5:13 pm
Naz,
I had saints in mind, not sinners.
And just so you know, I am not suggesting we need to always be in peoples’ faces pointing out each and every sin. What I am countering is the trend I see in the church today to not address sin at all in people’s lives. Instead, we say stuff like “that’s between them and God,” or “God’s grace will take care of it.” I don’t find a Scriptural basis for that. Sin was confronted, not ignored. Confronting sin with the right motive and attitude is an act of love.
Jason
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August 20, 2013 at 5:14 pm
Anthony, I’m working two jobs right now and haven’t had time to interact with the comments, or post new posts. I will not forget your comment, however, and will respond in due time. Could be days, or could be weeks. Perhaps you can leave another comment and subscribe to the thread to be notified of future responses (if you didn’t already do that).
Jason
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November 13, 2013 at 3:49 pm
Anthony,
I get the distinction you are making between God’s eternal existence and the universe’s eternal existence, and it has merit. Indeed, on its face, there are two ways for something to be eternal: existing outside of time in a timeless state, and existing within time but having no beginning or ending. If God is timeless, then the nature of His eternality would be different than the universe’s, which is based in time. But for someone like me who holds that God is omni-temporal with creation, that distinction would not hold. If both God and the universe are eternal in the sense of being omni-temporal, then the eternal nature of both is the same. They are both “always existing,” which is the basic meaning of “eternal.”
Where I think the distinction lies is not in the kind of eternity experienced by God versus the kind of eternity “experienced” by the universe, but in the kind of being each has. God’s being is necessary, while the universe’s being is contingent in nature. I wrote on this at the following links:
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2012/06/11/is-postulating-an-eternal-god-explanatorily-equivalent-to-positing-an-eternal-universe/
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2012/06/21/even-if-the-universe-is-eternal-it-still-needs-a-cause/
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2010/10/28/causes-vs-explanations/
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/existence-and-necessity/
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2013/04/23/contingency-argument-for-gods-existence/
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2013/02/12/illustrating-the-necessity-of-a-transcendent-cause-even-in-an-eternal-universe/
https://theosophical.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/why-is-there-something-rather-than-nothing/
Check them out.
Jason
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June 26, 2015 at 12:30 am
Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, small minds discuss people. — Admiral Hyman G. Rickover – 1900-1986see more
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