Grace

Jordan McKinney

I thought that this week for my blog post I would walk you through a journey that I have been on for almost two years now on discovering grace. This discovery of grace that I am talking about is not a theology of grace, but really how my theology of grace, what I know and believe about grace, and how I was living my life weren’t in alignment. I hope that this will help you as you learn to abide with Jesus and live in the freedom that He gives us.  

So real quick about me: I grew up in church my whole life. My grandpa is a pastor, my dad was a pastor, most of my uncles are pastors, even my brother is a pastor. So really I have never known different in my life, and I grew up knowing what grace is. I had a great knowledge base of verses and teachings on the grace that Jesus gives us, but for some reason I never really felt that freedom that those verses talk about. 

Almost two years ago now I was in an intensive small group where we were reading books, journaling, and diving deep into community. It was in this group that we started talking about grace, and where I had a huge lightbulb moment in my journey with Jesus. I realized that I wasn’t living the grace that Jesus had given me. I was still trying to live by the “Law” without me realizing it. For my whole life I had been trying to earn a right relationship with God. Really how I viewed grace was as if I received forgiveness from sin, but now I had to go and live a holy life. That whole “Go and sin no more” thing was big in church when I was growing up. It felt like my relationship with God was doing a tightrope walk up in the air. I had to stay on the “straight and narrow path” so to speak. If I messed up and sinned, or if I had gone a few days without doing any type of devotions, it felt like I had fallen off the tight rope and grace was this safety net to catch me so that I could go back up and try all over again. This really produced a “works” based relationship with God where I felt like if I was doing good, then God and I were good. But if I messed up at all then I had to start all over again from the start.  

I had this lightbulb moment when I realized what I know about grace is that all my sins, past, present, and future, are forgiven. They have been washed away like they never happened and are separated as far as the east is from the west. We are given a life of freedom in right relationship with God, and nothing can come between that. How I felt, though, was a completely different story.  

I have always had that tightrope feeling. It is a feeling of being trapped and almost like you are in this never ending cycle of being good > messing up > feeling shame > repenting (promising you will be different next time) > starting fresh > and back to being good again (at least for a while). This cycle is what a works-based, or law-based relationship feels like. It is trying to earn your salvation and your right relationship with God by the works and actions that you do. I didn’t think that what I had been doing was wrong, and there are a few reasons why I think I got trapped in this cycle.  

First is because of how I was taught. I don’t think that any of my pastors and leaders had bad intentions, but I just think that there was something missing from what they taught. The message always felt like “Good, now you are saved and are a Christian. Your sins are forgiven! Now work really hard to never sin ever again, and if you do you can always repent and ask for forgiveness. Try to live the fruit of the Spirit and like the Woman Caught in Adultery, go and sin no more.” There was grace there, but there was also a lot of work mixed into the messaging.  

The second reason that I think I got stuck here was that I wanted to be the one to actually do it. I wanted to live a righteous and holy life and be the guy that could actually accomplish this! I like to blame this one on my McKinney genetics.  

Third is part of my personality. With my personality, part of my deep fear and motivation is the fear of being irrelevant or incompetent. It was really hard for me to try and not earn my way on my own. I wanted to bring something to the table, if you get what I am saying.  

Really what it took for me to find freedom was a lot of letting go and surrendering. I had to let go of some unintentional beliefs that I had picked up over the years. I had to let go of some pride and fears to fully surrender to Jesus. I really had to let go of the idea that I could do or bring anything of worth on my own. We like to talk a lot about this when it comes to salvation, but it remains true throughout our life as well. There is nothing good that we can offer him, it is only Christ in us that makes us right with God.  

Recently Ephesians 2 has become one of my favorite passages of Scripture. Verses 4-10 really nail home this idea of not being able to earn anything. It says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” 

So how do we live out a Christian walk? Well, what I have turned my focus on is abiding in Christ. I don’t have to try and do anything. If you remember the Fruit of the Spirit, Jesus talks about how He is the vine and we are the branches. If we abide and remain in Him, we will produce fruit. So really I don’t have to do anything. If I want to be more loving, patient, kind, and good, I just have to be with Jesus. It is about surrendering every part of your life to Him. Inviting Him into your decisions, seeking Him in times of stress and worry. It is really our connection to Jesus that produces the life we want. For the first 29 years of my life I had tried to live a holy life and never found that it aligned with Scripture. The moment I stopped trying to earn anything and just focused on abiding in Christ I found such deep freedom. The less I try and the more I focus on abiding, the more I have found my life aligns with what the Bible promises, and the fruit just comes.  

I hope and pray that you find the grace, freedom, and relationship with Jesus that the scripture promises us. You are righteous, not because of anything you have done or ever will do. You are righteous already because of what Jesus has already done. Nothing can ever change that for us. Live in the deep love and freedom He has given you!