100% Natural “Style”

I don’t appreciate the feeling of being bamboozled. That awful moment when you realize that what you have purchased is something entirely different than what you thought it was.

Several weeks ago I had it happen at breakfast while drinking apple juice. I noticed the subtle way that the label was suggesting that there was something more to the story behind what I was drinking. There I was drinking what tasted like, smelled like, and even looked like 100% natural apple juice.

But it wasn’t, inasmuch as apple trees do not naturally produce one single huge concentrated apple per tree. The stuff is made from concentrate and made in the “style” of natural.

When again did natural become a “style”?

*Bamboozled*

I kind of felt the same way after reading a local chain restaurant promoting their “NEW SIGNATURE” sandwiches, only that time I caught the apparent contradiction and simply shook my head. But this time I had PAID for the stuff and was drinking juice that had the appearance of what I was looking for, but that in essence, wasn’t it at all.

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I wonder sometimes if we don’t do this with grace?

You know, where we sing songs with lyrics like “NOTHING but the blood of Jesus…” and read verses from Hebrews that state:

“Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more” (10:17)

“So also Christ died once for all time as a sacrifice to take away the sins of many people. He will come again, not to deal with our sins, but to bring salvation to all who are eagerly waiting for him.” (9:28).

Or others from Romans that tell us:

“Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1)

“For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.” (8:15-16)

…only to then include a bunch of our personal fears or biases – ultimately additives – that take the amazing right out of grace and that suggest we still have payments to make on our love lay-away plan, or that God is still angry at His family as He punishes us with all sorts of crazy stuff. Is our message “God is Love, so you better be VERY, VERY afraid?”

Does the message of the Gospel of GOOD NEWS smell, look like, and initially taste like grace, and yet leave us with the bitter after-taste of religion and self-performance to maintain fellowship with God?

Do we present a God who is loving during the preview weekend and orientation, but then turn him into a stern task master once the “application for enrollment” is accepted and classes begin?

Our world is thirsty for forgiveness and reconciliation and love from God. And I believe God wants us to be 100% representatives of Jesus, who is Grace himself, and not adopt a “style” that merely resembles God’s unfailing, never-ending, undeserved, unearned forgiveness and love for us.

“So we have stopped evaluating others from a human point of view. At one time we thought of Christ merely from a human point of view. How differently we know him now! This means that anyone who belongs to Christ has become a new person. The old life is gone; a new life has begun! And all of this is a gift from God, who brought us back to himself through Christ. And God has given us this task of reconciling people to him. For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And he gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation. So we are Christ’s ambassadors; God is making his appeal through us. We speak for Christ when we plead, “Come back to God!” For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.” – The Apostle Paul in II Corinthians 5:16-21

I’m thirsty for Grace. The 100% All JESUS kind of grace.