How to grow in Grace.
2nd Peter 3 verse 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
I wonder what the greatest gift you have ever received was?
I wonder if the most valuable gift was also the greatest!!!!
I remember once getting a push bike given to me when I was beginning as a minister - it was a great gift because the person who gave it to me was a humble man who saw I had a real need . I had been cycling around the parish on an antique boneshaker I really needed something better.. It was a great gift because he couldn’t really afford to give it to me. It was a great gift because I had really done nothing to deserve it.
But there are in fact greater gifts than this. One such gift is grace!!!
The New Testament is seasoned with grace:- 2nd Peter 3 verse 18 But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.
As Christians we are instructed to grow in the grace of Jesus.
When I was a child our family travelled to Christchurch and we took time to visit some relatives of my Father.
They were a very old couple who had been married for a long long time or it seemed so to me.
He was a thin old man with a big white moustache but what stood out for me was the depth of love that he had for his wife. Somewhere I have a photo of them standing outside their home. He has his arm around her and they are obviously very much in love with each other.
Their love for each other was obvious.
Contrast this with a woman I once worked with - she had had a relationship with her married boss. The night before her wedding her boss and her had gone out on a date. After her wedding nothing changed - she would continue to go out with her husband to functions but it became obvious that she was really with her boss.
Some years later I met this womans unfortunate husband on the streets of Dunedin he had left his wife and had sunk into a life of drunkedness and alcohol. His wife had divorced him and was now married to someone else again.
What a contrast between these two marriages.
Which one do we think is ideal - We would have to declare it a no contest awarding the medalion to the first couple.
But I wonder which marriage best represents, as a parable, the average New Zealand christian’s ongoing relationship with God. How many of us pay lip service to our relationship to the Kingdom of God, and to Jesus yet maintain an ongoing adulterous relationship with the world.
Are we a people growing in Grace or are we a people who have progresively dis - graced ourselves so that what is left is a remnant of grace.
This morning I would like time to consider grace and to consider ways in which we can grow in grace.
REV 2:4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken your first love. 5 Remember the height from which you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
If, by taking a sober look at our christian walk we discover that we have drifted from our first love then it may be time that we considered the importance of grace in our lives and once again anchored our boats in the bay of grace and then began plotting the wall planner of our lives in such a way that we could grow in grace.
The relationship between a bride and a groom is often the image that is used to compare the relationship between Christ and his church.
REV 19:7 Let us rejoice and be glad
and give him glory!
For the wedding of the Lamb has come,
and his bride has made herself ready.
REV 19:8 Fine linen, bright and clean,
was given her to wear."
(Fine linen stands for the righteous acts of the saints.)
The marital relationship is sharply focussed to describe the church. The bride makes herself ready for the coming of the Lamb Christ) for the marriage. The church prepares for the wedding by wittnesing, by right living, and by those actions which please the lamb. The church must remain morally pure as it waits for the bridegrooms appearance. (NIV Bible commentary.)
As Christians we do not start off our relationship with Christ as the perfect bride. Indeed it is quite the opposite.
Indeed the very thought of Christ being connected with even the best of us, without grace, is an absurd thought.
The Prophet Isaiah correctly describes our situation when he says:-ISA 64:6 All of us have become like one who is unclean,
and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;
we all shrivel up like a leaf,
and like the wind our sins sweep us away.
Elsewhere in the old Testament we get a beautiful picture of our situation and God’s incredible love.
HOS 3:1 The LORD said to me, "Go, show your love to your wife again, though she is loved by another and is an adulteress. Love her as the LORD loves the Israelites, though they turn to other gods and love the sacred raisin cakes."
HOS 3:2 So I bought her for fifteen shekels of silver and about a homer and a lethek of barley. 3 Then I told her, "You are to live with me many days; you must not be a prostitute or be intimate with any man, and I will live with you."
HOS 3:4 For the Israelites will live many days without king or prince, without sacrifice or sacred stones, without ephod or idol. 5 Afterward the Israelites will return and seek the LORD their God and David their king. They will come trembling to the LORD and to his blessings in the last days.
In this beautiful picture Hosea is called to live out a parable of God’s love for his people. He goes to his undeserving wife who has been a prostitute and an adulteress and buys her back for fifteen shekels of silver and a lethak of barley. And he loves her - Hosea represents - of course Israel - but in Christ that same love is extended to us as well.
This then can also be a reflection of God’s love for us - What Hosea extends to Gomer when he pays for her return is grace. In a way it is a type for us. Because when Christ dies on the cross he pays an incredible price for our return to God it is God’s grace towards us the unrighteous paid with the blood of his perfect son.
Recently a pitiful story was told in the newspaper of a deaf man who came across a woman who was being assailed upon by men in Wellington - he helped her and then pursued her attackers - because of his weak heart the protection of this woman led to a heart attack and the man died. He died extending grace to the woman.
Christ died extending grace to us.
It is this grace that God has extended to us. 2 Cor 5 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation.
If we have known a moment in our lives when we have been able to see two things together in the same frame then we are very blessed. These two things are - our pitiful - Gomer like state before God and the incredible grace of God.
You see if we want to grow in grace then we need to have real grace as opposed to what Bonhoeffer terms - cheap grace!
Cheap Grace (says Bonhoeffer.) Is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, comunion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.
Gal 5:4 You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.
So if I was to describe for you the best way of beginning to grow in grace I would have to suggest to you that that way begins in appreciation of what God has given us.
There is a need for us to look into our family christian album and to justcatch a glimpse of the snapshots of our lives without Christ. To see the wretchedness of our position without Christ and to understand our destination without him are powerful ways to comprehend the incredible gift that Jesus gave us when he hung on the cross.
The first step in growing in grace has to be appreciation for all God has done for us.
Without such appreciation growth in grace becomes stunterd and difficult.
So the first step growing in Grace is surely appreciation. Trace the roots of grace, or charis in Greek, and you will find a verb that means "I rejoice, I am glad."
Every now and then as Christians we can benefit powerfully from some helpful revision about where we were and what Christ has done.
You see we need to be bathed in grace.
"Ah, what a thing is a man devoid of grace." Sighed the poet George Herbert.
But a person enraptured by grace and thankful for it can do amazing things:-
Thankfulness for grace was exhibited in the life of Dwight Moody. Moody preached in a manner which led to the sort of effect produced by Luther. He exulted in the free grace of God. His joy was contagious. Men leaped out of darkness into light, and lived a christian life afterward.
Thankfulness for grace has to be a powerful starting point for growing in grace.
Take the story of the 10 lepers Luke 17:12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, "Jesus, Master, have pity on us!"
LK 17:14 When he saw them, he said, "Go, show yourselves to the priests." And as they went, they were cleansed. LK 17:15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him--and he was a Samaritan. LK 17:17 Jesus asked, "Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Was no one found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" 19 Then he said to him, "Rise and go; your faith has made you well." There was something about the thankfulness that this one leper expressed that somehow put a seal on his healing. . The fact that the Samaritan returned to thank Jesus may indicate that he had received salvation in addition to the physical healing all ten had received.
Something is released when we are thankful to God.Brent Williams
The Train and the Boy I would like to tell you a story about a man named John Griffith. John was the father of an 8-year-old boy during the 20’s and 30’s. John was very fortunate during those times, because he had a job. John loved his son very much. He was the apple of his eye. John’s son was a normal little boy who constantly wanted to go to work with his father. John decided he would take his boy to work with him one day. John was bridge conductor across the Mississippi River. John was in charge of raising and lowering the bridge so that boats could get through and trains could pass. John’s son was so amazed at the gears and all the things that went along with his father’s job. They had brought their lunch to work with them that day and decided to eat their lunch on the bank of the river. John and his son was eating lunch and John had realized that in about 3 minutes the Memphis Belle carrying 300 passengers was getting ready to cross the bridge, but the bridge was not lowered. John didn’t want to alarm his son so he patted him on the shoulder and told him to sit right their and he would be right back. John hustled up the stairs, he grabbed the lever to lower the bridge and he had realized that somehow his son had climbed to the bridge and had fallen in between the gears of the bridge. John could hear the train coming carrying the 300 passengers. In his mind he started going over ways he could get his son from the gears and still lower the bridge, but he knew he had to make a choice. John lowered the bridge just in time for the train to pass crushing his son in between the gears. John looked at the train passing by and saw a man reading his newspaper a woman drinking her tea and another talking to his wife. John screamed at the top of his lungs "Hey, Don’t you know what I’ve just done for you" they didn’t hear him so he screamed again "Hey, Don’t you know what I’ve just done for you" But again they just went along with their lives not ever realizing what John had done for them. God is asking us the same question "Don’t you know what I’ve done for you. I sent my only son to this earth for you. He died a terrible death so that you could spend eternity with me. Why are you going on with your busy meaningless live not serving me, and some of you have not even accepted me as your savior. I love you so much.
Thankfulness for God’s Grace will provide an incredible platform for you to grow in Grace.
Shakespeare once said O Lord that lends me life. Lend he a heart replete with thankfulness.
Understanding what god has done for you and being truly thankful for it will radically change your life.
The Apostle paul demonstrates this thankfulness in 1 timothy:-
1TI 1:12 I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength, that he considered me faithful, appointing me to his service. 13 Even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. 14 The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus.
It was out of gratitude for grace that Paul was motivated to serve his saviour and it was out of that gratitude that he was able to face many trials and to come to the end of the great adventure that had been his Christian live with gratitude and with keen anticipation for his Spiritual inheritance in heaven.
As you live
You may think that being grateful is only a small thing for you to have to do to begin to grow in grace.
But understand this that it is gratitude that releases the hand of god in your life.
That attitude of gratitude will release the power of God in your life in a way that you perhaps have never dreamed of.
