Title: No Longer Condemned
Scripture: Romans 8:6, “To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”
Our history of slavery and segregation sometimes explodes. Some may remember the riots in South Central Los Angeles in January 1993. People were burning buildings and looting stores. During all of the confusion an unsuspecting truck driver, named Reginald Denny, made a wrong turn and ended up in an area of some of the worst rioting. After smashing a window with a brick, some of the hoodlums pulled Denny from his truck. Millions of people were watching as a news helicopter hovered overhead. Two men then beat him with a broken bottle and kicked him in the face until he lost consciousness, permanently damaging him. Somehow, he lived through the ordeal. When the case came to court, the men who had beaten him were hardened, belligerent, and showed no sign of remorse. Once again, the media was filming live as they panned the courtroom. Reginald Denny still had a swollen and distorted face from that merciless beating. The nation watched as Denny got out of his seat, against the protest of his attorneys, and walked over to the mothers of his assailants and hugged them and told them as he told them he forgave their sons. They returned his hugs, and one of the mothers said that she loved him. Whether or not his actions had any effect on his attackers we do not know.
Before you think that I am overly romantic, let me remind you that is exactly what God has done for you. God calls it grace. The two men in the courtroom did not deserve forgiveness; they did not ask for it, and they had done nothing to deserve it, but Denny offered without condition. In the same way, the world mutilated Jesus. The beatings and abuses the night before and the torture of the cross disfigured him. The world was expressing hatred of him at the same time he offered forgiveness and reconciliation. Before we ever known him as God, he had walked toward us to embrace us and give us his compassion.
Romans 5:8 tells us, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners Christ died for us.” Colossians 1:21-22 gives more detail, “Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ’s body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation.” This is grace.
God loves you and forgives you when you deserve neither love nor forgiveness. You do not deserve it, nor will you ever deserve it. Grace means that “Thy sins are forgiven the.” God not only forgives, he wipes the slate clean.
Romans 8:1-2, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit who gives life has set you free from the law of sin and death.” Grace means that forgiveness and reconciliation with God have come. God does not base forgiveness and reconciliation on what you have done, but on who God is. Grace is God’s reward at Christ’s expense.
The first point I want you to understand is that Grace is the defining element of the Christian faith. Several years ago, world-renowned scholars held a comparative religious symposium in Britain. They began the debate with this question, is there anything in Christianity that other world religions do not teach? Life after death was first up. Christianity teaches that Christ appeared after His death. Other religions spoke of gods appearing in human form and accounts of people returning after dead though they usually spoke of it in terms of reincarnation. C.S. Lewis wandered into the room as the debate was in full heat. He asked what the debate question was. They told Doctor Lewis that they were trying to discover if Christianity taught anything that other religions did not teach. Lewis replied, “That is easy. It’s grace.”
There was a discussion about Doctor Lewis’s remark. Still, the scholars agreed that the idea that God’s love comes to us freely, without any strings attached and asking nothing in return, went against what other religions taught.
Next, on the agenda was the Buddhist’s eight-fold path. Here an individual’s performance is the measure of personal success. Likewise, the Hindu doctrine of karma where a person’s destiny is determined by his or her accomplishing certain things in each phase of spiritual growth measures is performance determined. Muslims have a code of law that they must follow precisely to enter paradise. Christianity alone makes God’s love and acceptance something offered to undeserving human beings without cost or condition. Indeed, you cannot earn grace; it comes as a gift.
Ephesians 2:6-9 says, “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.”
Buddhism, Hinduism, and the Muslim religions do count people’s sins against them. Reconciliation is a difficult if not impossible climb for them. Christians understand that the true God of Heaven is full of compassion and mercy. Even in the Old Testament, Exodus 34:6-7a, “And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.’”
God wants union with you more than you want to reconcile with Him. This reconciliation is free—paid for by the offended party. Grace is the central and defining element of the Christian faith. You cannot earn God’s love and forgiveness—it comes as a gift.
The second point important for you to understand is that Grace means that God has forgiven you and Heaven is awaiting you. Philip Yancey, in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace? tells the following story: “A vagrant lived near the Fulton Fish Market on the lower east side of Manhattan. The slimy smell of fish carcasses and entrails nearly overpowered him, and he hated the trucks that noisily arrived before sunrise. But midtown got crowded, and the cops harassed him there. Down by the wharves, nobody bothered with a grizzled man who kept to himself and slept on a loading dock behind a dumpster. Early one morning when the workers were slinging eel and halibut off trucks, yelling to each other in Italian, the vagrant roused himself and poked through the dumpsters behind the tourist restaurants. An early start guaranteed good pickings: last night’s uneaten garlic bread and French fries, nibbled pizza, and a wedge of cheesecake. He ate what he could stomach and stuffed the rest in a brown paper sack. The bottles and cans he stashed in plastic bags in his rusty shopping kart. The morning sun, pale through the harbor fog, finally made its way over the buildings by the wharf. When he saw the ticket from last week’s lottery lying in a pile of wilted lettuce, he almost let it go. By force of habit, he picked it up and jammed it in his pocket. In the old days, when luck was better, he used to buy one ticket a week, never more. It was past noon when he remembered the ticket stub and held it up to the newspaper box to compare numbers. Three number match, the fourth, the fifth, all seven! It cannot be true. Things like that do not happen to him. Bums do not win the New York Lottery. But it was true. Later that day he was squinting into the bright lights as the television crews presented the newest media darling, the unshaven, baggy pants vagrant who will receive $243,009 per year for the next twenty years. A chic-looking woman wearing a leather miniskirt shoved a microphone in his face and asked, “How do you feel?” He started back dazed. He then caught a whiff of her perfume for he said, “Lady, you smell good.” It had been a long time, a very long time since anyone had asked him how he felt. He said he felt like a man who had been on the edge of starvation and back and was beginning to fathom that he would never feel hungry again. What did that beggar do to deserve receiving several million dollars? Absolutely nothing! He had not even bought the winning ticket. All he did was pick it up and cash it in to receive his prize. Someone else had thrown it away as though it was useless, but he saw its potential worth. He had not worked hard for a long time. He did not earn the money. The check was given to him as a gift, without condition. He did not do anything but accept the check. Having a relationship with God does not depend on how well you will do or how perfect you are. God bases His mercy on the death and resurrection of Christ. It is pure mercy.
This is good news for failures. Titus 3:4-5, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit.” Here is the unique message of the Christian faith: 2 Corinthians 5:19, “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them.” Because God bases our relationship only on grace, we must understand that we can never be perfect. Ephesians 2:4-5 says, “But because of his 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.”
Philip Yancey writes, “Grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us more … And grace means there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.” The guilt and condemnation are gone, and a settled peace comes upon our hearts as we realize we do not have to do anything to gain God’s acceptance—we already have it. God does not base His love for us on how good we are but on the character of a gracious and forgiving God who loves us more than we can understand.
The third point that is important for us to understand is that grace inspires us to stop living in sin. One thing I have learned is that guilt is a poor motivator. Some people are afraid to talk too much about grace out of fear that people will no longer think obedience is important. The truth is that you can motivate people through guilt, but the motivation does not last long.
I found in my years in the military and later my decades in industry that you can provoke people with fear and intimidation resulting in workers that are full resentment and do only what is necessary. Some athletic coaches try to motivate through humiliation—pointing out everything a player did wrong—even in public resulting in players that lack spirit. The fear and certainty of hell and the constant concentration on sin have the same effects on a struggling Christian as do fear, intimidation, and knowledge of one’s every sin. A “That a Boy!” or a “That a Girl!” motivates, indeed inspires. Knowing that God accepts you where you are, loves you as you are, and believes in you are the things that make a Christian sparkle.
Some people prefer the “gotcha kind of god” that is for every pointing to our failures. People that live with this kind of god serve with cringing and resentment. A god that is always out to get you for something that you have done wrong or because you do not measure up will always give you a failing grade with no promise of improvement. People whose lives have been touched by grace understand that the Christian life is not a matter of following a moral code nor is it a matter of believing set prescribed doctrines. Moral codes and doctrines help direct when we have questions but if properly understood always point to a relationship marked by love and trust. The Scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees based salvation on codes but Christ-based salvation is unconditional love. The Apostle Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 3:6, “The letter of the law kills, but the Spirit gives life.” When we asked our mother which of us children she loved most, she always answered “The one that needs it most.” That was and is Christ speaking through her.
We serve a God that loved us when were still sinners. Most of us still are sinners and God still loves us. When we accept that God loves and accepts us, our hearts respond with love and dedication. This is the grace that inspires.
Saint Augustine said, “Who can be good, if not made [to do] so by loving?” He could say that because he knew that when you love God, what pleases you pleases God. Grace puts you in contact with the love of God, and that love changes you. Even though grace is our defining doctrine, we in the Christian church have not lived up to it very well. Some have even taught that yes, we are forgiven at the time of our salvation, but if we mess up, there is no hope for us. We must understand that God’s grace saves us, and then we act better and live by grace every moment of every day.
An important question: Do we get to the point that we do not need Grace? If we look at our thoughts, decisions, and actions on any given day, even the best days, we likely find selfish purposes and wrong motivations. Most of us are not Christ-like yet. Yes, we need grace.
Martyn Lloyd-Jones once wrote to his pastors, “There is thus clearly a sense in which the message of ‘justification by faith only’ can be dangerous, and likewise with the message that salvation is entirely grace. I would say to all preachers, If you are preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, you had better examine your sermons again, and you had better make sure that you are preaching the salvation that is offered in the New Testament to the ungodly, to the sinner, to those who are enemies of God. There is this kind of dangerous element about true presentation of the doctrine of salvation.”
There may be those who misunderstand the message of grace so that they feel they no longer have to obey God at all, but it is healthier to have an image of an angry god who can never be pleased and find yourself resenting him. If you err, always err on the side of grace.
The final point that is important to understand is this: you must be willing to receive Grace, to ask God for it by confessing Christ as your LORD and Savior. I can offer you the greatest gift in the world, but if you never receive it, it is never yours. If you never confess your guilt, you can never receive forgiveness—you will not understand your need for it. C.S. Lewis says that this is the “catch” of grace.
Pascal said, “Truly it is evil to be full of faults, but it is a still greater evil to be full of them, and to be unwilling to recognize them.” We cannot earn our salvation, but we do have to accept it. We must admit that we are “sinful, wretched, pitiful, poor, weak, and blind” to experience the reality of God’s wonderful grace that ushers us to his presence and showers us with his love. Have you taken that step? Have you faced the truth about yourself so that you can receive the fullness of God’s grace? Heaven waits.
