What Does It Actually Look Like To Have Grace-Based Relationships?
How the gospel tangibly takes root in every day relationships
During the building of the Golden Gate Bridge over San Francisco Bay, construction fell badly behind schedule because several workers had accidentally fallen from the scaffolding to their deaths. Engineers and administrators could find no solution to the costly delays. Finally, someone suggested a gigantic net be hung under the bridge to catch any who fell. Finally in spite of the enormous cost, the engineers opted for the net. After it was installed, progress was hardly interrupted. A worker or two fell into the net but were saved. Ultimately, all the time lost to fear was regained by replacing fear with faith in the net. Jesus and His grace is the safety net that gives people freedom to love others while knowing that they have nothing to lose and no danger awaiting them.
But, doesn’t this just give people a license to sin?
When Should Grace Be Given?
Always! If it is resurrecting power (Rom. 1:16) then it means that we can’t wait for people to change. They change by hearing about Jesus!
Yet, there are times when it hits hardest:
When someone truly feels the weight of the Law (why we need Law AND Gospel and in that order)
When someone is desperate for power to repent
When someone longs to be reconciled with God
When someone hungers and thirsts for righteousness
We must look for the times when we can “plunge” someone into the waters of the gospel of grace.
So, what does this grace-based living look like in real life?
Marriage
One author has said, “Being known in weakness is the origin of marriage.”
This is why honesty and openness in marriage leading to forgiveness, embrace, or assurance always leads to greater love between two people.
Intimacy (not merely frequently being around someone but also sharing a deep understanding and embrace of that person) is when you know someone as they are rather than what you wish they were. Yes, we want to love someone by helping them grow but we don’t wait to love them until they grow to a certain maturity. We love them before and during their growth.
How does Jesus love us? To be sure, He does not love our sin or sinful nature. This is why He went to the Cross and the Cross is where He was treated as the chief of sinners.
He loves us despite the way we are.
He doesn’t love us because of what we’ll be in heaven (although He is determined to perfect us). He doesn’t love us because of the progress in obedience that we make (although He empowers us to obey and delights in our obedience). He loves us where we are now despite the wretchedness of our sins
Grace-based marriages are filled with humble confession and even more so with trigger-happy forgiveness. Grace-based marriages repent more and more of the self-centered posture and strive to think more about the other. Grace-based marriages drop the past and move forward in love. Grace-based marriages learn to self-sacrifice in order to love the other.
Parenting
Grace-based parenting knows when to use Law and Gospel. It thinks about how to love that individual child the way they are. It is patient especially when sinned against. It is constantly talking about Jesus and His grace. It knows that sometimes the only way to see a changed heart is if you swallow your anger and you show forgiveness. It returns a harsh answer with a gentle tone. It sacrifices one’s own schedule when needed in order to give the child what they need. It holds the child as a greater priority than one’s career. It knows that the healthiest parenting relationships flow from a healthy grace-based marriage. It teaches biblical ethics and godliness but knows that the only power to live in light of this is the gospel of grace.
Friendships
In grace-based friendships you can move towards people in their worst moments. You can forgive them even when it’s most risky. You can return love toward them even when they have hated you. If they sin against you every day and come back every day to humbly confess then you can and should forgive them.
You can embrace someone when no one else will even if it costs you your social status. You can persevere with someone when they’re at their lowest moment. You can absorb their unrighteous anger and return mercy. You can gently and graciously speak the truth in love when they need correction. You can accept honest criticism from them.
There will be the elimination of cliques and exclusive friend groups and it will be replaced with groups that move toward each other. It doesn’t only hang out with certain pockets of people but rather seeks the entire body while also recognizing realistic expectations.
Symptoms of Grace-Based Relationships
Grace-based relationships have a giving posture rather than a taking posture.
The Law puts up strict boundaries but the gospel takes them down.
Others might look on and be frustrated with your foolishness or “recklessness” to be so eager to forgive.
Grace-based relationships are where encouragement abounds and reassurance of love is repeated.
Grace-based relationships know when it’s wise to address something and when to forget the past and move forward. But, even when you address something, it is always for the purpose of being able to move forward in grace.
Even when you come to situations (like Lot and Abraham) where you have to part ways out of wisdom, there is still forgiveness.
It means that we will still love someone even when they’re at their worst.
Freedom means we stop trying to have all the “side hustles”, gatherings, résumés, social media prestige, or anything else to try to show people that we are impressive and worth being around. Freedom means we stop thinking about what others are thinking about us and we start thinking about others just to love them.
We know the gospel of grace is taking root whenever we see that our goal is for others to be more like Jesus than for them to be more like us.
“You’re worried about permissiveness—about the way the preaching of grace seems to say it’s okay to do all kinds of terrible things as long as you just walk in afterward and take the free gift of God’s forgiveness. . .While you and I may be worried about seeming to give permission, Jesus apparently wasn’t. He wasn’t afraid of giving the prodigal son a kiss instead of a lecture, a party instead of probation; and he proved that by bringing in the elder brother at the end of the story and having him raise pretty much the same objections you do. He’s angry about the party. He complains that his father is lowering standards and ignoring virtue—that music, dancing, and a fatted calf are, in effect, just so many permissions to break the law. And to that, Jesus has the father say only one thing: “Cut that out! We’re not playing good boys and bad boys any more. Your brother was dead and he’s alive again. The name of the game from now on is resurrection, not bookkeeping.”