cheap grace

Did you ever notice the principle that when someone doesn’t work or pay for something, then they don’t appreciate it and end up taking it for granted? Perhaps with children especially, you spend a ton of money to buy them some lavish gift for Christmas, because you want to show them how much you love them or make up for some failing that you think you may have as a parent, and observe with pleasure the response on the part of the child when they first open their gifts, but then a few hours later, notice this expensive gift is left lying out in the yard, or already broken and discarded. And it’s very upsetting for the parent, who recognizes how much it cost them, but how little the child appreciates it.

That’s an illustration of what I call cheap grace. Yes, it cost us nothing. We couldn’t buy it. We received it free of charge. But as a consequence we tend not to cherish it as much as we should. However, we need to be reminded that it cost God something. In fact, the cost to God was priceless.

God’s gift of grace was priceless because first of all we don’t understand holiness. We can’t comprehend the horror of sin coming upon the holy God who had never sinned. Who never had an impure thought. Never hated a person. Never lied, even once, even just a little. Never taken what wasn’t His. One of the main reasons I believe God prescribed the ceremonial law in the Old Testament was to teach us about His holiness. How even little, seemingly innocuous details could be an affront to a holy God. And basically, books 2- 5, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy instruct us of the extent of God’s holiness.

But today we basically discount all of that. We love to quote, “we’re not under the law, we’re under grace.” However, a lot of times, I think we are just looking for a license to sin. Romans 6:1 says, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?”

Furthermore, we can’t comprehend the cost to God because we have such a dim view of heaven. We can’t imagine it. We can’t imagine the glory that Christ dwelt in before His incarnation. We can’t imagine the legions of angels attending to Him and obeying His every wish. We can’t imagine the glories of the universe that were under His control and authority. We can’t imagine what it cost God to leave heaven to become man.

We see a baby in a manger and it looks so sweet and innocent and we almost find ourselves looking down on Him in condescending pity at His humble circumstances. And we can’t comprehend that even if He had come as a full blown, mature man with all the riches and grandeur that even Solomon himself enjoyed, it would still have been such a humiliation that it is incomprehensible to us. We read that He humbled Himself to become one of us, and yet we cannot comprehend how much that cost Him.

No, grace was given to us for free, but the cost to God was immeasurable. 2Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” That sounds so cut and dry, so quick and easy, that it goes right over our head. The most vile sinner that ever lived, who committed the most vile sins that can ever be imagined, those sins were placed on Jesus in some supernatural way, and I cannot comprehend what it cost Him.

I know that in the garden of Gethsemane He prayed for it to be taken from Him if there was any other way. And it obviously was not possible in any other way for us to be reconciled to a holy just God, who demanded full payment for our trespasses, and so as our trespasses fell on Him, the Bible says He sweated drops of blood. He was in unbelievable agony, yes from the nails and the whip, but so much more for the little white lie that I told yesterday. My little, momentary impure thought that didn’t really hurt anyone that I indulged in the other day, added even more pain and suffering than 40 lashes with a cat of nine tails.

Oh yes, grace for me was free. It didn’t cost me anything. But Oh, how it cost Him.