GOD’S AMAZING GRACE
Romans 8:28-30
Good News Christian Fellowship
BUCAS, Daraga Albay
February 18, 2007
Introduction
The title of my message is GOD’S AMAZING GRACE. I want to show you from the Word of God about the eternal purpose of GRACE for the good of His people, in all its fullness and blessedness is eternal and was bestowed upon chosen sinners in Christ.
Our text will be Romans 8:28-30. We are told that we were loved, justified, called and glorified in God’s eternal purpose of GRACE in Christ. Only the all wise God could devise and execute the sovereign purpose of his grace toward us.
Here is a golden chain of grace. This is like the ladder Jacob saw, reaching up to heaven, upon which the angels of God ascend and descend as ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be the heirs of salvation. Each rung of the ladder was fixed by our great God in his eternal purpose of grace, before time began.
(1) In choosing to save us
(2) In guaranteeing our godliness
(3) In drawing us to Himself
(4) In declaring us righteous
(5) In securing our glorification
God does these for us because of His abounding sovereign grace. God shows goodness to those who deserves only his severity. We deserves death, but out of His riches of his grace salvation had appeared (Titus 2:11). “God commanded His love towards us, in that, while we are sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
In Ephesians 1:7-8 we read, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us..”
Take note the word “lavished.” The grace was not only given, it was lavished - generously showered – on us. He gives us abundantly. How amazing, how marvellous his GRACE is!
Grace is never spoken of in the Bible as God’s response to man’s choice, but just the opposite. According to this Book the believer’s faith in Christ is the result of God’s eternal choice of his people in Christ. Grace is not conditioned upon something in us. Grace cannot be earned, won, merited, or even attracted or influenced by us in any way. Grace is “unmerited favor.” Grace is God’s sovereign, eternal, and free favor toward sinners who fully deserve his wrath.
Grace is free, in the sense of being self-originated, and of proceeding from One who was free not to be gracious.- JI Packer
We all deserve to be punished throughout all eternity for our sins, but Christ Jesus has already taken our punishment. God, by his grace, that is His unmerited favor toward us, can now be just in saving us, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Our redemption is in Christ Jesus, and not in ourselves.
Proposition: All the blessings, privileges, and benefits of grace flow to us from and were infallibly done for us by his great grace in Christ, our great Savior.
Romans 8:28 we read, “All things work together for good to those who Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”
What a comforting declaration! “In all things God works for good.” What does Paul mean?
• There is a temporal good, and
• a spiritual good,
• and an eternal one.
However, Let’s focus our attention on that which is eternal and spiritual. Here he explains to us what is meant by those words “according to his purpose.” Our experience of salvation in time is the result of God’s accomplishment of our salvation in eternity “according to his purpose.”
Let’s look at these two verses. May God the Holy Spirit, whose words these are, teach us their meaning, write them upon our hearts, and use them to inspire worship and adoration for God our Father for His eternal works of GRACE.
CHOOSING TO SAVE US
Verse 29 begins, “For whom He did foreknow, he also did predestine.” The word “foreknowledge” gives some people a good deal of trouble because they think of God as being bound to thinking as we do. There are actually very few things that ay of us really foreknow to any degree. The word “foreknow” means “ordain beforehand or “foreordain.”
To foreknow is to determine or choose ahead of time. For God to “foreknow” us to be His children is for God to sovereignly choose to save us.
Ephesians 1: 4 reads, “even as he choose us in him before the foundation of the world..”
Peter declares that all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ unto life everlasting are “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” How we rejoice in God’s electing love! God’s gracious, sovereign election of our unworthy souls unto salvation is the source and cause of every heavenly, spiritual blessing (Eph. 1:3-4).
The counsel and decree and purpose of God did not depend upon what we would be, or do, or will!
“By the grace of God I am what I am”. We were chosen by grace (Rom. 11:5). We were redeemed by grace (Rom. 3:24). We were called by grace (Tit. 3:4-5). We “believed through grace” (Acts 18:27). And we are kept by grace (I Pet. 1:5).
We rejoice in our knowledge of God, but our hope and confidence is in God’s knowledge of us. He knows us in Christ. He loves us in Christ. He approves of us in Christ. He accepts us in Christ.
GUARANTEEING OUR GODLINESS
“Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”
Notice the word, “predestine.” (pro-or-id’-zo) It means to limit in advance, that is, (figuratively) predetermine: - determine before, ordain, predestinate. (Strong’s Hebrew and Greek dictionary)
The basic greek word (proorizo) means to “mark off or “to set off “ the boundaries of something. The idea is a glorious picture of what God is doing for the believer. The boundary is marked off; the boundary of being conformed to the likeness of Jesus Christ.
“having perfect, distinct, special knowledge of them, joined with love to them, he predetermined, or fore-appointed them in his eternal mind, in his everlasting and unchangeable purposes and decrees to this end, conformity to the image of Christ.” (John
Gill)
Predestination is God’s absolute infallible purpose of grace regarding his elect, whom He foreknew. Our eternal destiny (perfect, glorious conformity to Christ) was fixed and settled by our heavenly Father before he made the worlds (Eph. 1:3-6, 11; 3:11-12).
It is God’s determined purpose that such will the goal in life of each of us who has trusted in Christ.
In Ephesians 1:3-6 we read, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: (4) According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: (5) Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, (6) To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.”
Our salvation, when it is finished in resurrection glory, shall be our conformity to Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ is the express image of the triune God; and God’s elect have been predestined to be the express image of Christ.
This conformity of God’s elect to Christ is not something we perceive in ourselves. As we grow in grace, we grow into a truer and truer realization that we are the very chief of sinners. Yet, the believer’s conformity to Christ is real. We are, by the operations of God’s grace working in us made submissive to the will of God, though we repent of our rebellions against it.
So brothers and sisters, Predestination marked or set off the boundaries of the house into which grace would come, paved the road by which grace would travel to that house, set the time when grace would enter the house, and guaranteed that grace would actually enter the house at the appointed time of love. Nothing was left to chance, luck, blind fate, or man’s imaginary free-will!
DRAWING US TO HIMSELF
“..Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called…
The term “called” is used in the Bible in a variety of ways. Some of which:
• To give a name
• God calls by name (Isaiah 43:1; 45:3-4).
• God sovereignly calls men individually to salvation (Romans 1:6-7; 8:28, 30; 9:11, 24-25)
These are only some of them. We will not deal all of it here.
So, having considered the above meanings the term “called” can have in the Bible, what meaning did Paul intend for his reader to understand here in Romans 8?
The call spoken of here is not the outward, external, general call of the gospel, but the internal, effectual, irresistible call of God the Holy Spirit, by which we have been separated and distinguished from all other people.
“When Paul says, “Those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified” (Rom.8:30), he indicates that CALLING is an act of God. In fact, it is specifically an act of God’s Father, for he is the one who predestines people “to be conformed to the image of His son”(Rom.8:29).” – Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, pp.692
Those who are “the called” are those who are separated and distinguished from all others by the saving operations of God’s grace in time.
This calling is the work of God’s Spirit whereby, convincing us of our sin and misery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ, and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered us in the gospel.
This calling draw us our of the darkness and brings us into the kingdom of God. The great, impulsive, moving cause of the effectual call is the grace of God. The Apostle Paul describes the call of God as a call of grace, free, sovereign, undeserved, distinguishing grace (1 Cor. 15:10; Gal. 1:15).
1 Corinthians 15:10 "But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me."
Galatians 1:15 "But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, (He) called me by his grace."
God, as the God of all grace, calls his elect to grace and glory by Christ. The infinite, superabundance of his grace in Christ was displayed to us in this call.
DECLARING US RIGHTEOUS
“…and whom he called, them he also justified.”
dik-ah-yo’-o
From G1342; to render (that is, show or regard as) just or innocent: - free, justify (-ier), be righteous. (Strong’s Hebrew and Greek dictionary)
Please take not the tense of the verb. Justification has already taken place for the true believer in Christ.
Justified: means to count someone righteous. It means to reckon, to credit, to account, to judge, to treat, to look upon as righteous.
It doesn’t mean that man was made righteous. Instead he was declared righteous. He was counted as righteous. This verb means not to make someone something, but merely to count, to judge, to treat someone as something.
All who were called were, at the same time, by the same decree, justified freely by the grace of God through the redemption of Christ’s blood as the Lamb of God slain from the foundation of the world. We were declared just with God, absolved of all sin and guilt, forgiven of all iniquity, made righteous by divine imputation, and accepted as perfectly righteous in the Beloved, in Christ our Surety before God spoke the world into being!
Justification is free for us, but it was costly to God, for we read in Romans 3:23-24, “since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”
Justification comes to us by God’s grace through faith. There’s no merit of any in ourselves. It was His own free decision to free us to save us from the bondage and power of sin.
In Christ, God’s righteousness was made available to all who will receive it. Man receives God’s righteousness by faith, apart from works (Romans 3:21-26).
SECURING OUR GLORIFICATION
Read Romans 8:28-30.
We come no to the conclusion of Paul’s words in verses 28-30.
The last word in the text is “glorified.”
This is the last
According to one Bible teacher glorification is so little understood. I agree with that. However, I can’t spend or talk much time about it right now, because I have a limited time. We will discuss this in length in our Sunday School.
But for now, here’s what I want to share with you:
Glorification is exactly the opposite of condemnation. God removed the guilt of sin from us in justification, and he shall free us from all evil the consequences of sin in glorification.
Take note the three words: called, justified and glorified. They are in the past tense; all three are something already accomplished. The believer’s glorification has already taken place in the plan and mind of God.. God already sees believers glorified; He already see believers in His presence.
Our future glorification is God’s promised reward for the righteous, the “glory” of which Paul writes in Romans 2:7 and 10.
John Gill comments:
eternal glory is here meant, which is what the apostle had been speaking of in the context; is what the elect are predestinated and called unto; and which their justification gives them a right and title to; and will consist in a likeness to Christ, in communion with him, in an everlasting vision of him, and in a freedom from all that is evil, and in an enjoyment of all that is good; and so the great end of predestinating grace will be answered in them mentioned in the foregoing verse: now this glorification may be said to be already done, with respect to that part of God’s elect, who are in heaven, inheriting the promises; and is in some sense true also of that part of them which is on earth, who are called and justified; being made glorious within by the grace of Christ and array and adorned with the glorious robe of his righteousness; by the one they have a meetness, and by the other a right to eternal glory.’
The day we are glorified will a day of great victory and rejoicing because the last enemy, death, will be destroyed.
The justification which took place at the moment of conversion will be manifested in the future (Romans 5:9-10).
Our God has predestinated us to be conformed to the image of his Son. That shall be accomplished in glorification. God’s goal for his elect is absolute and everlasting glorification. His designs of love and grace (Eph. 1:4-6) will have their absolute, full accomplishment in our glorification. Nothing less than our absolute, full, perfect conformity to Christ in glorification will satisfy God’s purpose of grace and fulfill his will. In everything he has done, is doing, and shall hereafter do, our glorification is his object.
Application
In Ephesians 2:8-9 we read, "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast." We are saved by the unmerited favor of God through our obedient faith. There is no way that anyone could ever be good enough to go to heaven, because we have all sinned. We all deserve to be punished eternally. There is no way that anyone could ever earn his way to heaven, because heaven will be a gift of God for those who go there.
Our Lord says in Luke 17:10, "So likewise you, when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do." We cannot do enough to earn our salvation. We read in Isaiah 64:6, "But we are all like an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are like filthy rags."
There is no one of us that deserves to be saved. It is only by the GRACE of God that chooses us to be saved.
How bountiful and amazing His GRACE is!
Let us pray.
