DISCLAIMER: The following story below is not true. However, it was concocted in order to illustrate in a small way the grandeur of what God has done for us in Christ.
Here it is:
‘Wreck-less’ Grace
When I was sixteen, I got my license. It was also that season of the year when all my friends were getting their licenses too. It was the freshest taste of freedom yet. However, it was not completely ideal.
Most of my friends got cars when they were sixteen, but I did not.
I had curfew, but most of my friends did not.
I could not stand the personal rules my family imposed on me, especially when the friends I hung out with had no rules hanging over them. In fact, it even became difficult to spend much time with them since our timetables were not in sync. I was working under my parents’ time whereas they were going on their own time. In addition, leaving for curfew was awful. It gave me the idea that I was constantly missing out. Thus, my situation became all the more frustrating. I loved my parents, but I did not love their leash, even though they held it with good intentions.
Indeed, the limits of my parents’ ordinances played out as limits on my social life. And when limits are applied to social opportunity, everything I tried to work for in high school held in the balance: friendships and identity. Two good things in life that are not meant to be cast into the crucible of high school conditionality.
So while my metric of freedom took a dive, my barometer of rebelliousness boiled up. I could no longer withstand the feeling of being out of the loop, out of the inner circle, and out of the game. Yes, I still got to spend time with my friends, but it was in a limited dosage that I did not prefer.
So one night past curfew, I took my Dad’s car without permission to go to a friend’s house. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was being defiant and disobedient. But at the time, all I cared about was grabbing freedom.
However, on the way to the friend’s house, I got into a terrible wreck and ruined my Dad’s car. End of story. I was done for. No more freedom ever. All I deserved was punishment. I knew it full well. That realization hung over me like a dark cloud just waiting to burst.
Back at home, the talk with my parents ensued. I was waiting any minute to hear the death sentence to my social life. Then my Dad spoke up. He explained he was glad I was safe. He forgave me about the car. And then, oddly enough, he put a car catalogue into my hands and smiled. He told me it was time to get me a car.
I could not believe it. I was simply overcome with a feeling I have rarely ever felt. Thankfulness, indebtedness, confusion, and resolve swept me off my feet. It tore me apart and broke me down. I cried because I knew I didn’t deserve this. My great weight of sin was suddenly displaced by a greater weight of grace. Not only was my punishment gone, but my freedom actually increased—dramatically.
See, most of you might think that was the dumbest thing my Dad could have done. That was his chance to really teach me a lesson. However, he knew he did not need to show me I was wrong. He knew that I knew I was wrong.
But this act of grace did something that punishment could never solve: change my attitude of ingratitude and rebellion into a heart of loyalty for my parents. Even though I still did not fully understand the rationale behind their rules, I learned to follow them, and not begrudgingly but finally out of humility and love. Since then, in light of what they had done for me, the thought of willfully disobeying my parents seemed near insane.
So, this I believe: grace is the most powerful catalyst on the soul. It is costly, it is messy, it is counterintuitive, and it is reckless. But it is real, and it works.
* * * * *
I hope you can glean from this small-scale analogy what God has done for us in Christ on a much greater scale. Like the rebellious son, we have all lived for our own authority, taken the good things that are God’s, and have–in doing so–pressed the proverbial button of ‘self-destruct’ on ourselves and what is His. But regardless of all our sin and defiant disobedience, God looks upon us in love. No, not a cheap love that simply sweeps sins under the rug and ignores them. A costly love–one He pays for himself. And the clearest place we can see this is the cross of Christ. It alone is the place where justice and grace perfectly agree. And still, our heavenly Father takes a greater cost upon himself: He gives us all that is Christ’s (Eph 1:3). Similarly, like the pardoned son who falls to his knees in humble thankfulness and indebted joy, how could we not do the same? Grace doesn’t give us free reign to sin. Grace finally frees us to not want to sin, and it compels us to finally and truly love God from the heart. Any reckoning with grace will destroy our heart of stone, and replace it with a heart of flesh (Ez. 36:26).
Indeed, reckless grace is the only thing that will reverse recklessness.
