Grace is funny.  She draws fire from all sides, yet she always prevails.
 
She offends some because when she shows up, she points out the sin she intends to heal and redeem.  She offends others because she gives herself so freely—she really ought to be earned.
 
There is a new attack on Grace, and its source may surprise you.  Maybe you’ve heard this refrain lately: “Your worship is not acceptable to God until you’ve acted in mercy toward the poor.”  In other words, if you think Grace is free, well, you just don’t get it!  No, this isn’t coming from liberal protestant moralists.  It’s coming from megachurch, non-denominational evangelicals like Francis Chan—and it is nothing less than a frontal assault on Grace.
 
Chan is an inspiration (CT article: Crazy Passion).  His challenges are well-founded, his radical discipleship is profound and genuine, and his reshaping of church is right on.  But he’s wrong on salvation—and that wrinkle in his theology has been taken up like a blunt instrument by those who would attack free Grace.  What Chan is saying is simply that if you're saved, it's because an encounter with Jesus, and Jesus changes lives.  Chan conflates justification and sanctification—you’re not saved until you’re holy and if you’re not holy, you’re not saved.  Throughout Crazy Love Chan is so hopeful that his teaching won't be used this way!  He regularly pauses to say “I’m really a grace salvation guy!  Don’t use this to stand for works righteousness!”  He clearly knows that his challenge could easily be taken as an attack on grace. 
 
How is it abused?  It’s a simple turn.  What others are using of Chan is this:  if you're not living in radical discipleship, then you're not saved.  You don’t know Jesus if you’re not abandoning all you have, departing from all meaningful relationships, selling your possessions and moving to live among the world’s powerless and destitute.  Demonstrate your salvation by radical discipleship, or stop talking about your relationship to Jesus—If you’re not doing what I’m doing, you don’t know the Lord.
 
I understand the critique.  Southern evangelicals are haunted by the specter of the “spirituality of the church,” the old doctrine that church is a place for spiritual things, not issues of social justice.  This left believers on the wrong side of slavery, racism, and civil rights.  For them social justice is now a corner of the field worth fighting for (no matter what Glenn Beck might say!).  Church is not fully church until it expresses God’s care for all in the city.
 
Other evangelicals have thrived in the suburbs.  The faith they have passed on to their children is marked by extravagant camp experiences, food fights, and club meetings held in 1500 square foot basements of McMansions—while the majority of the world’s human beings live on less than two dollars per day.  These young Christians can easily feel like they’ve missed something.  The gospel must mean more sacrifice than this.  Grace can’t come so cheap.
 
How grateful I am for the man who took me and a few friends on a short-term mission trip to Tijuana, Mexico, with YoungLife when I was only 16.  That week changed my life more profoundly than most camp experiences—second only to the week at Oakbridge when I first devoted my life to Jesus Christ as my Savior and my Lord.
 
So I understand the critique.  It even sounds good at first.  But worship is nothing less than our communion with God.  And God the Father isn’t waiting for you to perform some act of self-sacrifice before He’ll accept your worship.  Your worship, your communion with Him, has been purchased fully and completely by His Son, Jesus Christ.  Your worship is accepted not because you’ve been kind to the poor, or sold all your possessions, or performed any other noble and meritorious act, but on the grounds of the atoning work performed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.
 
Grace is offensive because she is willing to be abused.  Cheap Grace, they call her.  But still she comes.  Insurance policy salvation is still salvation, it’s just a pathetically impoverished way to live with Grace.  There’s so much more she’d like to show you!  But she’s not waiting for you to prove the slightest thing.  The gift Grace brings was bought by another.
 
Because of Jesus, Grace comes freely.  She comes with a simple profession of faith…and when she shows up, she comes fully sufficient and mighty to save.