Can You Go Too Far With Grace?

One of the most frequent accusations I hear as I teach the truth of grace is that we have to be careful about not taking grace too far. After all, people will go crazy and abuse grace if you aren't careful. Some suggest that there is "grace and truth" and that we need to keep the two in balance, as if there is anything else we could do. You can't divide truth from grace. When we do, truth stops being true and grace becomes disgrace.

It is important to remember that grace involves God expressing His unconditional love and favor toward us; independent of anything we ever do or don’t do. Grace is personified in Jesus. So to say that you can go too far with grace is like saying that you can go too far with Jesus. It simply isn’t possible.

Some people are afraid that if you teach the pure grace of God, people might be encouraged to go out and commit sins. That kind of fear shows a lack of clear understanding about what grace does in a person’s life. It certainly doesn’t encourage sin!

The idea that you can go too far with grace is an irrational fear. When a believer sins, he is acting in a disgraceful way by contradicting the very essence of the grace of God which is in him. Grace empowers us to honor our Father through our actions, not dishonor Him. It is possible to pervert grace so that it stops being grace, but it isn’t possible to go too far with it.

Paul explained it this way in Romans 5:17: “Much more, those who received the abundance of grace, and the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the one Jesus Christ. He said that if we’re going to reign in life, there needs to be an abundance of grace, which provides the gift of righteousness. The result will be that we reign in life.

The word “abundance” in that verse suggests an overflow. It doesn’t mean filling something to the top. It means filling it beyond the top, so that it spills over. Paul said that is what has happened to the Christian. We have received an overflow of grace.

Go too far with grace? There’s no way. The fact is that most Christians haven’t gone far enough in their understanding of it. We need an overflow of grace, especially in the modern church. Especially in the lives of Christians today who’ve been ambushed by legalism. As much as we say we don’t want to live under the law, we’re scared to death of the grace of God.

We need to boldly proclaim God’s grace to the church world -- not only to the unredeemed, unsaved world, but to the church world. We need to proclaim the grace of God because the fact is that, even if you could go too far with grace, which you can’t, I’ve not been in a church yet where there was even a remote possibility of going too far with the grace of God.

Go too far with grace? Not a chance. We need an abundance of grace in the legalistic barrenness of the modern church. It’s only when we jump in over our heads, into the river of God’s grace, and we experience that abundance, that we know the victory that is ours in Jesus Christ.