59 - Grace, Love and Repentance

Does grace mean I can keep doing bad things and still go to heaven? Does God's love mean I don't have to stop? Does repentance mean if I say “I'm sorry” God will let me continue sinning? If asked those questions most of us would quickly answer, “No! Of course not,” that is until God told us to stop doing something we really wanted to do. In that case our answer might be less definite. We might start looking for Bible verses that could be interpreted to mean “maybe” or listening for “prophetic words” that say, “In your case it's okay; you're the exception to the rule.” What used to be unquestionably right or wrong in our mind gradually becomes debatable. We might even start quoting conflicting opinions on the matter to show how uncertain a definite answer is on that subject.  What's happening is that we've entered into the process of making something that was once forbidden into something that is now possible. Before we can convince others that God will allow us to do what we really want to do we must first convince ourselves. In order to do that we have to start questioning the standards of right and wrong that we have been taught, looking for loopholes. And this temptation to re-interpret God's moral standards is a danger which, sooner or later, will confront us all, because sooner or later each of us will really want to do something God forbids, which is why it is so important for us to understand these three terms: grace, love and repentance. As you might expect, each of these words has been given a wide variety of definitions, so that one person might say the word and mean one thing while another hears them say it and understands something entirely different. Since there's only one proper way of deciding the true meaning of each word, and that's listening to what the Bible says with an unbiased ear, let's ask the Bible to tell us what each word means and then ask ourselves how God wants those words to guide us when we really want to do something that He forbids.