For those familiar with Disciplesplanet content, you’ll be aware of our monitoring of what we have the called ‘hyper-grace’ genre in the ever-morphing post-truth soteriology.
Of course, the published work; Second Chance Solution drills down into orthodox protestant theology on salvation, but we also challenged this increasingly unhelpful space in ‘Who Says We Are Undeserving?’
This version of grace doing the rounds has a lot going for it, well from a cultural perspective anyway. It is wonderfully marketable, easily swallowed, but tragically incomplete. It announces forgiveness but whispers nothing of forsaking. It offers safety while removing the guardrails. It assures the traveller that the road is secure—then neglects to mention the cliff edge on the Narrow Way.
Ah, but that is not grace, it is spiritual negligence dressed in welcoming language.
Charles Spurgeon warned the fellow-pilgrim not to say, “I will go hither and thither, and I shall not sin.” The road is muddy and the world is pitch, he wrote. There are robbers at every turn, temptations in every mercy, and snares in every joy. The issue is not whether God is able to keep His people; He certainly is. The issue is whether we imagine His keeping makes watchfulness unnecessary – it does not.
Grace does not abolish vigilance, rather it establishes it - soundly.
The Highway Has a Direction
Proverbs does not describe the upright person merely as someone who dislikes evil in theory. The upright highway turns away from it – it departs. It does not linger at the edge, conduct a risk assessment, build a chair, make excuses, negotiate on lines of holiness and call its proximity “discernment”, or worse ‘relevance’.
It turns away, not toward.
The wisdom of God is not suggesting that believers live frightened, suspicious of every breath, or paralysed by the possibility of failure, God’s precious new construct and resource of underserved favour, empowers us to live larger than the sin-soaked, broken world that enters into the plan of the Restrainer to bring a New Kingdom, not play psycho-social ‘tag’ with the old. It is declaring something far more practical: a guarded life is a protected life, and one (as mentioned) that builds the better ‘other.’
The soul is not usually wrecked in one dramatic moment. More often, it is eroded through tolerated compromises—small permissions, private rationalisations, repeated exposure, unchecked appetites, unguarded thoughts, and casual associations with what God has clearly called us to leave behind.
We do not drift into holiness, no, that journey is intentional. This, for those quick to misuse ultra-Calvinist doctrine, is not ‘working for your salvation’, it is collaborating in it. All developing and deeply formed relationships require this, not least our relationship with our Heavenly Father.
Ah, but be rest assured, we invariably drift elsewhere we are not intentional.
Grace Reigns—But Not Passively
Romans 5:21 tells us that grace reigns through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. Notice the order. Grace reigns through righteousness. It is not a divine arrangement whereby grace excuses what righteousness confronts, nor does it negotiate with it.
Grace is not God lowering the bar of righteousness – remembering that Righteousness is that which receives God’s judicial approval – so we can step in and out with ease. No, the bar is still high, but grace enables and equips us (with indwelling Holy Spirit empowerment) to conform with it. Grace is God, through Christ, bringing us into a new realm where His life, power, righteousness, and Spirit enable us to walk differently.
The cheap version says, “God knows your heart; do whatever you like.” The gospel says, “God knows your heart (and it is deceitful and desperately wicked)—but in Christ He gives you a new one.” But you must take care of it – you must guard it.
The cheap version says, “Don’t worry about the road.” The gospel says, “Watch your way, pray without ceasing, and trust the Keeper of your soul.”
The cheap version makes the narrow way sound like legalism – the Biblical witness presents it as life.
Do Not Customise the Gospel
We live in a consumer culture expertly trained to customise everything: playlists, diets, newsfeeds, identities, spiritualities—and, regrettably, ever-increasingly the gospel itself.
We personalise the gospel rightly when we receive Christ’s saving work as personally necessary and personally transformative. We customise it wrongly when we trim away every demand that threatens self-rule.
The gospel cannot be reduced to: “Believe a few facts, make a decision, receive a benefit, and continue as before.”
Jesus did not merely invite people to admire Him, sample Him, or attach His name to their existing project – He called them to follow Him. And following begins where self-rule ends; deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow. It’s important to note that the Saviours words here are not about ‘permission’, they are about capacity. Matthew 16:24 indicates inability to follow if you don’t take up your cross, and inability to take up the cross if you don’t deny yourself.
Again, for the slow of hearing, this is not salvation by works, it is salvation working.
A person does not guard their way in order to buy God’s acceptance. They guard their way because, having been rescued from darkness, they now know the road matters. They have been transferred from the control – the coercion – of Satan, into the Reign of the Son. Their feet, habits, desires, loyalties, and direction must increasingly reflect that new citizenship.
The Dangerous Lie of Security
Spurgeon’s image is confronting; do not carry a bombshell near a candle. Common actions, he says, are “edged tools”; handle them carefully.
That is not old-fashioned anxiety, it is sober realism – and one so easily dismissed by cheap license masquerading as ‘grace’.
There are places we should not go, conversations we should end, influences we should refuse and screens we should close. We most definitely must note patterns we should interrupt, grievances we should surrender and habits we should confess. Unchecked, these are all disturbing detours from the Narrow Way.
We do this not because the Christian life is a joyless retreat from the world, but because life is precious and the soul is worth guarding, especially when it is deepening in its intimacy with the One who created us.
You would not deliberately walk into a firing range without protection and then call the resulting wound “unavoidable.” Nor should we expose ourselves unnecessarily to temptation while presuming upon grace.
Prayer is not a substitute for watchfulness; nor is watchfulness a substitute for prayer. Spurgeon’s counsel is beautifully balanced; having prayed, watch. Guard every thought, word, and action with holy jealousy.
“Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe.”
That is not the prayer of self-sufficiency. It is the confession of a disciple who knows both the weakness of the flesh and the faithful keeping power of the El Elyon – The Most High God.
The Narrow Way Is Grace-Enabled
The narrow way is not narrow because God is reluctant to save. Christ’s invitation is as wide and inclusive as the world: come each and all but, believe, repent, receive, follow. His mercy is not cramped, His atoning work is not small, and His grace is not underpowered.
But the way is narrow because there is only one Lord, one truth, one Cross, one resurrection life, and one Kingdom allegiance. It is in the receiving that exclusivity is required and negotiations with the past end. Notice we said negotiations, not wrestles, as there will be times when your past and its fruit may try to encroach and it is here that we, by His undeserved favour and mercy, wrestle it into submission, not negotiate a co-habitation.
Jesus did not come to improve our autonomy, He came to end it and replace it with communion, obedience, freedom, and life.
So, fellow pilgrim do not boast that you can go “hither and thither” without consequence. Do not mistake access to grace for permission to play with evil; and please do not settle for a Gospel reduced to reassurance without renewal.
- Guard your way.
- Turn from evil.
- Watch unto prayer.
And trust the Father’s power to keep you upright on the only narrow road that leads to life.
Shane Wesley Varcoe – Disciplesplanet.