The Hump Day Hope comes from two of my favorite grace rabble-rousers. My friend Ed Underwood wrote an excellent piece about our innate mistrust of grace. The title alone was enough to generate deep thought.

Before You Decide that Grace is Too Radical: Who Thought of Grace?

Religion is about control and performance. Jesus changed the dynamic completely and made it about relationship. Ed’s writes that the idea of grace does not come from the heart or mind of man.

If you leave human beings to themselves and ask them, “If there’s a God, what do you think He’d demand from people if they wanted to have a relationship with Him?” the answer is always the same, “Be good enough for Him to accept you!”

Grace says you can’t be good enough to earn it. Grace says you can’t be too bad to receive it. Grace gives up the need to control. Grace gives up the requirement to perform for acceptance. Grace is radical. After reading Ed’s piece I listened to a podcast from another grace instigator. Pastor/writer Tullian Tchividjian was talking about our need to find value and identity in our work. He outlined how that is counter-intuitively upset by God’s grace.

We now work not for acceptance but from it. We now work not for love but from it. We now work from a position of security and not for it.

Think about that. Because of Christ we are accepted, loved and secure and we don’t have to earn or, more to the point, keep earning that status. Ed Underwood sums that up beautifully in his article linked above.

The gospel doesn’t divide humanity into performers and non-performers. The gospel only values one Performance: the work of Christ on the cross.

The message is simple. Relax. Jesus has this. Trust Him. Remember who you are. That should get through the week!