The Gospel of God’s grace

SIBKL/ Pastor Colin Hurt/9/6/12

In Acts 20:24, Paul proclaimed “However, I consider my life worth nothing to me; my only aim is to finish the race and complete the task the Lord Jesus has given me —the task of testifying to the good news of God’s grace.” The gospel of grace is a hot topic in the world right now. Over these 2 Sundays, I want to focus on four aspects of God’s grace. There are many teachers that teach only a certain aspect of God’s grace. The four aspects are saving grace, strengthening grace, sanctifying grace and serving grace.

Firstly, we will look at Saving Grace. In Romans 3:22-24, Paul says “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile,  for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,  and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” Grace gives us righteousness. In faith, we receive that righteousness. It is indiscriminate, relevant to all, Jew or Gentile, and by redemption, by Christ Jesus.

Justification is a legal term which means being declared not guilty, even if we are guilty. It is God’s method by which the unrighteous can be declared righteous, by laying our sins upon the Lord Jesus Christ.

I had a Mexican friend who spent 16 years in jail for murder. He was in fact given the death sentence. A former drug dealer, he had stabbed someone in a deal gone wrong. Sentenced to death in a Texas jail, a clever lawyer managed to get it changed to life in prison, and there he found Jesus. After being released, he started planting churches in Mexico. Now, Eduardo, the Mexican was guilty. He would say “Texas said I was guilty, the judged said I was guilty but Jesus said I was not guilty.”

In Romans 5:20-21, Paul says “The law was brought in so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more,  so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Eternal life starts the moment you believe. It is all by grace.

In Ephesians 1:7-8, Paul says “ In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us.” God is excessive in His grace. God gave us His redemption and forgiveness of sins.

Some “grace” teachers say all sins - past, present and future are forgiven. That means that while I am beating my wife, I’m being forgiven. While I am murdering my neighbor, I am being forgiven. Those who believe that way have a twisted thinking of grace.

In 2 Corinthians 7:8-10, Paul, speaking to believers, says “Even if I caused you sorrow by my letter, I do not regret it. Though I did regret it—I see that my letter hurt you, but only for a little while— yet now I am happy, not because you were made sorry, but because your sorrow led you to repentance. For you became sorrowful as God intended and so were not harmed in any way by us. Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.” Paul had rebuked the Corinthian believers for their sin. Some people say there is no need to rebuke people for their sins but Paul had written letter to rebuke believers. His letter was so strong that at first Paul regretted his writing but after seeing that it had brought repentance from the believers, he was glad.

There is a teaching that same repenting is simply changing your mind. Consider the word “invest”. It means to put clothes on. So if I want to invest a RM50 bill, does it mean I put in a handkerchief? Of course not! Invest has a much deeper meaning than that and everyone knows it. To say that repent means only to change your mind shows that you don’t understand how language works. Paul’s usage of repent means a lot more.

In 2 Corinthians 12:21, Paul said “  I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.” Repentance here clearly does not mean just changing one’s mind but a turning away that leads to a change in behavior. Paul was talking to believers.

In 1 John 1:5-10, the apostle John says “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.”

From the start of the letter, John uses the words “we” and “us” numerous times. Here, we see that there are 2 conditions to be forgiven – walking in the light and confessing our sins. You can go to a kindergarten and ask a kid what “we” means, and they will understand it includes the person who is speaking. All John words here includes himself, John, the apostle of Jesus Christ.

Some make the apostle John out to be a grammatical idiot, saying that “we” refers to a certain group of people, the Gnostics but not to himself. If we don’t walk in the light, our sins are not forgiven. We have to confess our sins. We do fail the Lord even as Christians. Confess our sins and receiving forgiveness is positive. Those who say you don’t need to confess your sins are depriving you of a relationship with God. Unconfessed sin will cause separation from God. In His letters to the seven churches in Revelation, Jesus clearly said that many of them needed to repent. The positive impact of saving grace is the knowledge that our sins are forgiven when we confess.

There is power in the blood. In Matthew 6:14-15, Jesus said “For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” The teaching of Jesus clearly says that to forgive is a condition to be forgiven. “Pseudo-grace” teachers say that the Sermon of the Mount is for Israel, but Jesus taught the sermon of the Mount to His disciples. Are you a disciple of Jesus? The verse of forgiving others to be forgiven is the only part of the Lord’s prayer that is amplified.

When God created man, His plan was to make men into His image, and this hasn’t changed. God is a forgiving God and that means we have to be a forgiving people.

How do we know God has forgiven us? It is written that our sins and iniquities, He will remember no more. If a wife says to a husband “you always do that”, that means you haven’t forgiven him. When God forgives, He forgets. There was a well known man of God who once had a close associate betray him in the past, and a reporter writing about him wanted to know about that incident. However, he replied “I have forgiven that brother, so I am under obligation never to repeat it again”.

In Ephesians 2:4-10, Paul says “But because of his great love for us,God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions —it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith —and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

The whole purpose of the salvation of grace is to do good works. It is the reason we are saved by grace through faith. If you are not doing good works, you are not saved by grace. The purpose of playing football is to score goals. It does not matter how many fanciful passes or intricate movement you play if it does not result in a goal. A famous tennis player who never won a grand slam was asked about this fact, and he replied “If I win, I win, and if I don’t, I don’t”. That was certainly the wrong attitude to go about it.

Moving onto strengthening grace, Acts 20:32 says “Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified”. The word of His grace builds us up. It is an edifying grace. If I just stick at being saved by grace, I am not being built up. In 2 Corinthians 12:6-10, Paul said “Even if I should choose to boast, I would not be a fool, because I would be speaking the truth. But I refrain, so no one will think more of me than is warranted by what I do or say, ⁷ or because of these surpassingly great revelations. Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. ” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” Paul was saying that God allowed something in his life to prevent him from becoming arrogant. God has a perfect way to keep us humble. God loves you too much to let you become arrogant. Pride comes before destruction. Paul was content with his weaknesses and persecutions. Life is full of unfairness. There are tough times, but the grace of God helps us through.

Some people may say when you become a Christian, you will never have any problems, but the Scripture says “Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. (Hebrews 4:16)  We receive 2 things at the throne of grace – mercy and help in times of need. We will have times of need!