God’s Growing Grace
Ephesians 4:22-24
An oxymoron is not someone who is foolish with a bad complexion. It’s a figure of speech using words that seemly contradict each other yet has a special meaning to create a special effect like, “A wise fool,” “Cruel Kindness,” “Thunderous silence,” or “Make haste slowly.”
Oxymorons are found throughout society, like supermarkets advertising, “diet ice-cream,” or “fat free potato chips,” They’re also found in government with phrases like “temporary tax increases,” or “government intelligence.”
Within the church there also seems to be an oxymoron concerning God’s grace, that somehow it’s growing, or growing grace.
When we think of growth, we normally think of it in numeric terms of quantity. But that’s the furthest thing from God’s mind when it comes to growth in the church. Church growth isn’t about how many attend church, but rather it’s about our growing in our relationship with Jesus, or what we know as discipleship.
Just because a person is a part of a church that is growing in numbers doesn’t mean they are growing in their relationship with Jesus. Even if they attend weekly Bible studies doesn’t mean they are growing in the things of God. It’s only when they are applying what they learn.
Let me illustrate. If I decide I wanted to get healthier and physically fit, then the most logical thing for me to do is to join a health club and start eating healthier. But if for the next six months I went to the gym every day and sat in an easy chair reading magazines about healthy foods and life style, I may have learned more about getting healthy, but I didn’t grow one ounce healthier; maybe a few pounds heavier, but not healthier.
So what is growth?
Growth isn’t about quantity; rather it’s about quality. It’s the quality of my relationships. It’s how much closer I am to God today than I was yesterday. It’s how much more I love my family and my neighbor as myself, because of God’s grace. It’s how much my character is being changed by the power of God.
Jesus didn’t say, “I came to give you more stuff.” Instead He said, “I have come to give you abundant life,” John 10:10. Jesus didn’t give us His grace to help us get started on this journey of faith, but He also gave us His grace to help us along the way. We need to grow, therefore, in His grace.
We think that just because good things are happening that we’re growing. Take Las Vegas for an example. It’s been growing for some time, and at one time it was known as the fastest growing city in the U.S. But this growth has nothing to do with the quality of life of its citizens. Freeway and street congestion has also grown and produced increased fist shakers, cut-off artists, and road rage. These are definitely not quality growth characteristics, as there has also be a marked increase in violence.
We are living in a fast growing society, but one with very little inward growth. We’re a society that’s struggling with addictions and people who have been hurt and unable to get beyond their past.
But Gods’ desire is that we start to grow and mature in our relationship with Him so that God’s inward change can take place, and He has given His grace to accomplish this.
It’s God’s desire for all of us to grow in His grace.
Being a Christian doesn’t guarantee automatic growth or change. I’ve known Christians who have known the Lord for some time, but haven’t grown much in their faith. Yet, I’ve known others who have only known Jesus for a short time, and they have surpassed these others in their maturity and knowledge of God.
It isn’t through length of time that we grow; rather it’s by the grace of God. If anybody thinks it’s by working hard, they’ll end up only growing as far as their capabilities will allow. Those who have tried to work harder only find themselves mired deeper in guilt. The good news, however, is that our growth is by God’s grace.
The Apostle Peter said,
“But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 3:18a NKJV)
We’re going to be examining this whole process of putting on the new man or woman that God desires for us to be.
Our text is out of Ephesians chapter 4, and in these verses we see God’s new wardrobe.
When I think about a new wardrobe, it amazes me how caught up everyone is concerning what celebrities are wearing on and off the red carpet. The fashion world’s lure is a promise of a “new you.” You’ve seen the before and after shots. How with a miracle makeover, paint job, or with this or that pill we can be brand new person.
Now, I’m sure you’ve all heard the phrase, “Clothes don’t make the person,” but some have added, “but it helps.” What the world is trying to sell is that people can get a new birth through a change in how they look. But clothing is more often a cover up to who the person really is inside. Clothing may be able to polish the image, but it cannot polish the soul.
In our passage, Paul is describing for us the clothing for a whole new race of human beings called believers. They’re no longer classified by race or nationality. They are neither Jew nor Gentile, male or female, slave or free. They are instead simply believers.
They are a new creation, a new nation, and a new race. They’re God’s children who will one day inhabit heaven. Therefore, they need a whole new wardrobe, one befitting their new status. And this new wardrobe will never go out of style like bell-bottom pants. Also these new clothes never wear out. In fact, the longer they are worn, the better they become.
Paul gives us this process of getting fitted by God, that is, what steps are needed to put on these new clothes.
1. Put Off Old Self
What exactly is the “old self,” or “old man” as it says in some versions.
The following verse is taken from the Phillips translation because it does a good job in expounding upon Paul’s word.
“Do not live any longer the futile lives of gentiles. For they live in a world of shadows, and are cut off from the life of God through their deliberate ignorance of mind and sheer hardness of heart. They have lost all decent feelings and abandoned themselves to sensuality, practicing any form of impurity which lust can suggest.” (Ephesians 4:17-19 Phillips)
This describes our old self, which just so happens to be the current condition of present day humanity. It’s where their hearts and souls are hardened to the point of being darkened and dead due to the deceitfulness of sin. They are completely alienated from God and have lost all feelings towards Him. They have completely given themselves over to sensuality and lust.
But they instinctively know that they need to change, but instead of coming to God and His wonderful grace, they turn to other things.
a. Trying to Do Good
The thinking is if we could just do enough good things, then we would grow and change. Jesus gave to us, however, a beautiful word picture to reveal how this can never work.
“Nor do they put new wine into old wineskins, or else the wineskins break, the wine is spilled, and the wineskins are ruined. But they put new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved.” (Matthew 9:17 NKJV)
Since most of us know little if anything about wineskins, because we don’t have wine fermenting inside a goatskin. New wine needed to be put into new wineskins. As the new wine ferments, it expands and only a new and flexible wineskin can expand with it. But if new wine is poured into an old hardened wineskin, the result is that the old wineskin will burst pouring out the contents.
But here’s the good news. If the wineskin is old and hardened, it doesn’t need to be thrown out. Mainly because it’s not really economical to have to kill a goat every time a batch of new wine is made. Instead they would take the old wineskin down to the river and thoroughly clean it, and then they’d apply oil to the outside to make it subtle again.
Jesus wasn’t interested in telling us how to make wine; rather He was showing us what was necessary if we want to grow. If we don’t want to burst at the seams, we have to wash ourselves in the water of God’s word, and then apply the oil of the Holy Spirit.
Far too often we come to faith in Jesus with various rules and regulations of what we are to do and be. The difficulty is that we can only grow so much within the framework of religious boundaries. Unfortunately there’s no room for growth, and if we do not renew ourselves, then we’ll end up ruined and in the trash heap.
This leads me to the second way we try to take of the old.
b. Keeping the Rules
People try to change themselves, and the writer of Hebrews has some great advice for them.
“Do not be carried about with various and strange doctrines. For it is good that the heart be established by grace, not with foods which have not profited those who have been occupied with them.” (Hebrews 13:9 NKJV)
The writer of Hebrews tells us that our hearts are strengthened by God’s grace, not by obeying the rules. Yes, there is a time and place for rules, especially with our children, but rules should not dominate our relationship with them especially as they grow older. Rules for an 8 year-year-old do not apply to when they are 18.
Rules cannot produce growth; they only control people. Rules give direction, but they do not empower; only God grace can do that.
Religion tries to make a bunch of rules about our relationship with God thinking this is what produces growth. But religion never has worked, nor will it ever work.
True growth comes only in relationship with Jesus and only by His grace.
c. Change Through Guilt
Guilt cannot produce growth. We say, “If I just feel bad enough about what I’ve done, then maybe I’ll change and get better.”
If we think about it logically, this doesn’t make sense. Feeling bad about ourselves won’t make us feel better, it will only make us feel worse, and continue down the wrong path.
It’s kind of like we’re trying to beat God to the punch. “Lord, I know You don’t like what I’ve done, so I’m going to condemn myself so that you won’t have to.”
For believers, however, there is no condemnation, and Jesus doesn’t condemn us either, and that’s because He died so that we wouldn’t be condemned.
“Who then will condemn us? No one—for Christ Jesus died for us and was raised to life for us, and he is sitting in the place of honor at God’s right hand, pleading for us.” (Romans 8:34 NLT)
Therefore, if God doesn’t condemn us, then neither should we.
The second part of taking on God’s wardrobe is …
2. Put on the New Self
“Put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.” (Ephesians 4:24 NKJV)
Paul also says,
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17 NKJV)
What an incredible promise. It isn’t about a new list of rules; that’s the old self, who we once were before belief in Christ. But now the new has arrived. To keep our clothing theme, God has replaced last year’s fashion with His new creations.
And with this incredible promise there are a couple of things that we need to know.
a. We Don’t Achieve this New Life
We don’t have to work for it. This new wardrobe is a creation of God. We don’t make ourselves new, we just have to put on what God has graciously provided.
Our problem is that we don’t feel comfortable in receiving it, so we get out our old stuff and sew it onto God’s new clothes.
Right before Jesus gave the illustration of the wineskin, He gave another illustration that fits this perfectly. He said we can’t sew a new patch onto an old set of clothes.
“No one puts a piece of unshrunk cloth on an old garment; for the patch pulls away from the garment, and the tear is made worse.” (Matthew 9:16 NKJV)
This piece of unshrunk cloth is our own righteousness. And what we try to do is to make it fit the righteousness of God, and it doesn’t. Instead it tears away and makes God’s new wardrobe unsuitable to wear. The prophet Isaiah said it best when he said that our righteousness is nothing more than filthy rags in the sight of God, Isaiah 64:6.
When we try to put our righteousness onto His, I just see Jesus saying, “Why didn’t you just put on what I freely gave you by My grace, rather than ruining the whole outfit.”
b. We Still Have to Put On the New Life
Just taking off the old isn’t enough. Many believe that if they just stop the bad stuff and start going back to church it will be sufficient. But it isn’t. God says that after we take off the old life we have to put on His new life, which comes by God’s grace through faith in Jesus.
It’s like having two coats. One is old and raggedly and no longer fits. It needs to be thrown away, not rehung in our closet to pull it out and put it on again.
Our problem is that we still like this old coat because we’ve worn it for many years. What we end up dong is putting on the new coat over the old. We try to wear them both, and it just doesn’t work. It’s uncomfortable and it looks ridiculous.
Another problem is that once we put on this new garment, this new self, we think that’s it. But the verbiage says we have to continue doing it. It is therefore a constant and everyday decision to take off the old and to put on the new.
And the reason is that we’re still sinners. The sin nature still resides within us. We have to, therefore, continually put off this sin nature every day, if not every minute, and consciously and continually put on this new self, this new creation in Christ.
Now, while this is good in theory, it’s hard in real life, which is why this third and last part of the process is so important.
c. Renew Our Minds
To the church in Ephesus Paul said,
“And be renewed in the spirit of your mind.” (Ephesians 4:23 NKJV)
And then to the church in Rome he said,
“And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” (Romans 12:2a NKJV)
God wants to change us into this new person by changing us from the inside out, and this begins with the way we think. This is at the very heart of what it means to repent. In the Greek language the word means to change one’s mind concerning what we are doing.
This allows us to see things as God sees them, like the prophet Isaiah who stood before the Lord in his old set of clothes, in his own righteousness, and for the first time he saw them as the Lord saw them, as filthy rags he had sown together.
However, when we come to Jesus Christ making Him our Savior and Lord, he gives us a whole new life, and the more we live in this new life, the more real it becomes, and the more we realize that it isn’t by our anything we do.
“Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now being made perfect by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3 NKJV)
It’s by God’s grace all the way. A renewed mind isn’t about determination; rather it’s about a determined dependence on God. And there’s a difference. Determination says we can do this no matter what, but a determined dependence on God says it is only by His grace that we live, and move, and have our being.
This renewal of our mind begins with our thinking in a whole new way as outlined in the Bible. Since it is God who gives it, then He will empower our lives to live it.
Conclusion
For this change process to take place, we must realize that not only does change take time, but it also begins with trust. God is not just changing us for a time and season; rather He is changing us for an eternity with Him. So we need to trust Him to accomplish what He has started.
“Being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6 NKJV)
To grow in God’s grace we need to daily take off the old self that has been and still is dominated by sin, and then put on the new creation God has made for us to be through faith in Jesus Christ.
