When Sally first heard the gospel at age eleven, she understood immediately that God's grace is what saves us. She already knew her heart was full of evil and that she had nothing to bring to God. It made perfect sense that God would have to do the saving, if any saving was to be done. The solution of Jesus' death on the cross was perfect, and she understood that He had died in her place.

The Bible church where Sally began her pilgrimage strongly taught the concept of grace. She learned that grace meant "undeserved favor." Grace was getting something you didn't deserve, whereas mercy was NOT getting what you did deserve. The gospel addressed both of these areas of life in the provision of Jesus' death on the cross. So she fully understood that she came to Christ because God was reaching deep into her soul to regenerate her and to bring her to an awareness of her need and of His provision for her salvation. She entered the path to the kingdom on her knees, got up, and took off running.

By the time Sally was seventeen, life was not as clear-cut as it had been at the tender age of eleven. She had understood what it meant to be saved by grace; now she began wondering what it meant to live there. She began to struggle with the difficult choices of life and a tension in her desires to do the right thing. When she went to her Bible teachers for advice, they told her that God had given her all the resources she needed to live a victorious Christian life, and she only needed to avail herself of the Spirit of God who now lived inside her. If she tapped into His power, He would grant her the ability--and the desire she lacked--to do the right thing. The Bible teachers asked Sally if she did her daily devotions, and they recommended some helpful Bible studies. These things, they said, would help unleash the Spirit's power to work in her life.

Sally took off running again. She dove into her daily devotions with renewed vigor, and even though she wasn't a morning person, she began to get up an hour earlier. Sally was so grateful that God had given her this extra measure of grace to be so dedicated to him at such a young age. Things seemed to improve for a while.

Then something slowly changed. The excitement began to wear off, and Sally suspected that her non-Christian friends were having more fun than she. She indulged with them every now and then, only to feel tremendously guilty and to make a renewed commitment to God with each failure. The longer this pattern went on, the more confused Sally became. Why wasn't God unleashing His Spirit inside her for victory anymore, even when she carried out all her spiritual practices and dedication? Why was the evil around her becoming more attractive instead of less attractive? Was it normal for her to find herself rededicating her life to God so routinely? Was this what it meant to live by grace? After a few years of riding a spiritual roller coaster, Sally decided that Christianity was a good idea, but it just didn't work for her.

In her third year of college, bewildered and disillusioned, she abandoned her faith.

modern pharisees

Much of modern Christianity, rather than being committed to the truth at all costs, instead fosters a safe place for us to hide from who we really are. One of the ways we do this is by re-defining righteousness into a manageable set of rules. We believe these rules to be divinely inspired, when, in fact, they may be defined by the geographic or theological subculture in which we live. The set of rules might include negative rules like "no drinking" and "no smoking," as well as positive rules like "daily quiet time" and "church on Sundays."

Because we are still fallen sinners even after we are converted, once we define a do-able set of rules to live by, something begins to happen to our self-concept. We may have understood thoroughly our need for the gospel of grace when we first turned to the cross, but once we practice our rules for a while, an illusion of self-satisfaction and confidence, in ourselves rather than in God, settles in unconsciously. We have now turned righteousness into a manageable set of guidelines, much like the Pharisees of Jesus day.

What was Jesus' response to this approach to righteousness? In His sermon on the mount, He decried the Pharisees for equating the keeping of rules with true righteousness. He illustrated this with adultery, a sin most of us can manage to avoid, and reminded us that lusting after our neighbor's spouse is no less evil than the act of having an affair. The Pharisee was able to convince himself, because he avoided the affair, that he was righteous, even though lust ran rampant in his heart.

Jesus challenged this notion.

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