Don't Make Grace A Doctrine!

I have a brother from a different congregation whom God has placed in my life. We work in the same Company but not the same Section and we grow in grace together. We share what God had shown us from time to time and we would come together at His appointed time to share and encourage each other. By His grace, though we are of different congregation, we have the same flow and receive same revelation from the Lord. Our Company vehicle that is allocated to me use to be our little church.

Last week we had a change to meet for breakfast; and he shared with me about his own encounter among his new found circle of fellowship; and they are having their own Bible study session. I was told that a group of youngsters have been trained to preach grace. They emphasis on memorizing the Bible verses and they are good at that. They are very sharp to identify grace in their sharing and they are very quick in quoting Bible verses. The thing is, after a few sessions of attending their Bible study session; he sensed that they tend to beat around the bush with their sharing. The “life” is not there…

That was what he meant and I would agree with him because I could not smell the “aroma”of grace. It gave me a feeling of a pre-programmed bible study session with a little bit of the aroma of legalism.

Can this be another coincidence again? The Lord just led him to me and allowed him to share this matter with me right after my post on “New Wine & the New Wineskin”.

My peace was disturbed, and these are the questions that rose up from the inside of me…

- Is Grace a Person or a doctrine?
- My goodness, if memorizing Bible verses is the requirement, and I am not good in memorize Bible verses, can I still receive grace from Jesus?
- Can we kick aside Jesus and share grace with others?
- If preaching grace of God can be taught, can this be another “religion”?
- Can a man train a man to know grace?

My goodness, as I look back, I don’t think I had known the verses first before I got to know grace. The verses in the Bible did not really change my life; in fact, they bind me. It was Jesus, who had changed my life. It was when I got to know Jesus then I started to know His grace and then the Bible verses. The Bible verses then started to set me free…

Men in their fallen nature can never know grace without the help of the Holy Spirit because grace is divine in its origin. Men can never know grace if they could not believe Jesus loves them. Men can never know grace if Jesus did not finish His work on the cross. Men can never know grace if Jesus was not glorify. Men can never know grace if the Holy Spirit is not given. Men can never know grace if they do not believe that their sin is forgiven (past, present and future). Men can never know grace if they do not know that they are righteous in God’s eye. Men can never know grace if they do not know they are in Christ…

2 Peter 1:2 ~ Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord.

Grace is a Person; don’t make grace a doctrine… If Grace is a doctrine, this will end up in another form of religion…