Topical: GRACE
February 10, 2008
Jesus the man of Grace
Have you ever noticed that everyone seems to have this certain, innate sense that they are owed something? People seem to think that because they are a human being they deserve a certain thing, or to be treated in a certain way. Have you ever noticed that? People walk around saying things like: “I don’t deserve to be treated that way” or “I should get this because I deserve it.” It is in the nature of man to believe that we are somehow entitled to things. Here is the amazing thing: some people actually think that they deserve something from God. They think that it is God’s job to make their life happy, and carefree, and good. I have heard of people who felt that they did not deserve to have anything bad happen to them because they went to church on Sunday morning. When something bad happens to someone you care about, do you ever find yourself thinking: ‘why did that happen to them, they don’t deserve that, they are a good person’? How is it that we think we have a right to anything? To think that somehow in some way God owes us something, like we have done something that put God in our debt and He is now responsible to make things even. God created us, He gave us life, He gave us everything that we have. What do we deserve from God? It is an absurd thought. Someone who is dependent on another for life is never owed anything by the person who provides it. Think about this: parents do you owe your children anything? No. You gave them life, you feed them, put a roof over their heads, pay their bills, take care of them, watch out for them, raise them up. Your child is dependent on you for life. You do not owe them anything. And to think that God owes us anything is as totally ridiculous as it would be for your child to tell you that you owe them something. God does not owe us anything. We do not deserve anything from God. Actually, that is not totally true…we deserve death and eternal punishment. Praise God that He does not give us what we deserve. This idea that we can somehow earn favor in God’s eyes is ridiculous. We are fallen and sinful people. God is the source of life and we chose to walk away from Him. We chose to defy God. We chose to rebel against Him. We deserve death and eternal condemnation. Yet God who is rich in mercy and abounding in love does not give us what we deserve. Instead of the death we earned, God gives us life and salvation.
Salvation can be a tricky thing. We saw last week that the Jews mistakenly believed that they law was their source of salvation. It wasn’t. We are not saved by the law, we are saved by the grace of God. It is through the grace of God that we do not receive the condemnation we so rightfully deserve. We experience the grace of God not only in not receiving what we deserve, which is eternal condemnation and punishment but also in the receiving of that which we do not deserve which is eternal life and being called the children of God. Grace can be displayed when you receive something that you do not deserve, or when you do not receive something that you do deserve and the incredible thing about the grace of God…is that we get both.
We do not get what we deserve. We deserve death. That is the only byproduct of our actions. God created us to love. Love by necessity requires choice. You cannot force someone to love, they must choose to do so. So God created for us a choice so that we could truly love Him. We chose not to. We chose to reject Him. We walked away from God and became wicked in our lifestyles. We chose sin of faithfulness and the wage of sin is death. When we walked away from God, when we denied Him we also rejected the life that only He can give. So in our fallen state we were at war with God. Yet God was not willing to allow us to pay the price for our sins. God out of His unfathomable mercy was willing to do whatever it took to keep us from receiving the death that we deserve. While it was man who initiated the fall, it was God who initiated the reconciliation.
Ro 5:6 You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly. Ro 5:7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. Ro 5:8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Ro 5:9 Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him! Ro 5:10 For if, when we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! Ro 5:11 Not only is this so, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
God saved us while we were still sinners. We did not deserve that. We did not earn His sacrifice. It is out of His great love for us, not out of our own greatness that God was willing to send His only Son to die on our behalf. It is through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross that we were made right with God. Jesus took our place. He died on our behalf. Don’t you get it? That should be you on that cross. That should be me. We are the ones who should have died. We are the ones who should have been tortured, and mocked, and killed. We should have been crucified…not the ones doing the crucifixion. It should be us hung on that tree…not Him. Instead of dying as we deserved, we hung the Son of God on a cross. We put Him there and we continue to put Him there as we sin, and reject God time and time again even after knowing what He did for us. To think that God owes us anything is offensive. Not only did He create us, not only did He gives us this world to live in, but when we rejected Him and destroyed the life that He wanted us to have, He gave His own life, to give it back to us. Don’t you see? Every step of our existence is a part of the grace of God. We did not deserve to be created, but we were. We did not deserve to be made in God’s image, but that is how He made us. We did not deserve the life that He offers, but He offers it anyway. We do not deserve to be His people but we are. When we walked away from Him we did not deserve to be brought back. But He set in motion a plan to do just that. We did not deserve to have God come to earth as a man but He did. We did not deserve to have Him teach us, live with us, heal us, and show us how to live, but He did. We do not deserve the righteousness that we have in Christ Jesus, we do not deserve to have our sins forgiven, we do not deserve sanctification, we do not deserve glorification. We did not deserve to be saved by His death…yet through the Cross of Jesus Christ we got everything that we did not deserve and nothing that we did. That is the power of the grace of God. We do not get what we deserve while at the same time we get what do not deserve. Thank God for His grace and His mercy.
Grace by its nature is something that cannot be earned. If you could earn it then it would not be grace: Ro 11:6 And if by grace, then it is no longer by works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace. The grace of God is the source of our salvation. We are saved by the grace of God not by our actions, not by our works, and not by our observation of the law. You are not saved by your tithing percentage. You are not saved by your church attendance. You are not saved by keeping the rules: don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t engage in pre-marital sex, and things of the like. You are not saved by your own righteous lifestyle. You are saved by the grace of God. You cannot earn salvation. Salvation is not a work…it is a gift that comes from God.
Eph 2:4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, Eph 2:5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Eph 2:6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, Eph 2:7 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. Eph 2:8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— Eph 2:9 not by works, so that no one can boast. Eph 2:10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
While grace is not something that you can earn…it is something that you can give. The fact is that we are saved by grace. As a result of that grace we are expected to do something. We are expected to offer grace to others. When we consider the boundless grace that God has offered us throughout our lives there should be nothing that we are unwilling to forgive. We should offer grace in the same way it was offered to us. Without limit, without condition, without it being asked for. When someone wrongs you the right thing to do is forgive them. They do not have to ask. They do not even have to be sorry. Their wrong action whether they know it or not is not your responsibility. You are accountable for your own actions. Being wronged does not merit doing wrong in return. You are to forgive anyone and everyone who wrongs you. How often? EVERY TIME. That does not mean you have to forget. It does not mean you have to be stupid and let people take advantage of you. It does not mean you have to be best friends with the person who wronged you. It does mean that you cannot keep a record of wrongs. It does mean that you do not hold that action against them. We are to forgive others but in what capacity? Total. We have no right to withhold our forgiveness from anyone. Think about it. We put the Son of the Almighty God to death. We rejected God. Yet without our asking for it God offers us the grace to cover all of that. Without our even knowing we needed it God offers us His complete and perfect grace that is the source of our life. What offense then do you have a right to hold on to? What offense can you not forgive? The answer here is obvious: nothing. There is nothing anyone can do to you that merits you not forgiving them. There is no wrong they can commit that is so great, that you are not responsible and expected to forgive. No one can do to you anything that even compares to what we did to Christ. So we, who have been forgiven so much, are expected to forgive all the little things that people do to us. We are expected to forgive.
In Matthew 18 Jesus tells a parable about a servant who is called in by the king to settle accounts. The servant owes so much money that he could never hope to pay it back. The king had mercy on him and forgave his debt. This servant who had been forgiven a greater debt that he could repay in 100 life times then went out and displayed his total lack of appreciation. Despite this huge gift of mercy that this servant received he refused to offer it in return. He found another servant who owed him a very small sum of money but could not pay it back. Yet this wicked servant refused to offer even a portion of the grace that he had just received. He throws his fellow servant in prison to have him work off the debt. When the king hears of this He is furious. He sends for this servant and in His anger has the wicked servant turned over to the jailors to be tortured. This wicked servant lost the grace he was given because he refused to offer it to others. He was forgiven much, but could not even forgive a little.
The parable of the unmerciful servant also shows us that those who refuse to offer grace to others have the grace that they have been given taken away from them. You see while grace is not something you can earn, if you truly accept it, it will change you. Receiving the grace of God will change the way you live, it will change the way you think, the way you act. Truly receiving the grace of God changes you and those who receive God’s grace are compelled to offer grace to others. Think of it like this, by forgiving someone else you are actually making yourself available to receive forgiveness. You do not have to forgive because the other person is sorry. You do not have to forgive because the other person has changed and will no longer wrong you. You do not have to forgive because the person who wrongs you asks you to…you have to forgive because you are forgiven.
The forgiveness, the grace that you offer is not conditional. It known no limits, no restrictions, no boundaries. The forgiveness you offer is not dependent on the worthiness or quality of the person you forgive it is dependent on the worthiness of the Lord who forgave you.
Jesus was man of grace. Sure, the law is important, but Jesus Himself emphasized grace that is received through faith. Jn 1:17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. Jesus did not come to this world to judge it. He came to bring grace and forgiveness. The entire message of the Gospel, the story of the Bible, the good news of Scripture is that it is the grace of God. For without that grace, we could not be saved. We are the first servant. We have a debt with the king that we could not repay in 100 lifetimes. Thanks be to God that He is a merciful king and a forgiving Lord for He does not hold that debt against us. In fact by the blood of His Son He wipes the debt away. Through the Cross of Christ your sins were washed away, and you were made new.
Now there are some of you who have a hard time letting go. You make a great friend…but a terrible enemy. When someone wrongs you, when someone lets you down you hold it against them. You refuse to let go. I mean you may tell yourself that you forgive them…but in your heart…you haven’t. There are some of you here today that are holding on to grudges, and malice and refusing to let go. You speak ill of the person, make fun of them, make snide remarks about them…that may be all you ever do…but you do because you really never truly forgave them…you never truly let it go. You should know…that the grace you receive comes with expectations. One expectation is that when you receive grace- you offer it. It’s an if…then kind of a deal. If you receive God’s grace, then you offer grace. If you don’t offer grace…then you don’t…you get the idea.
Then there are others of you. You have no problem offering grace. It’s the receiving it you have a hard time. You can understand that God loves others…you just can’t see how He could love you. I will tell you two things: one you are no worse than anyone else in God’s eyes. Two: God can love you- because He made you. You are His child, His creation, His baby. He gave up His Son for you, and even though you make mistakes…all He sees is His child washed clean by the blood of His Son. Take heart, grace is not something you can earn…which means that your making mistakes…does not nullify the gift of grace God has for you.
