What is "Cheap Grace"...really?

(Vincent Van Gogh's "Weeping Woman")

My favorite blogger Ann Voskamp, over at A Holy Experience, hit another home run with her recent post entitled "You Know They're Laughing At Us, Right?"

I also weep over the Creflo Dollars of the pop-Christian-culture...and the Josh Duggars of the fundamentalist-legalist-Christian sub-culture...and the Tullian Tchividjians of the grace-Christian camp...and I applaud and appreciate Voskamp's willingness to name names.

The great apostle Paul named names.  And so must we.  Carefully.  With many tears.

I would only add one thing to Ann's post - and it feels like wild presumption to even think I could add to the thoughts of one of our day's finest writers - but in her recent post she said:

"Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession…. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate."

I couldn't agree more.  And here is what I would add:

Cheap grace is grace without local church.  Cheap grace is grace without true community.

Where else is repentance required and lived out, if not in the context of community?  Where else does church discipline take place, but in church?  Who do we confess our sins to, if not to a safe community of believers?  Where else is discipleship fleshed out, the cross made vivid, wolves in sheep clothing called by their name, and the flock of God guarded, and where else can Christ be incarnated?

Nowhere else but the church.  

All these things - repentance, church discipline, confession, incarnation - do not find their full expression within one person, or within a small group of favorite people who think like me, or within a business.  They don't find full and robust expression even in one family.  "Family church" can be a smokescreen to avoid the pain of real, true, flawed, diverse, beautiful local church.  To avoid church community is to live in such a way as to never have to extend grace to anyone but "me and mine".

Living like a lone ranger is cheap grace.

When I hear someone refer to "cheap grace", or "easy believe-ism", I laugh. I've read (and love) all of Bonhoeffer's works, and I get what he meant, when he coined the term "cheap grace" from a prison cell, living in close community amongst a diversity of men, suffering for the sake of Christ.

But can we, with authority, use those words unless we are likewise living in community as Bonhoeffer did?  Some who use the words "cheap grace", are using them to look down their nose at someone else...or to take someone else's theology down a peg or two.  No one who bandies those words for those reasons have actually understood the grace of God - because it can't be comprehended outside the gritty community of imperfect local church...a place often filled with prodigals in various stages of return.  

That's why repentance and confession must be preached and incarnated before the eyes of our watching community, right alongside justification and grace.  That's why I appreciate Voskamp's use of the term "cheap grace" - her context is spot-on.

Grace is mere concept to the rugged Christian individualist, that is why they think it can be cheapened. When you "live of the gospel", when you live in right relationship to others, nothing is more costly or more difficult in life than to earnestly look for the good, to "keep yourself in the love of God". (Jude)

Far from being "cheap", the truth of grace will cost you more than you ever thought you could pay, and stretch your faith beyond where you thought you could go.

Wear Your Praise Wednesday {...neutrals go with neutrals go with neutrals - transitioning into fall...}

(In advance...a grateful "thanks" for pinning...)

...this morning, even as I type this post for tomorrow, fall is in the air.

Fall used to be my favorite season.  Now it is my second favorite, and that's still something.

I will miss summer, but I will also love transitioning into my fall clothing.  So today, I want to tell you something you already know, deep down:  a neutral goes with a neutral, goes with a neutral.  Here is a list of the neutral colors that have made it into my capsule wardrobe (and yes!  I've gone to a capsule wardrobe - more about that in another Wear Your Praise Wednesday post...along with pictures of my beautiful closet - which I used to hate, and now want to live in...)

black
brown
olive green
white or cream

That's it.  Any combination of those neutrals (or any other neutral palette, such as navy, khaki, red, and cream), you can pile them on this fall, as many as you like even in one outfit, and you won't go wrong.  Even if you combine neutral patterns.  And that, girlfriends, is also another post for another day.  If you ever wanted to dabble in combining patterns...as in, on your body....we, the over 40 crowd, can do it if we stick to neutral patterns.  (Think black and white stripes with a leopard print jacket or shoe).

Here, I've gone with those Wal-Mart bermudas in black, and I shifted my artisan belt buckle off to the side on purpose.  Because it interests me.  And because I love the two rhinestone rivets, with the word "fly" stamped beside them.  I've combined the shorts and belt with a new Old Navy long sleeve boyfriend T.  (And oh my dear sweet goodness...run, don't walk, run to Old Navy and get you some.  Boyfriend T-shirts, not boyfriends.  Mmmmm-kay?)

Comfy, baggy, cozy sweetness that you can do the "half tuck" with.  Or the "mullet tuck".  (Business in the front, party in the back...)

The point is, combine your neutrals - throw on black on black on brown on black without worrying about matching.  Throw on your black with brown shoes and a brown belt...and if your big hair bothers you...

Put on a neutral hat.  Not blue.  Not green.  Not red (though some say red is a neutral).

Then, take it right back off...

...because sister...the taller the hair, the closer to God.

Here, I've piled on yet another neutral layer.  This olive colored vest from Target was on sale at my store, and I felt like I stole it, it was so cheap.

I can't find it on the website anymore, so I went to Amazon, and found almost the exact same thing here - and I chose the most inexpensive one.  You're welcome.  (This site is not monetized.  My links are purely hard work and a courtesy.  I do not (yet) get anything at all, if you click and buy something.)

One reason why this vest is my favorite layer (I wear it with daggum near everything) is that it has pockets for my iphone.

I weep.

I used to be so old-school.  Now I am a technology snob.  "Dear Santa, I want it all."

"I like big hair, and I cannot lie."

Girl, I say rock the big hair, and rock the big whate'r else your momma gave ya.  Because beauty is not about size or age or any such thing.

That's true.

You know it is.  And if you don't know it, I will make it one of my life's goals to convince you.

If you want to keep your complexes, you better bail on me now, because #wearyourpraise
is a thing.

It is taking off, friends, and I am driving the bus.  My way or the highway - so start feeling beautiful in middle age, or I will stop this bus and fuss.

Or something.

In summary:

Shorts
T-shirt
Belt (my design)
Necklace (my design - this is a different design, but same length)
Vest
Boots

Underlined Bits {...things I underline when I read...}

(one of my first pieces of original art)

“God looked on Christ as if Christ had been sin; not as if He had taken up the sins of His people, or as if they were laid on Him, though that were true, but as if He Himself had positively been that noxious—that God-hating—that soul-damning thing, called sin. When the Judge of all the earth said, ‘Where is Sin?’ Christ presented himself…what a grim picture that is, to conceive of sin gathered up into one mass - murder, lust and stealing, and adultery - and the Father looked on Christ as if He were that mass of sin. He was not sin, but the Father looked on upon Him as made sin for us. Christ stands in our place, assumes our guilt, takes on our iniquity and God treats Him as if He had been sin…How can any punishment fall on that man who ceases to possess sin, because his sin was cast upon Christ and Christ has suffered in his place? Oh, glorious triumph of faith to be able to say, whenever I feel the guilt of sin, whenever conscience pricks me, ‘Yes, it is true but my Lord is answerable for it all, for He has taken it all upon Himself and suffered in my place.”

Charles Spurgeon, The King’s Highway