Obedience to God’s law is not legalism. Obedience to God’s law in an effort to earn favor from God is legalism. Obedience to God’s law in an effort to pile up enough merit to outweigh our demerits is legalism. But a grace-empowered obedience of God’s law is not legalism. What’s the difference? It’s the difference between fear and gratitude. Grace empowers us to truly love God and to seek to keep His law out of gratitude for all He has done for us.

 
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. – Titus 2:11-14

We recently participated in a homeless count in our community. As we did so, we struggled with the definition of homelessness, which is not as simple as you might think. Definitions matter. In fact, the most vital issues of life hang on proper, faithful definitions. What is human life? What is a fetus? What is freedom? What is marriage? And, in the words of Pontius Pilate, perhaps the most important definition of all, “What is truth?”

Two words whose definitions have been cheapened and twisted in much contemporary usage are the words grace and legalism. As I have heard these terms often used (or misused), it seems that grace means “being let off the hook” and legalism means “any serious attempt to understand and obey God’s law.” As with most bad definitions, these distortions have an element of truth at their core, but they over-simplify and distort the larger reality.

Here’s the glorious truth that lies at the very heart of the Gospel: We are so broken and marred by sin that we have no hope of fulfilling the righteous requirements of God’s law. We have broken the law and we must indeed be broken by the law before we can be made whole by God’s grace. God’s grace sent His Son to live a sinless life for us, to die a brutal death on the cross as a sacrifice in our place and to rise again to bring eternal life and new creation to light for all who believe. The same grace of God unites us to Christ, cleansing us from sin by His blood, clothing us in His righteousness and empowering us with His eternal life.

Trying to earn God’s grace by keeping the law is a futile pursuit. It would be like receiving a mansion from a billionaire and then trying to pay for it with the earthworms you dig out of the backyard. Jesus paid the price for our salvation and all of our good works, done in our flesh and apart from Christ, are worthless in the sight of God, filthy rags of vanity.

But Titus 2 tells us more about grace and the law. Here God tells us that His grace not only forgives us but also trains us. His grace not only gets us off the hook for our sin, but it empowers us to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives. In other words, grace is more than just the favor we receive from God when we disobey, it is also the power of God to train us to obey. When grace redeems us from our sin, it also redeems us from lawlessness.

Here’s where the deeper truth about God’s law comes into view. Jesus redeems us from lawlessness and makes us zealous for good works. To be redeemed from lawlessness means that we are redeemed for law-abiding obedience. Grace and the Gospel do not cause us to reject and abandon the law of God. If so, we could hardly be “redeemed . . . from all lawlessness.”

Obedience to God’s law is not legalism. Obedience to God’s law in an effort to earn favor from God is legalism. Obedience to God’s law in an effort to pile up enough merit to outweigh our demerits is legalism. But a grace-empowered obedience of God’s law is not legalism. What’s the difference? It’s the difference between fear and gratitude. Grace empowers us to truly love God and to seek to keep His law out of gratitude for all He has done for us.

So what is grace? Grace is the utterly undeserved favor and kindness of God, given to us in Christ in the face of our rebellion, which transforms us from God’s enemies to His children and empowers us to love and obey God out of gratitude.

Jason A. Van Bemmel is a Teaching Elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and is Pastor of Faith PCA in Cheraw, S.C. This article appeared on his blog Ponderings of a Pilgrim Pastor and is used with permission.