Over the past couple years, I have walked through a season of great brokenness.

Upon the first blow, my response was resentment. I grew bitter and judgmental. Pride distorted my vision and to myself I appeared more holy, more righteous and more acceptable to God.

Self-righteousness does that. It distorts your vision until, in your own eyes, you are the only right one.

Then in 2012 God took me on a journey through 1 Corinthians 13, showing me how this passage speaks to the church, about how our relationship with the body of Christ needs to be.

Suddenly the true grace of Jesus Christ became more real to me than ever before.

I had been focused on God’s holiness and righteousness to a point that couldn’t see His grace and love!

Suddenly I was seeing Jesus in a whole new way!

Now my relationship with Him took on a whole new dimension.

But in the joy of my new discovery of grace, My heart wanted to go to a new extreme.

I fought hard to keep the pendulum from swinging too far in the other direction of hyper-grace, which isn’t really grace at all.

This is important, because there is a great tendency in the body of Christ today to label certain actions grace when they are not grace, while labeling the antithesis judgement when it is not judgment.

It is as if grace and judgment are two camps that are mutually exclusive and divided by an abyss.

But as wise believers who walk in the fear of the Lord, we must find a balance where we walk in true grace that is not afraid to call sin what it is, but still extends loving arms to the world and a brother in sin; that sends out a clarion call for holiness in the church while extending grace to a weak member of the body; that refuses to allow society to determine what is right or wrong and yet sees the world around them with the same compassion Jesus had.

Men and women of God who will weep over the lost, broken and fallen with true agape love!

3 Reasons Why Grace Must Have Balance

1. Without balance it becomes permissive. When grace is not balanced by the holiness and righteousness of God, it grows permissive. Permissiveness is not the nature of God. Nowhere in the Bible do we see that God permits sin. Ever.

In fact, we see just the opposite. The Bible tells us to be holy as He is holy. It says, “Therefore be perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).

The requirement for heaven is perfection.

And all of this would be discouraging for us, if not impossible, if it were not for grace,

Grace enables to do what we could not otherwise do!

Through grace, God forgave our sins, when the penalty should have been death. But He didn’t stop there; grace is in abundant measure to us each day so that we have the power to reject sin and embrace holy living.

Grace doesn’t say, “To err is human. So don’t worry about it.”

It says, “To err is human, but you have Almighty God dwelling in you, so you can rise above sin and live holy!”

That is grace!

2. Without balance it negates Christ’s sacrifice. When grace is not balanced by righteousness and holiness, it permits a measure of sin and insults the sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

If God is prepared to look the other way when we sin, why did He reject His Son on the cross?

Furthermore, why did Jesus die at all?

If some sin is permitted under grace, who decides which sin is permitted and which sin isn’t, and on what verses do we base this assumption?

And if it’s true that some sin is permitted or able to be swept under the rug of grace, then what do we do about heaven? The Bible teaches that perfection is the requirement.

Grace—true grace—enables us to walk in the power that Christ purchased for us when He descended into hell as a victorious warrior and ripped the keys of death, hell and the grave from Satan’s slimy talons!

“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead lives in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit that lives in you” (Rom. 8:11).

This is grace! God bestowing upon us the power to live a new life – resurrection life!

3. Without balance it keeps people enslaved to sin. When grace is permissive and assumes that God will let certain sins slide, it keeps believers enslaved to sin!

Instead of teaching them the truth that Jesus died to free them from sin, we bind them with chains of deception!

Grace—true grace—breaks these chains with the truth that we have been given the power to live free from sin!

That is what Romans 6-8 is all about.

Paul gave us the key to unlock the chains of sin and walk in the freedom of Jesus’ resurrection power!

Yes, he admitted to his own struggle with sin, but he didn’t leave it there! He didn’t leave us hopeless!

He reminded us that while we live here on earth in an earthly body that is at odds with a spirit that is born again and set free. By the grace of God, we now have the power to choose to walk in freedom!

That is the message of grace!

Not easy-believism.

Not permissiveness.

Rather, grace is the power and authority to reject sin and live in the freedom Jesus purchased on the cross!

Grace is so much more than undeserved favor; it is more than just forgiveness of sin. This definition without the rest of the truth about grace is like eating the appetizer and leaving out the main dish!

Grace is also the ability to stand in the power and authority given to us by the blood of Jesus Christ against the power of sin. And when we do sin, inadvertently and unintentionally, we know that we already have an advocate with the Father Jesus Christ. So we don’t have to live under the condemnation of that sin, but have free and full forgiveness right now.

Rosilind Jukic, a Pacific Northwest native, is a missionary living in Croatia and married to her Bosnian hero. Together they live with their two active boys where she enjoys fruity candles, good coffee and a hot cup of herbal tea on a blustery fall evening. Her passion for writing led her to author her best-selling book The Missional Handbook. At A Little R & R she encourages women to find contentment in what God created them to be. You can also find her at Missional Call where she shares her passion for local and global missions. She can also be found at on a regular basis. You can follow her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google +

After making threats for weeks, anonymous hackers have released the private information of millions of users of the Ashley Madison website, billed as the “most successful website for finding an affair and cheating partners” and boasting that it is “the world’s leading married dating service for discreet encounters.”

So much for being discreet.

What lessons can we learn from the release of millions of names of users looking for adulterous hookups?

1. Sooner or later, your sin will find you out (Num. 32:23). Whether in this world or the world to come, if we don’t turn from our sins and renounce them, they will catch up with us and find us out. Count on it.

As Paul wrote to Timothy, “The sins of some people are conspicuous, going before them to judgment, but the sins of others appear later” (1 Tim. 5:24).

One way or another, sooner or later, we reap what we sow, and if you want to avoid an embarrassing harvest, don’t sow embarrassing seeds.

If you knew that tomorrow, the whole world would know about something ugly you did in private today, would you do it?

One day, the whole universe will know. The Ashley Madison hacking is like child’s play compared to what’s coming.

2. Nothing is hidden from God. The real folly of “secret” sin is that it’s not secret at all, and the one whose opinion matters most is the one who sees it all.

We might hide things from our spouses and friends.

We might hide things from our pastors and employers.

Pastors might hide things from their boards and congregations.

But God sees what we do in secret, and if hackers have access to our private information, how much more does the Lord?

Live and act as if you’re in the presence of a holy God, and esteem His approval more highly than the approval of people.

3. It pays to live clean. When you have nothing to hide, you gladly come into the light (John 3:21), and when your conscience is clean, you have confidence before God and man. What price will you put on a clean conscience?

From the ages of 14-16, I was a heavy drug user, sometimes walking down the street with drugs in my pockets (and even a needle), getting on public buses or hitchhiking (the hippie thing to do, back then). And whenever a police car would drive by, my heart would pound since I was breaking the law and I had the evidence on my person.

Once I was born again in late 1971 and drugs were totally out of my life, I remember feeling so clean when the police would drive by. I had nothing to hide.

It’s wonderful to be able to look people in the eye and not wonder, “Do they know? Are they suspicious?” It’s even more wonderful to stand before God and know that there are no skeletons in your closet.

4. Be quick to repent. It’s true that every one of us has fallen short of the mark at some point in our lives, even as believers. We have all said or done some things that are regrettable, things of which we’re ashamed, things we wish we could take back.

But if we try to cover our sins we will not succeed; if we confess and forsake them, we will find mercy (Prov. 28:13). If we get rid of the skeletons in our closet (by God’s grace, they can be dealt with fully), then no skeletons will ever be exposed.

The temptation, of course, is to cover one sin with another sin, to cover the adultery with lies or to cover the pornography with deception, but that only makes things worse, like fighting depression by getting drunk. When we add sin to sin, we only compound our difficulties.

That means, as hard as it is, coming clean before God and important individuals—often meaning those whom it’s most difficult for us to come clean with—is the path to freedom.

Many a marriage has been destroyed by lack of confession.

Many a marriage has been saved by honest confession.

When we cover our sins, it’s like trying to swim across the river wearing a heavy lead coat. We only sink ourselves.

5. God’s Word is eternally relevant. Ashley Madison subscribers would be shocked to see how these words written more than 2,500 years ago speak to us today.

As it is written in Proverbs 6, “Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one walk upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned? So he who goes in to his neighbor’s wife; whoever touches her will not be innocent. … But whoever commits adultery with a woman lacks understanding; he who does it destroys his own soul. A wound and dishonor will he get, and his reproach will not be wiped away” (vv. 27-29, 32-33).

As for the owners and workers of the adultery website itself, Jesus speaks to this quite directly: “Woe to the world because of temptations! For it must be that temptations come, but woe to that man by whom the temptation comes!” (Matt. 18:7).

Both the existence of an adultery website and the hacking of that site are no laughing matters, and if the subject of adultery makes you nervous because of something you’ve got to hide, make it right today in the sight of God and man.

His abundant mercy is waiting for you, and the godly sorrow you experience today will lead to freedom and joy tomorrow.

Michael Brown is the host of the nationally syndicated talk radio show “The Line of Fire” and is the president of FIRE School of Ministry. His newest book is Outlasting the Gay Revolution: Where Homosexual Activism Is Really Going and How to Turn the Tide. Connect with him on Facebook at AskDrBrown or on Twitter @drmichaellbrown

Source : Chrisma News