You might be thinking, “Wait, what?! Slutty Grace? It’s not only offensive to call God’s grace slutty, but it’s just gross. I don’t like it.”

The name might make you squirm a little. Honestly, it makes me squirm a little too. Every time I say it it feels jarring—and that’s okay.

Because God's grace is unsettling.

She doesn’t wait for the worthy. She doesn’t ask if you’ve been good. She doesn’t play by religious rules. She just gives herself away—recklessly, promiscuously, without apology.

Grace pours herself out on saints and screw-ups, the certain and the doubters, the broken and the whole.

Again and again, she shows up—fierce, tender, unrelenting.

So as I kick off this podcast, I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge and think about the elephant in the room: the title.

Why Slutty?

I wanted to take a word that is drenched in shame, taboo, and insult, and marry it to a word that is dripping with love, transformation, and God’s inclusion.

It also needed to convey the restless, promiscuous, undeserving nature of god’s love and grace. Something that god gives away freely, to everyone, without discrimination.

I wanted it to feel untidy, uncomfortable, scandalous.

It needed tension.

To feel earthy, not theological or academic, but salty.

A word, that itself, kinda needs grace.

I wanted it to be metaphorical.

Contrasting. Partnering together two words that, on the surface, live in tension. Playing with black and white religious categories.

• Clean and unclean.
• Sacred and secular.
• Worldly and heavenly.
• Of god and not of god.
• Pure and dirty.
• Acceptable and unacceptable.

And by doing so, get people to pause and think: Why these two words? Whoa, can we do that? Can we put these two types of words together?

This feels wrong.

But that very tension is the point—I’m reclaiming an insult to point out that divine grace behaves in ways polite religion and tidy culture would call promiscuous.

I feel that’s precisely the energy the gospel often carried in the first century.

To feel the scandal of the gospel: not polite, not respectable, but radically inclusive.

Slutty is a word that doesn’t live in the church pews, which is the point of Grace.

Is Grace Slutty?

That’s a bold statement, Jeromy.

It is. Can I share more?

Slutty = “promiscuous or provocative in a way that is considered in bad taste.”

• Promiscuous: indiscriminate, wild, liberation, unrestrained, easy.
• Provocative: annoying, infuriating, insulting, offensive, controversial.

“If grace is free, then won’t everyone just go out and sin? Should we keep sinning so grace may abound?”

Jesus flipped proper taste and religious categories on their heads with his grace.

It was so provocative, that it was, I believe, a large part of why he was killed.

“The people you love and offer grace and forgiveness to are not deserving. They are unclean, unholy, not jews, sinners, unacceptable. They cannot be in God’s presence, unlike us.”

Even though they would NEVER use the word, if we are honest, they felt Jesus’ grace was too slutty.

Too free.

Too easy.

Too promiscuous.

Too loose.

God’s grace was (and is) the ultimate offense to the clean categories, judgements, and rules of tidy morality and religion.

Grace Still Provokes

And still today, the notion that God’s love, grace, and forgiveness is ultimately given to ALL despite their behavior or beliefs, is extremely provocative and promiscuous.

That in the end, Love wins.

Love. Wins.

• That death does not and will not have the final victory or sting.
• That God’s grace is not earned (or triggered?) by our proper belief.
• That God’s hands are not tied simply because our heart and breathe stopped.
• That ultimate restoration and reconciliation is indeed God’s lavish plan and heartfelt desire.
• That all of God’s creation will experience and be transformed by God’s grace and love.
• That it is always and only the kindness of god that leads to repentance.

Period.

So that’s my heart.

That’s what I want to explore together in this Podcast: the scandalous, beautiful, untamed love of God.

Short conversations.

Honest reflections.

Slutty Grace—Let’s sit with the mystery.