Grace is a Slippery Slope

Grace is a Slippery Slope
​(When human weakness catches up to our best intentions)

​Some time ago, I was invited to a function where people I particularly didn’t like were expected to attend.  So having arrived there, before I got out of my car, I prayed for the Holy Spirit to fill me and asked for the grace to be nice to them, no matter what.  God answered my prayer that evening.  Not only did I act nice to them, I began to genuinely start to like them.

But just as I was congratulating myself for being such a great guy while driving home from the event, a car cut in front of me.  So I angrily blew my horn, while a bunch of expletives came to mind, and for the next several minutes engaged the driver in a childish race to overtake each other.  There you have it - from gracious Christian, to raving lunatic driver.

More recently, I was feeling all “holy” and spirit-filled in church worship, singing out praises with heartfelt devotion.  But all it took was a side-glance at the person beside me to lose that moment of grace.  I thought, “How awful is his singing . . . why does he have to sing so loud?” There I go again - delighting in grace one moment, then in an instant, thinking like a fool.

At that instant in church, I immediately remembered (spurred by the Holy Spirit no doubt) what C.S. Lewis once wrote of going to church worship:

“I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit.”[i]  

What kind of a man am I to think of the meanest things in a place of worship? 

I feel an awesome responsibility to be the perfect Christian and protect my witness at all costs.  I want to show grace wherever I can.  But grace is a slippery slope and I find myself slipping and falling down time and time again.  It’s so frustrating.

My only consolation is that even the most devoted of Christ’s saints were no exception to this situation.  Paul lamented: “For I do not understand my own actions.  For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate" (Romans 7:15).

Even with the best intentions to obey God, why do we keep stumbling? Does God want us to constantly embarrass ourselves with our behaviour?  Is it his will for us to feel like failures?  How can we glorify God if we keep making others stumble?

So what do we do when we stumble?  The worst we can do is to constantly beat ourselves in the head and wallow in guilt and shame.  It is not God’s will for us to go through life with bowed heads and sit in sackcloth and ashes every moment of the day.

Firstly, we should remember that, while sin has been forgiven in our lives, it still resides in our hearts as our inheritance from Adam (Romans 5:12-14).  That is why we will never be perfect.  Accepting or reminding ourselves of the fact that we are not perfect creatures is the place to start.  Again, remember that the most dedicated of God’s people – Peter, David, Abraham, Moses, the list goes on – committed egregious sins.

Secondly, I believe that is God’s way to keep us humble.  In fact, I specifically notice that I slip just at that very moment when I start to feel a bit too proud of myself.  I don’t think that’s a coincidence.  God loves us too much to allow pride to creep back into our hearts.  While painful, I thank God for those humbling moments.

What we do is to quickly pick ourselves up and move on.  We should not say, “Oh I’ll confess that sin later.”  That only postpones the recovery process.  The time to confess is the time you realize your sin.  That is the only way we can allow  grace to start working again and continue to be instruments of God in our lives.  We pick ourselves up by immediately repenting of and confessing our sins and - this is important - actually believing that God has forgiven our sin (1 John 1:9).  If we don’t believe our sin is forgiven, we continue to be weighed down with guilt.

While there is a moment to think about and feel sorry for what I did and figure out a way to avoid it in the future, I find it is best not to fret, overanalyze or mull over it any longer than needs to be.  We must be especially careful not to let the devil gain a foothold in our minds with his accusations. 

Oswald Chambers talks about the time when the apostles must have felt despair when they were found by Jesus to be sleeping in the garden of Gethsemane and they realized they should have been awake to keep him company.  But Jesus did not allow them any time for self-pity.  He said, “Rise, let us get going.”  Jesus wanted them to get over it quickly and move on.[ii]  Proverbs 24:16 says, "For though the righteous fall seven times, they rise again."

We move on by the grace of God.  Paul showed us the way when he said, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 24-25a).  We cannot proceed to improve our lives going forward without the grace of God.  Not only do we repent and confess, but we also ask God, through Jesus, for the strength and wisdom to stand up and start walking again.  “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength” (Philippians 4:13).

We also should learn and recognize our vulnerabilities so that we can anticipate situations where we can stumble.  When we know we are at risk, we can put on God’s armour, praying at all times in the Spirit, so that we may able to resist yielding to our weaknesses and to temptations (Ephesians 6:13-18).
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We stumble.  We fall.  Sometimes, we even drag others to the ground with our foibles and weaknesses.  But we should not be discouraged.  Despite our imperfections, we are God’s masterpiece, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared for us to do (Ephesians 2:10).  The good, the bad and the ugly will not deter God’s plan for us.  We cling to the fact that the good work that God started in us, he will continue until the day Jesus returns (Philippians 1:6).

To him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy - to the only God our Saviour be glory, majesty, power and authority, through Jesus Christ our Lord, before all ages, now and forever more! Amen. (Jude 1:24)
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A.G. Astudillo

[i] C. S. Lewis, “Answers to Questions on Christianity,” God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1970), pp. 61–62.
[ii] Oswald Chambers, My Utmost for His Highest”, February 18 entry (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Discovery House Publishers, 1992).