“So prepare your minds for action and exercise self-control. Put all your hope in the gracious salvation that will come to you when Jesus Christ is revealed to the world. So you must live as God’s obedient children. Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, “You must be holy because I am holy.” … For you know that God paid a ransom to save you from the empty life you inherited from your ancestors. … For you have been born again, but not to a life that will quickly end. Your new life will last forever because it comes from the eternal, living word of God.” (1 Peter 1:13–23, NLT)
We find throughout the history of the Church new voices raising old questions that have already been answered. Front and center in our time is the question of whether God is a God of Love or a God of justice? But this question is clearly a false dichotomy. We should remember from our logic class; a false dichotomy is a logical fallacy which states an “either-or” type of argument when, in reality, they may both be true or both false. The heretic, Marcion, early in the 2nd century claimed that Jesus taught a different God from that of the Old Testament. He taught that the Creator (Demiurge) in the Old Testament was vain and angry and only cared about Law. His gospel was wholly a gospel of Love to the absolute exclusion of even moral Law.
The “catholic” faith understands it very differently. God created the world and “it was good.” But in rebellion of the Garden, both humanity and creation were alienated from God. Thus, all of us were born into a broken world in need of redemption. Jesus came to restore humanity and ultimately creation itself. Jesus’ full humanity—which Marion denied— is equally necessary to that redemption as His deity. By His ransom we are already being saved from the “empty life” of our birth to the new birth which begins in baptism. God is fully both the God of Love and the God of Justice.
While today’s heretics are much more likely to deny Jesus’ deity than His humanity, they nevertheless follow Marcion’s error in denying God as a God of Justice. They readily discard God’s moral law as inconsequential even as they write their own laws of morality that serve their passions. We see them first tolerate and then become advocates for what scripture plainly teaches as evil.
But Christians embrace God as fully a God of Love and God of Justice, neither separating themselves from the world as ascetics nor living by the world’s standards, but living lives of holiness. That holiness is not self-created but God-birthed: “But this is the new covenant I will make with the people of Israel on that day, says the LORD: I will put my laws in their minds, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people.” (Hebrews 8:10, NLT)
Compare the Church’s understanding to modern heresy. The modern heresy believes grace to be indifferent to sin. I say modern heresy, but it is really an ancient heresy. Paul speaks against it in addressing the Church at Rome: “Well then, should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of his wonderful grace? Of course not! Since we have died to sin, how can we continue to live in it?” (Romans 6:1–2, NLT) Here, Peter tells us to live into our new birth. “Don’t slip back into your old ways of living to satisfy your own desires. You didn’t know any better then. But now you must be holy in everything you do, just as God who chose you is holy. For the Scriptures say, ‘You must be holy because I am holy.’” (1 Peter 1:14-15, NLT)
Grace met us when we had broken lives alienated from God. Grace was the outpouring of God's love on us. Grace receives that great gift of love. We love the Lord because He first loved us. Grace forgives our sins and sanctifies us in our new life. Therefore, we are to live our new life and reject “the old ways of living.” Cheap grace is a lie from the devil himself.