Over the past couple years, I have walked through a season of great brokenness.
Upon the first blow, my response was resentment. I grew bitter and judgmental. Pride distorted my vision and to myself I appeared more holy, more righteous and more acceptable to God.
Self-righteousness does that. It distorts your vision until, in your own eyes, you are the only right one.
Then in 2012 God took me on a journey through 1 Corinthians 13, showing me how this passage speaks to the church, about how our relationship with the body of Christ needs to be.
Suddenly the true grace of Jesus Christ became more real to me than ever before.
I had been focused on God’s holiness and righteousness to a point that couldn’t see His grace and love!
Suddenly I was seeing Jesus in a whole new way!
Now my relationship with Him took on a whole new dimension.
But in the joy of my new discovery of grace, My heart wanted to go to a new extreme.
I fought hard to keep the pendulum from swinging too far in the other direction of hyper-grace, which isn’t really grace at all.
This is important, because there is a great tendency in the body of Christ today to label certain actions grace when they are not grace, while labeling the antithesis judgement when it is not judgment.
It is as if grace and judgment are two camps that are mutually exclusive and divided by an abyss.
But as wise believers who walk in the fear of the Lord, we must find a balance where we walk in true grace that is not afraid to call sin what it is, but still extends loving arms to the world and a brother in sin; that sends out a clarion call for holiness in the church while extending grace to a weak member of the body; that refuses to allow society to determine what is right or wrong and yet sees the world around them with the same compassion Jesus had.
Men and women of God who will weep over the lost, broken and fallen with true agape love!
3 Reasons Why Grace Must Have Balance
1. Without balance it becomes permissive. When grace is not balanced by the holiness and righteousness of God, it grows permissive. Permissiveness is not the nature of God. Nowhere in the Bible do we see that God permits sin. Ever.
In fact, we see just the opposite. The Bible tells us to be holy as He is holy. It says, “Therefore be perfect, even as your Father who is in heaven is perfect” (Matt. 5:48).
The requirement for heaven is perfection.
Janet Perez Eckles 
Shawn Akers 
Abby Trivett 
