There’s a reality show in which, at each stage of the competition, the contestants are lined up before the judges and one person is eliminated. This weekly guillotining is preceded by the phrase, “In the fashion world, one day you’re IN, and the next, you’re OUT!” It is probably just me, but it seems that the host delivers this line with particular sadistic relish. It’s hard to deny the power of those words. We all yearn to be a part of some IN crowd, and oh how painful to be OUT!

Coaches and teachers have used such exclusive selectivity to great effect, making high performance standards a condition for acceptance and approval. Some are so adept that a mere frown or cold shoulder can send the student to the gym or library for hours of diligent work in the hopes that the frown will turn to a smile, and she’ll be IN. Country clubs, bridge clubs, fraternities, sororities are all famous for it. (Joe is IN; he’s one of us, but Jane is OUT!) Adulthood is not the exclusive venue for such behavior, either. On the playground an adorable six-year-old announces, “Alex and Cameron can play on the monkey bars, but you and J.J. can’t.”

This “club mentality” is one that we Christians are powerful to reverse. Rather than relish in exclusion, we can, and often do, emphasize inclusion. “Do you know Jesus? We’ll then, you’re IN.”A Reformed perspective gives us the theological underpinning for such a reversal. Concepts like Calvin’s unconditional election and verses like John 10:28 (No one will snatch Christ’s sheep from His hand.) are essential to our understanding of a secure salvation and are sources of great comfort to us. We and our brothers and sisters are eternally a part of God’s family. Theologically we know this as justification, and theologically we can distinguish it from sanctification, but when it comes to practical daily life there seems to be a disconnect.

While God’s love for us is undeserved, unearned and unconditional, it is wrong to believe that our behaviors and attitudes are inconsequential. When I sin, I’m pretty sure that something is required of me despite my “club membership” in the family of God. Christ’s admonition to the churches in Revelation 2 & 3 underscores such consequences. “I know your works, your labor, your patience . . . . Nevertheless I have this against you.” In my distorted understanding, I can interpret, “I have this against you” as “You’re rejected; you’re OUT!” Conversely, it’s easy to interpret, “I’ll never leave you nor forsake you” as “Relax. Kick back. You’re IN.” I find myself wavering emotionally in my relationship with the Lord between feeling either OUT or IN.

It occurs to me that I am confusing feeling at peace with God with feeling at ease with Him. While we can and should have the former, I don’t know that the latter is ever entirely possible. I think again of Peter. In a mere six verses in Matthew 16, he hears Christ’s “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah” but then His “Get behind me, Satan!” Despite Peter’s status as one of Christ’s closest followers (surely he was IN), misunderstanding the nature of God’s kingdom earned Peter a resounding reprimand.

There seems to exist in the church at the moment a sort of laissez faire attitude that assumes perhaps too much comfort with the Savior. We waltz into and out of everything from church commitments to marriage commitments with the supreme confidence of one who is IN. Like Peter, we have no problem telling the Lord how it really ought to go down. A brother is called by God to fill an important appointment in his church but resigns when the going gets tough. He claims God’s release even though the key position remains vacant and important work is left undone. A sister rationalizes the impending divorce of a believing couple because, “It’s been years, and you know, the marriage was never really very good” and thereby denies the power of God to bring reconciliation and the subsequent glory such reconciliation would bring Him.

These behaviors are suggestive of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s cheap grace which says, “Of course you have sinned, but now everything is forgiven, so you can stay as you are and enjoy the consolations of forgiveness.” This is to confuse grace with discipleship. Grace is imperative; it gets us into “the club.” But while membership has its privileges, it also has its requirements. To be Christ’s disciple means to be jealous for God’s kingdom just as Christ was jealous for it. Hebrews 12:3-8 is a good place to get a picture of what it means to be IN. To be His son is to be disciplined by Him. When we get the frown or the cold shoulder – the rebuke – it is not a rejection but the very evidence that we are in fact IN, that we belong to Him and that he has important kingdom work to do in and through us.

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