You might be saying to yourself already, “There’s no negative side to grace!...what’s this guy talking about?” Give me a moment to explain myself...geesh! :)

Grace teaches us amazing things...things we’d never be able to understand otherwise. In fact, it’s more precise to say that we lack every capability of understanding the things of God in the absence of grace. In one sense, it’s all good, no matter what we learn, as Paul wrote about, “But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light” (Ephesians 5:13). From that perspective, the knee-jerk reaction supposed above is justified. However, I’m speaking in terms of practical living.

On the positive side, grace teaches us to live righteously, as a function of our God-given motivation via the new heart given to us at salvation. “Moreover, I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will be careful to observe My ordinances” (Ezekiel 36:26-27). From this new heart springs the God-given desire to please Him. Desires like this are grace gifts, nothing any human could ever manufacture on their own. You can’t fake motivation, for God sees the heart, so godly desires must be considered grace gifts. And by the way, would it be right to ever expect anything less from grace??? ”How shall we who died to sin still live in it” (Romans 6:2b)? Remember, God’s intention is to bring glory to Himself through His good work in us.

So then, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure.
— Philippians 2:12-13 

It’s easy to see how grace teaches us to live as unto the Lord. It makes immediate sense, too, unless a person’s looking to pervert God’s doctrines for the sake of antinomianism (aka “grace is a license to sin”, something Paul refutes in Romans 5-6). If we dub this as the “positive” aspect of what grace teaches us, how about what grace teaches us on the other side of the coin, namely the “negative” aspect? We don’t have to even leave our current passage to see this.

Do all things without grumbling or disputing; so that you will prove yourselves to be blameless and innocent, children of God above reproach in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you appear as lights in the world, holding fast the word of life, so that in the day of Christ I will have reason to glory because I did not run in vain nor toil in vain.
— Philippians 2:14-16

Paul never departs from the common sense attitude that grace not only instructs the saints to do certain things, but it also instructs them not to do other things. In other words, there’s a positive and negative side to grace. Both are equally important if we are to understand the fullness of grace and truth that Christ, Himself, embodies. “And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us, and we saw His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth...For of His fullness we have all received, and grace upon grace” (John 1:14, 16).

The very desire to wage war against our own flesh cannot possibly originate within the flesh (the flesh is self-preserving). This is a mistake many believers continue to make throughout their lives. They suppose that there’s some way to conquer their flesh on their own. The truth is that the very substance of their enmity towards their own flesh was placed there by God at salvation, by grace. Paul proffered a very simple explanation through his own life, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).

This idea of the negative side of grace is something all of us need to fully grasp, lest our perspectives become warped and therefore weakened, susceptible to satanic lies. Grace teaches us to deny ourselves (aka the flesh), just like Jesus proposed, “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me” (Matthew 16:24). Since no man has ever been able to do that in the absence of God’s grace, it immediately follows that all denouncement of self is a grace gift, beginning with the fundamental tenets of sanctification, such as repentance. Even hatred of sin is a grace gift.

It is only by grace through faith that mere man is even capable of being set apart for God’s purposes, including in his own heart; for prior to God’s call to salvation, every motivation, every thought, every deed was manifest as fruit of the flesh. “Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest” (Ephesians 2:3). Man is utterly incapable of delivering himself from the throes of spiritual death. In fact, the human flesh prefers separation from God. However, by the grace of God, man is made able when he is saved.

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.
— Titus 2:11-14

If we are to abide in God’s grace, we must learn what the Word has to say about it. We cannot do as some do in the so-called “Christian” ranks - speculate rather than understand, invent rather than diligently seek Truth, espousing perversions of grace. Grace has two sides to it:  positive and negative. It’s all too appealing to the flesh to accept the positive aspects of grace and deny the negative, for the flesh is greedy and finds many ways to pervert and leverage such lopsidedness (e.g. antinomianism). The undeniable, freeing truth in the Bible is that grace teaches us both sides of the coin.

It’s the negative aspects of grace that are often swept under the rug, for it is easier for some to write off self-denial as legalism or religious works. What these people don’t understand is that they are implying that God’s grace is incapable of enabling man to do as the Lord, Himself, commanded. The implications of this grave error are far-reaching, beginning with the assumption that God isn’t fair (How could God ask man alone to do something righteous?). Since no professing Christian wants to posture themselves on such a statement, false doctrines are invented to cover their tracks. All kinds of complexities follow, errors that Paul had to deal with thousands of years ago, hence the lengthy retorts in his epistles.

To leave out either side of grace is to assist the devil, himself, in undermining the very essence of God. Could there be a worse endeavor???

Love in Christ,

Ed Collins