I think I have often done just that – been over-concerned that I will focus too much on one aspect of God and so become complacent of God in another so I chuck more salt in the mix to avoid it tasting too sugary sweet instead of savouring the sweetness of the moment!

I guess there are many brothers and sisters who want to honour the Lord and be careful that they are not abusing the precious truths that they hold dear. If my heart is right in wanting to please the Lord then, knowing my heart’s tendency towards extremes, sometimes a balance is helpful so that I can fully enjoy what God has given me.

Is it possible that this very article is, in one way, a call to balance ourselves against too much counter-balance!!! I don’t see this as a negative – the article rightly points out the weaknesses of an over emphasis towards counter-balance.

There are two positive challenges I receive from your article:

1) To honour the Lord increasingly without the counter-balancing thoughts (often driven by fear of myself) getting in the way.
2) To lessen my use of counter-balances without dismissing the positive root they can come from – While we may tend towards putting ‘checks and balances’ in place it should only be out of a response to the Saviour’s free grace and so that we can know the completeness of all that He has given us.

Thanks, Peter, for making me think about this.

Grace is found in Genesis all the way to Revelation. The Heart issue is addressed in the OLD . Understanding the OLD will always prove the New. The New is only ¼ of the Bible and the OLD is ¾ of the Bible. Sit down and Read the Bible from Genesis to Revelation in 4 months. You will find Jesus in the OLD with his grace and forgiveness.

Joke!

If we’re Protestants we are constitutionally unbalanced people. Christ ALONE, faith ALONE, etc. Balance on these matters is a blasphemous disowning of the gospel. On the *far* side of radical truth we find good works, desires for holiness, reverence for God. But if we insert those things *before* Christ and faith and adoption by grace we instantly lose Christ and faith and adoption by grace.

“Yes, but” Christianity is not reformational Christianity.

Many years ago, I did a word-search on “balance” in my Bible (NIV). The word occurs only four times in the whole of the Bible, once in the sense of difference, and three times in the sense of scales:

Leviticus 25:27 – “He is to refund the balance.”
Psalm 62:9 – “If weighed on a balance, they are nothing.”
Proverbs 16:11 – “Honest scales and balances are from the Lord.”
Isaiah 40:12 – “Who has weighed the hills in a balance?”

It seems the closest the bible comes to talking about “balance” in the sense of some-of-this-but-some-of-that is in Revelation 3:16 – “Because you are neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth.”

For me, it goes back to how we preach the Gospel: Do we preach it as some sort of “get out of jail (hell) free” card, or do we preach Jesus? If we preach Jesus (and the Father that we see when we see him) then we do not need to worry, for how can someone in love with Jesus continue to grieve him?