Is Jesus Lord of Your Lips or Your Life? Discovering the Prodigal Grace
Grace for the Older Brother I was sitting there with my coffee, the steam rising in lazy curls against the morning light, when a notification pinged on my phone. It was a response to a Facebook post I’d put up earlier that day. I had asked a simple, pointed question: Is it okay if Jesus is Lord of our lips only and not Lord of our life? I didn’t realize at the time that I was poking a hornet's nest of theological debate that has been buzzing for centuries. As I watched the comments roll in, I saw the lines being drawn. On one side, you had people shouting about "legalism," and on the other, folks were screaming "hyper-grace." It’s a pain point we all feel, isn't it? We want the security of salvation, but we often find ourselves living in a weird tension. We say the right things at church, we use the right Christian vocabulary, and we might even have a fish on our bumper. But when the rubber meets the road—when the temptation hits or the brother who hurt us ...