Outside The Box

The new covenant of grace had opened up an ultimate gateway for the gentiles to approach God without having to observe Jewish Law. The Gospel was designed to bring good news to the poor in spirit, to proclaim freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, bring freedom to the oppressed and to claim the year of the Lord’s favour.

Luke 4:18 ~ 19  "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

Ironically, despite of its harshness, the law offers the proud religious people the opportunity to sing their praises to their self-righteousness. To these law observers, the notion of free grace is far too cheap and is “outside the box”. The Pharisees in Jesus’ day were a good example of this scenario. Bold souls who think "outside the box" have often been dismissed as eccentric, burned as heretics or even "stoned to death". Even in our time, those sincere and good intent Christians appear to have little tolerance for those who stray too far from their denomination traditions - no matter how biblically sound their arguments are…

To many, the offer of grace seems far too confronting to their logical mindset. They are reluctant to be reminded of their own spiritual nakedness and poverty. Like Adam, they look for fig leaves to hide themselves from God and creating religions to make convenient fig leaf.

In fact, it is observable throughout Church history and even it is observable in our day. Time and time again when God’s grace has visited the Church, the church institution has often either neglected it or sought to nullify it. They have paid too much attention on signs and wonders; their self-righteousness blinded  them from seeing that these signs and wonders are the pointers to His grace!

The Gospel of grace has not been fully realized widely by many Christian. Though shafts of light have periodically cut through history, the Church has remained in the shackles of mixture of law and grace, plus unhelpful traditions and denomination rulings. As such, the Gospel of grace which make up of two third of our New Testament Bible, remain classified as “outside the box” in many churches.