Several years ago I debated a Chasidic Jew who taught history at a Yeshiva. We continued our debate more informally for about a year, writing to each other. One of the interesting aspects of our continuing dialogue was that he wouldn’t write the name of God.

The history of this practice goes back to Israel’s captivity in Babylon, where they believed that the reason for their exile was because they had profaned the name of the Lord. To protect against that ever happening again, they erected numerous safeguards once they returned to Israel. They didn’t speak the name of God, nor did they even write it.

In a similar way to this man who debated me about 2,400 years after their exile, they protected themselves against any possibility of misusing God’s name. But in the process they lost the blessing of that name. They were so fastidious in their avoidance of the use of God’s name in either written or verbal form that they soon forgot how God’s name should be written, and was meant to be written. Amazingly, to this day, there is no certainty, even amongst evangelical Christians, about the exact pointing of the vowels in the spelling of God’s covenant name, Yahweh. We are not certain even how His covenant name is pronounced.

The result is remarkable. The Jewish people protected themselves against abusing the name of God, but in the process they lost the name of God, the name that was to be above every name, the name that was to be a blessing to them forever.

One of my deepest concerns is that the church has become similar in this respect to Old Testament Judaism. In order to protect what is most important to us, which certainly includes the grace of God, we have put up a barrier of restrictions and rules for the Christian life. Since the rules seem good, we enshrine them. Over time, we come to live by rules rather than by grace.

Remember, it was a Jewish nation deeply concerned for the higher life that lost the very name of the God from that higher life. I believe a good portion of the evangelical and Reformed churches have slipped into the same deadly snare.

I can certainly see this in myself. I can remember my coming to faith in Jesus. That was the focal point—faith, a living faith in Jesus Christ, a faith that sprang from grace. At some point (fairly early on) a series of issues became central. The first issue was eschatology. The next issue was the baptism of the Spirit, followed almost immediately by speaking in tongues. Then there was a cessation from all of that, as I got involved in the Reformed faith.

The issues changed. There was baptism. Then there was predestination. Then there was the Sabbath. Then there was what you can sing or not sing. Then it was eschatology again. Then it was the Law. Then it was head coverings. I could go on and on.

You could say, “But Rich, wasn’t all that necessary? Don’t we need to deal with those issues?” What we need is to maintain a focus on the grace of God in Christ Jesus, no matter how many issues with which we get involved. I realized how easy it is to lose our focus, and, in the process, grace becomes little more than a transcendent abstraction.

When you ask a Baptist, “What makes you a Baptist?” he will most likely say that it is believer’s baptism. If you ask the same question to a Pentecostal, he will most likely say it is speaking in tongues. A Charismatic will say it is the gifts of the Spirit. A theonomist will say the Law of God and an optimistic eschatology. A Reformed Presbyterian might point to psalm singing a cappella. Imagine (for a minute) the delineation of our existence because of what we sing, or because of speaking in tongues, or because of who we baptize or won’t baptize. The tragedy for any of us is that we can, in so carefully delineating our particular distinction, so easily, over time, and over the ensuing battles, lose the masterpiece, the centerpiece of grace.We understand all the issues, but we come to hardly remember grace at all, in a living way—because if we understood grace, how could our identity revolve around these issues, and the grace of Jesus Christ be so little an actual part of our lives?

I have seen personally how easy it is to become a 20th Century Pharisee. I would turn up my nose at even the thought of listening to a so-called Christian song because “I sang the Psalms.” Instead of possessing the humility pervading the Psalms, I developed the rigidity of a Pharisee. The Sabbath became a day of strict observance instead of a delight. The redemptive blessing and centrality of the Sabbath was lost under the force of “keeping” or “breaking” the Sabbath. I remember discussions about whether it was permissible to go for a walk on the Sabbath. I also remember hearing from a young man how, in his youth, all he was allowed to do on the Sabbath was to read the Bible or the Westminster Standards or possibly a Christian biography. All of these things were good things, but was it good to see all else as sin? Of course he didn’t have to see it that way. Neither did Israel; but he did, and they did. And that is exactly the manner in which Israel “kept the Sabbath.”

I have tried to figure it all out. I know one thing. During all that time, I was convinced that I knew grace. I am not at all suggesting that I wasn’t saved. I was. The problem was simply how grace had come to be a doctrine instead of a living reality. The grace of God is so magnificent that the more you see and experience it, the more you realize that you can never say, “I’ve fully grasped it,” any more than you can say, “I’ve grasped a sunrise or a sunset.” Perhaps even more to the point, one could never say, “I’ve fully grasped God.” It is a ridiculous understatement when we think we understand grace by saying, “God’s grace is undeserved favor.” It would be like saying, “Love is when two people get married.”

When Jesus came, He added something that was truly new. If we think that the Old Testament fully showed grace, then we don’t understand what Jesus did. What He did was unimaginable. It is irrational to every category of thought that we possess. That’s why the disciples couldn’t get it, because what He was doing in His love for them, what He was doing in His grace for them, was contrary to every rational experience they had ever had. We look back on them, wondering, “What in the world was wrong with these men? How could they not get it?” The reality is quite the opposite. We should ask instead, “How could they get it?” It’s impossible. It’s beyond comprehension. The sacrifices, as powerful a pointer or type as they were, just show us how even the most rational and beautiful picture of grace, a blood sacrifice for sin, falls flat in front of what Jesus actually did. We see how men who went through hundreds of sacrifices and decades of Passovers and Yom Kippurs were still utterly incapable of “getting it” just from the facts. It is absolutely impossible to come to an understanding of God’s grace just from the assessment of all the facts. There is nothing in human experience that can awaken a person to the reality of God’s grace. I’m not talking at all just about a kind of comprehensive understanding, because I believe that such an understanding is eternally impossible. I think that what Jesus did for us, the grace that His life and death became for us, is, again, eternally impossible to fully comprehend. The fact that people like you or I can live with God forever is an unattainable mystery that should never become an excuse for pride, but rather should truly break our hearts.

All of this keeps bringing us back to the cross. Why did Jesus go to the cross? The best understanding of this, as I see it, comes from Jonathan Edwards, and he spoke of it, surprisingly, when he spoke of hell. The people who heard his words cried and moaned, not because Edwards wanted them to be in pain, but because he so clearly saw the pain, and so deeply wanted to spare all people from the pain. And so he said to them, in his warning against staying in unbelief that “it would be dreadful to suffer this fierceness and wrath of almighty God one moment—but you must suffer it for all eternity. There will be no end to this exquisite, horrible misery. When you look forward, you shall see a long forever, a boundless duration before you, which will swallow up your thoughts and amaze your soul. You will absolutely despair of ever having any deliverance, any end, any mitigation, any rest at all. You will know certainly that you must wear out long ages, millions of millions of ages, in wrestling and conflicting against this almighty merciless vengeance. And then when you have so done, when so many ages have actually been spent by you in this manner, you will know that all this is but a point to what remains. Your punishment will indeed be infinite.”

This is why I was a Pharisee. This is why the church is in such danger. It is because even though we know that the above horrors are true, even so, we bring a religion of rules rather than grace. We (and I don’t care which church or denomination it is) live in a submission that so easily becomes more to our denominational standards than in submission to a God of such holiness that the purest expression of justice in the world cannot even in a miniscule way express the fierce righteousness of God in sending unbelieving humanity to that place of which Jonathan Edwards spoke.

You can suggest that there need never be an either/or of rules versus grace. There never needed to be such a dichotomy. Sad to say, one always seems to exist, and we hardly ever want to acknowledge it.

I can remember what I look back upon as the first experience of grace in my life. It happened over half a century ago. I had done something wrong and my mom told my dad to give me a spanking. He took me into my bedroom, where I would be punished. I was five years old and waited in pure fear as he took off his strap. Then he did something I still weep about even as I write these words. He proceeded to hit the bed three times. I remember being flooded by this sense that because of what he did, I had escaped a terrible punishment. Please don’t get me wrong. What he did that day was terrible parenting, but it remains for me my first experience of grace, which stays with me to this day.

The startling reality is that I not only deserved that punishment, but I deserved the punishment Jonathan Edwards spoke about as well, one that we all deserved. Here’s where the picture with my father changes. In the encounter with my father, there was no justice. The punishment I deserved was forever unpaid. But in the case of God, He looked upon us all, every one of us who would ever belong to Him. He saw the punishment we justly deserved, but He didn’t punish us. He punished His Son instead, and He did it with a wrath that should have justly been poured out upon us. In my case, I understood a bit about grace as a son who had escaped punishment; but in God’s case, His justice, His holiness demanded that the punishment be paid, and none but either His Son or we could pay the price. Either He pays it for us, or we pay it.

Because of a grace-filled love that the apostle says involves a height and depth and length and breadth that is beyond comprehending, the Father chose to punish His Son instead of punishing us. He chose to hurl His white-hot, legitimate fury upon His Son, so that we could go free even though we deserved every stroke that fell upon His own Son, who deserved only love.

When we come to Him believing that He is truly God our Savior, a good and loving God, it is then that we see, perhaps slowly, the unconditional forgiveness, and with that forgiveness a brand new heart. We can now live out of our new hearts a brand new life. This is not a life of rules and regulations, but a life of love. This is why He says, “In this is love” (1 John 4:10). In what? In this: “not that we loved God.” That’s the starting point. We had no love, none for the people around us, even less for God. We were loveless and lost in our selfishness. God came after us and found us. “Not that we loved God.” He wants us to know that. It is the first principle, emphatically stated so that we really get the point. We had nothing of love in us. “BUT.” Here is where it changes. It’s like the criminal who is standing before a judge. He is told he is guilty. Yet if the judge says “but,” the prisoner knows immediately that mercy is coming. If it is judgment coming, the judge will say, “You are guilty, and I’m throwing the book at you.” If there is to be mercy, the judge will say, “You are guilty, but I’m going to give you a break.” Here is the place where the break comes for us. God has just declared us guilty, guilty of lovelessness, a capital offense worthy of death. “You are woefully, sinfully loveless, but I love you.” Not that you loved God, but that He loved you.

He is saying that although we spat upon Him, although we, if we had lived at the time of Christ, would have stood in the crowd and shouted “Crucify Him!”—in spite of all this, in spite of the fact that we are proud, arrogant, lustful, greed-filled sinners, He loves us anyway. “You don’t love Me, but I love you.”

“So what?” you may say. “Talk is cheap; love is cheap.” How many women reading this article have heard “I love you,” when all it meant was “I want you”? “So He loves us,” you say. “So what?” Here is what: “In this is love, not that we love God, but that He loves us and gave His Son to die on the cross in order to pay for our sins.” This is love. It dies for the beloved, and we are his beloved. He loves us. We hated him, but He loved us anyway. And when we come to love him, we should see it all as a miracle, because it makes no sense to die for a mass of people who hate you, but that’s what He did. This is grace, pure and simple. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and gave His Son to die on the cross in order to pay justly for our sins.”

It doesn’t stop there. Grace is freely given, but it can only be grace when we see how powerfully it transforms us. “In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and gave His Son to die on the cross in order to pay for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, so also ought we to love one another”(1 John 4:10-11). How have we so messed it all up? How have we so missed the mark? He wants us to simply “be like Christ.” He wants us to live a life of love, because the life that knows grace becomes gracious, and the life that is lived by love, loves as well.

We don’t have to be afraid of grace. We mustn’t let anyone set up a barricade between us and grace, not even a barricade of good things. Grace, pure, free, unmerited grace is to be the heart of everything. Let the grace of God take hold of your life. Let the grace of God kindle a fire of love and devotion that will reveal the Savior who graciously “loved us and gave Himself for us.”