Grace Is Not a Longer Leash

The car turns left at the roundabout before he has decided anything.

That is the honest way to describe it. He does not sit at the junction weighing it up. His hands are on the wheel and the indicator is already ticking, and there is a small clean feeling of relief in his chest, and the relief arrives before the choice does, which is the part he has never been able to explain to anyone. Right takes him home in nine minutes. Left takes him the long way, past the place, and he has been driving the long way home for two and a half years.

He is not a hypocrite. That is what makes it complicated. He prayed this morning and he meant it. He has a Bible on the passenger seat with actual notes in it. He has told God about this more times than he can count, and every time he has felt the warm real thing, forgiveness, and gotten up lighter. And then at some point, without ever writing it down or saying it out loud, an arrangement quietly formed in the back of his mind: this is covered. He knows how the transaction goes now. He knows the shape of the confession he is going to pray at midnight, and he can more or less feel it in advance, and knowing that it is waiting for him makes the left turn easier, not harder.

That is the bit nobody says out loud. He is not sinning in spite of grace. He is sinning with grace factored in.

I am going to talk to you now, and I am not going to be careful about it, because you did not come here to be handled gently and told nothing.

You have a corner. Maybe it is a road, maybe it is a time of night, maybe it is a particular thirty seconds after everyone has gone to bed and your thumb already knows where to go. And underneath it you have an arrangement, an unspoken budget, a line of credit you have never once said out loud because saying it out loud would kill it instantly. Grace, as you have been using it, has stopped being the thing that saved you. It has become the thing that makes the next one survivable.

The rope is not the problem

Let me say the low thing first, and let me say it kindly, because I know exactly how this feels from the inside of it and I am not going to pretend it is simple.

Tired of yourself. That is the actual weight. Not the guilt, the guilt has become almost ordinary. It is the tiredness. It is having said that was the last time with your whole chest and then watching your own hands do it again, and slowly concluding that the problem is not the habit, the problem is you, structurally, permanently. It is being a person other people trust and knowing what you know. It is the double life, and the double life is heavy in a way that has nothing to do with the thing itself.

And somewhere along the line you started to suspect that God is tired too. That He has an eyebrow raised. That there is a counter somewhere.

There is not. Let me take that off you right now, because it is not in the Word and it has done enormous damage. Nowhere are you told there is a limit on returning. Peter asked whether seven times was the ceiling for forgiving, and was told the number is so much higher it stops being a number. And that was the standard Jesus set for us, which means it is not the ceiling on Him. So hear it plainly: you are still welcome at that door tonight, at midnight, in the car, on the two hundredth return. That is not my warmth talking. Matthew 18:22 has it in writing. The Holy Spirit carries it the whole distance from the page to the driver's seat.

So the problem was never that grace ran out. Here is the actual problem, and it is a good deal more hopeful than the one you thought you had.

You have been treating grace as a longer rope. It was never a rope. It is a pair of hands untying you.

That is not a metaphor I invented. It is what the Scripture says grace does. Grace is not only the pardon that covers the left turn. It is described as something that teaches: the grace of God appeared, bringing salvation, and it teaches us to say no to ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self controlled and upright lives in this present age. Teaching. Instruction. A grace that changes what you want, not just what you owe. And the teaching is not a principle you have to apply on your own. Titus 2:11 puts it in writing, and it is the Spirit inside you who does the actual teaching, at the roundabout, with your hands still on the wheel and the indicator not yet on.

And Paul saw this exact question coming, because he knew people. He asked it in advance, in the plainest terms: shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? And the answer was not a scolding. It was a picture. You died to that. You cannot live in it anymore, not because it is forbidden, but because it is not where you live now. He was not saying stop taking advantage. He was saying you have moved house and you keep going back to stand in the old kitchen.

The lock is changed. The tenancy ended. You have been going back out of habit, not out of ownership. That is not a feeling to work up. The move is recorded in Romans 6:2, and by His Spirit the old kitchen has already stopped being yours.