Frustrate not the grace of God

Nobody hates the gospel of God's "grace" like Satan does. The word is there in both Galatians and Romans (yes, Ephesians), and he can't blot it out. So the best he can do is to "frustrate the grace of God," and inject into the idea some poisonous infiltration of legalism cleverly disguised. That's Paul's idea in Galatians 2:21 where he says, "I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain."

In other words, if an iota of self-seeking pride is mixed in with our "gospel," grace is "frustrated." Take a seven-course dinner prepared by the best gourmet chef imaginable, full of wholesome food, and add a mere 5% of arsenic, maybe even only one percent - if the dinner didn't kill you it would paralyze you.

Take a sermon, an article, a book, that is 99% "gospel" truth full of Christian verbiage, and add one percent of subtle, poisonous legalism, and you have the recipe for "lukewarmness," the enervating malady that Jesus says afflicts His last-days church (Rev. 3:14-21).

Wherever human pride or self-sufficiency raises its head even a little, there you can be sure the grace of God is being somehow "frustrated." "Righteousness by the law" is the sure result.

Close by 2:21 in context Paul defines what he means by "grace": "before [your] eyes Jesus Christ was clearly portrayed among you as crucified" (3:1). The people in Paul's Galatian audience forgot who they were, where they were, for he brought them to the cross and they saw, "comprehended," "the width and length and depth and height" of the revelation of that grace (Eph 3:18, 19), as if they were at Calvary itself. They responded with what Paul called "the hearing of faith," precisely the same as Abraham's response ("he believed" when "God . . . preached the gospel unto" him, Gal. 3:6-8).

I walk softly here; I tread on holy ground; here is the solemn truth behind all the "frustration" of confusion about the gospel that so afflicts the modern lukewarm church. As James Stewart said long ago, "No man can give the impression that he himself is clever and at the same time preach Christ crucified." "Who is sufficient for these things?"

Have you been blessed?