Grace for the Journey
1 John 1:5-2:6
Last week, we looked at how we understand grace in our Wesleyan Methodist tradition. We started out by defining grace as God’s unmerited love and forgiveness. We understand grace as a journey of faith which John Wesley called the “way of salvation.” It starts with the recognition of our sin, leading to repentance, receiving God’s grace and forgiveness and being justified before God, and then moving into sanctification and perfection. Today, we summarize this journey in three-stages: prevenient grace, justifying grace and sanctifying grace. These are not 3 different types of grace but rather 3 different ways we experience God’s grace, and the impact it has on our lives. Prevenient grace, or preceding grace is the grace that comes before our response of faith to God. God is active in our lives, wooing us as with His love with the hope that we will respond in faith to Him. When we turn to God and accept His love and forgiveness, we experience God’s justifying grace and are made right with God. While the struggle with sin remains, it no longer reigns over our lives. Through God’s justifying grace, we are freed from the consequences of sin, that is separation from God and guilt over our actions. Therefore, we are able to move forward into the future in a right relationship with God.
In that moment, God’s grace begins to sanctify us as we yield to Him and He begins to transform us into the likeness of Jesus, His son. In the Old Testament, the word sanctification comes from the root word ‘kadash’ which means "to cut or separate." Sanctification is God’s grace setting us apart for His work and to lead holy lives. This life of separation challenges the believer to forsake the patterns of the world and to follow the pattern of holiness found in Jesus. Sanctification and holiness are closely tied together. It leads to a life of holiness. For God is holy, and calls his people to be holy. Leviticus 11:44 says, “I am the Lord your God; consecrate yourselves and be holy, because I am holy.” When we respond by consecrating ourselves entirely to God, it is by God’s grace that we may become more holy. Wesley named 2 kinds of holiness. First is personal holiness which is avoiding sin. We become more and more like Jesus. And when we do, our lives show evidence of the Fruit of the Spirit which is “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control.” Also evidenced in our lives is a growing love for others. This then leads to social holiness which is addressing the needs of people and the social ills of the day. In Wesley’s time, these were a lack of good education and health care, poverty, and war. Not much has changed today has it?
Our scripture lesson this morning talks about God being light, “in whom there is no darkness at all.” This is the image of sanctification as God’s grace enters our lives, removing the influence of sin and continually revealing more and more of the light of God in us. Sanctification deals with any darkness within and replaces it with light. Then we are able to let that light shine in the world. This is how we become the light of the world and the salt of the earth.
If justification has to do with our standing with God, that, is before we are mired in sin then sanctification has to do with our character and conduct for God. Justification puts us into a right relationship with God; sanctification exhibits the fruit of that relationship, a life of holiness. Justification is what God does for us; sanctification is what God does in us. Sanctification is not what we do for God but rather what God does in us. It’s doesn’t begin by changing us on the outside but rather begins with a change on the inside. This is where the person of God enters the heart, soul and mind of man and begins to change us to think, believe and feel like Jesus Christ. By doing so, we begin to participate in the life of Christ. The mind that was in Christ now becomes our mind. The desires of Christ become our desires and the heart and compassion of Christ becomes ours. We become more and more like the image of Him who created us. Sanctification first and foremost is all about a change of the heart and mind from thinking and feeling like the world to thinking and feeling like Christ. That inward change then leads to an outward change in our lives. It’s change from the inside out.
The path to salvation is not a one-way road. Experience and history tell us that backsliding is possible. Just as you can enter into life in Christ, you can also leave it. It’s not a “once saved, always saved” thing. You can leave your faith and living for Christ and lose your salvation. Therefore, each and every day we need to continue to live an intentional life of faith and growth in God’s grace. The good news is that God’s justifying grace is continually available to those who backslide, but the point is not to rely on that fact but to grow continually in Christ-likeness through sanctifying grace. That takes hard work and discipline. That’s one of the main reasons Methodism was built around a disciplined and methodical way of living.
Methodists believe grace is not a one time event in our lives but rather a progression of how we experience more and more of God’s love and guidance on the journey of faith as we experience what Wesley called “grace upon grace.” We all are a work in progress. John Newton said, “I am not what I might be, I am not what I ought to be, I am not what I wish to be, I am not what I hope to be. But I thank God I am not what I once was, and I can say with the great apostle, ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am.’” Slowly but surely there is more of Christ in us and less of ourselves. The thoughts of Jesus become our thoughts which then become the catalyst for all of our actions. To live that type of life is obviously challenging, and therefore it takes God’s grace to enable us to get there. Through God’s sanctifying grace, we are able to become much more than what we are today as we continually grow in His grace. God’s sanctifying grace enables us to do more of what we know God wants us to do, and we become less apt to do what we know we shouldn’t do.
The goal of holiness is to become just like Christ. Is it possible to become exactly like Jesus who was perfect. Jesus call us to “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Matthew 5:48 The idea of perfection was John Wesley’s most controversial belief but mainly because it was misunderstood. So what is Christian perfection? Simply put, perfection is ‘loving the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the sum of Christian perfection: It is all comprised in that one word, Love. First, we are called to love God with everything we have and everything we are. But part of loving God is loving who God loves. This is why Jesus said: ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself.’ These two things contain the whole of Christian Perfection. Becoming perfect in love – that is the goal of the path of salvation. Seeking to love God and neighbor as we have been loved means to be on the road to perfection. This is the pathway to life. To be moving toward this life of love is to be moving toward God. And moving toward God means moving toward life in ever richer and more meaningful expressions.
It’s living a life where Christ is living in me. With Christ dwelling within, there could be no other road to follow than the road to perfection, the road to God. With Christ dwelling within, the impossible goal of perfection suddenly comes within reach. For as Galatians 2:20 say, “it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me.” Once self has been removed from the center of life and that center is filled with Christ, Christian perfection does come within reach, not because of our goodness, efforts, or merit, but because Christ dwelling within us provides both direction and power to travel this high road of loving God and neighbor. This is the road to perfection. It is a road all are called to travel, and none is called to travel it alone. The thought of perfection, apart from the intervention of God in our lives, is at worst terrifying and at best impossible. But with Christ dwelling within, giving direction, courage, and strength, the journey becomes not only bearable, but enormously challenging and deeply rewarding.
John Wesley sought a way of living that would lead him closer to God and God’s plan and purpose for his life, in other words, holiness. For him, the call to perfection was the call of God for everyone. This is what led him to live such a disciplined life aimed at loving God and neighbor every day of his life. Such a disciplined life was not burdensome, but liberating. It was a way of living that offered freedom, meaning, and joy because you are always moving toward life at its best. Now there are five daily practices of what John Wesley called the means of grace. This what makes us Methodist. One is reading the Word of God every day. It takes us about 24 hours to lose a healthy fear of God. And then we are capable of reverting back to living our lives for ourselves and that usually means outside the will of God. Remember Peter said, “O Lord, I would never deny you” and yet just hours later he did it 3 times. And the same can be true in us. So as Methodists, we must regularly take the time to realign ourselves with the purpose of God, to remind myself who I am and whose I am. The second regimen is prayer. All of us keep falling back into this illusion that we’re in control. Prayer is the outward expression of my dependence upon God. Prayer is one of the easiest disciplines for me to skip so I must continually force myself to pray. I need to say to God and in doing so remind myself, “I can’t but you can, God.” But it is also when God can speak to us.
The third discipline is having a community of accountability. You cannot remain faithful to God and his will for your life without a community of accountability. You and I need people who will hold us accountable for the faith we profess. The fourth is service. You were not saved to sit. You were saved to serve, especially the poor. The fifth is the discipline of stewardship. Stewardship takes many forms. First is physical. Methodists believe that our bodies are a gift from God and we are going to be held accountable for the way we care for our bodies. That not only includes what we eat but also whether we exercise. This is the temple of God. Second is spiritual. We believe we are going to be held accountable for our gifts and talents and how we use them. We only have 70-80 years of life if we’re fortunate. God wants us to use that short period of time by using his gifts to do his will by serving others. Third is environmental. Genesis 2 says God gave us dominion over all creation and everything in it. Dominion means caretakers. It’s why we’re concerned about the use of energy, the pollution of our waterways, the loss of our wetlands and recycling. For this is not our world to do as we see fit but it is God’s world which has been entrusted into our hands. Fourth is financial. Money, possessions or wealth do not belong to the one who accumulates it. Only God owns, we’re just stewards. Wesley believed if we keep it to ourselves then we’re robbing God and wasting the Lord’s resources but we’re also robbing the poor. This is why we believe debt is not our friend and why we are committed to living debt free so we can give to God’s purposes generously. A Methodist is someone who is committed to the daily practice of the means of grace.
Grace is a process of dealing with removing sin in our lives. It’s like the story of a couple who purchased an old abandoned New Hampshire farm. They picked the spot where they wanted to build their house, but they found that the site was covered with rocks and boulders. Here’s how they described the process of clearing the site. “It was going to take a lot of hard work to clear it all out....The first phase of the clearing process was easy. The big boulders went fast. And when they were gone, we began to see that there were a lot of smaller rocks that had to go too. But when we had cleared the site of the boulders and the rocks, we noticed all of the stones and pebbles we had not seen before. This was much harder, more tedious work. But we stuck to it, and there came the day when the soil was ready for planting grass.”
God’s sanctifying grace begins with the boulders of sin in our lives and starts removing them. When they are removed, we then are able to see the rocks that remain and God begins working on those. As they are removed, we start to work on the stones and pebbles, and all along the way, we are making room for growth as the seeds of the kingdom are planted with us. The invitation to Christian discipleship is to begin working on clearing out the rocks of sin in your life. We are all a work in progress. The Good News is that God’s not done with you yet. You may not be today what you might be, ought to be, or even hope to be. But by the grace of God, you are what you are and can become what He wants you to be!
