Grace We Don’t Deserve: The Face of Grace
“Grace,” part 3 of 3
Easter Sunday – March 27, 2005
Wildwind Community Church
David Flowers
I have to start out this morning by saying I know the title of this message is redundant. By definition, grace is unmerited favor – favor that we do not deserve. So literally the title of today’s message is “Favor That We Don’t Deserve That We Don’t Deserve.” Now I realized that the moment I came up with the name, but I did it that way for the very simple reason that I want us to focus specifically on that undeserved part today. Two weeks ago we looked at how grace is something we do not understand. Last week we talked about how grace is something that is hard for us to accept. And today I want to focus on this idea that grace is something we do not, and cannot, deserve.
The easiest way to go at this, I felt, is simply to put a face on grace – to view it in human form – which clearly would be in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is a picture of grace.
Colossians 1:15 (NIV)
15 He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation.
Jesus is the image of the invisible God. In other words, Jesus is the one who takes God’s qualities (which are unseen and unknown to us), and makes them visible – gives them an image we can see and recognize and maybe begin to understand. The image of the invisible God.
We need to start there because Jesus is the physical demonstration of everything we need to know about God. If God is a God of love, we can see God’s love in Jesus. If God is a patient God, we can see God’s patience in Jesus. If God is a God who is willing to suffer on our behalf, then we see that suffering in Jesus. If God is a God who forgives and heals, we can see healing and forgiveness in Jesus. And God is all those things, and we do see all those things in Jesus. Jesus puts a face on all those qualities of God that without Christ we would never see – in fact, that’s kind of the Old Testament picture of God. The Old Testament is full of descriptions of God. It speaks of God as loving, faithful, just, merciful, strong, steady, compassionate, angry (at times), and many other qualities. So for centuries people read the Old Testament and had to make due with written descriptions of God.
But one day God decided he’d told us enough. Telling us wasn’t working – it was time to show us. Time for him to slip into a human body, come down here, and SHOW us what he looks like.
John 1:14 (NIV)
14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
Even John’s reference to Jesus as “The Word” hints at what I’m trying to get to today. Jesus is referred to as “The Word” for what reason? I mean, what is YOUR word? Your word is a tangible representation of you, isn’t it? It is through your words that you make known who you are. If you did not speak words, people would have little go on in knowing who you are. Your words express your thoughts, your feelings, your character, your intentions, your commitments, your dreams and ideals, nearly everything about you can be represented by your words.
So Jesus is referred to as The Word. Jesus is The Word of God, in other words he is the expression to us of God’s feelings, God’s character, God’s intentions, God’s commitments to us, God’s dreams and ideals for relating to us. Your words give form to who you are and are representations of you. Without your words, people are making guesses and assumptions as to who you really are. Jesus gives form to who God is and is a representation of him. Without Jesus, we would be making guesses and assumptions as to who God really is. As Paul writes in Colossians, he is the IMAGE of the invisible God.
But there’s our problem, my friends. Jesus is The Word – the imago dei – the image of God – yet many live life in this world as if we can’t know a single thing about who God is. God is a mystery, that’s for sure. But many live as if God is a TOTAL mystery, as if we can’t know how God thinks, or how God feels, or what God desires for our lives. But because of Jesus that’s not true at all. Jesus is the image of God. When Jesus acted certain ways, we can know that’s how God would act. When Jesus said certain things, we can know that’s what God would say. When Jesus said…
John 15:13 (NIV)
13 Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.
…we can be sure that there is no love greater than God’s love. We can be sure that God loves us enough to lay down his life for us. And how do we know we are the ones he was talking about there? Because he goes on to say:
John 15:14-15 (NIV)
14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
We can know that there is a chance for us to have a friendship – a relationship – with God. And we can also know that the chance of that being able to happen in our lives is related directly to the extent to which we are willing to learn and do the Father’s business. That’s a great thing for us to think about at this point because before I go on to talk to you about the face of grace it’s a question we all need to ask ourselves. “Am I willing to learn and do the Father’s business, as expressed through the teachings of Jesus?” That’s a question we can’t answer for you, and if we try to force you or even work too hard to convince you, it will miss what it most needs, which is your passionate, heartfelt conviction. And you can’t have passionate and heartfelt conviction about anything forced on you by someone else. So let us begin there. Jesus is the image of God. By looking at him and his life, you CAN learn about who God is and what he wants with you. The question is, are you willing to learn and do God’s business?
We don’t deserve a relationship with God. There’s no reason why God should have made it so that we can know Him and allow Him to know us. Our not deserving God’s grace is where I want to focus for the rest of our time this morning, and I want to center our thinking on Christ. More specifically, on the face of Christ. Metaphorically speaking, Jesus put a “face” on who God is. So let’s look at a few scenes this morning where we can imagine Jesus’ face and reflect on just how undeserving we really are of this day – of Easter and all the suffering Jesus had to do to make it possible.
We have already looked at the first face of Jesus I want you to think about this morning, and that is the face of friendship. Jesus came to live among regular people like you and me. We have a whole holiday reserved for the miracle of this event called Christmas. At Christmastime we celebrate the fact that God would choose to grace us with his presence, and become friends with everyday people. If you read the gospels you’ll see that Jesus’ work among us on earth was work that was rooted in friendships, in relationships with people. Jesus was not primarily a theologian. He didn’t sit in an office or an ivory tower and come up with fancy theories. He was not primarily a philosopher, coming up with logical arguments for God’s (and I guess therefore his own!) existence. Even in his work as a preacher, his aim was always to make a difference in the everyday lives of those who heard him. He healed people by touching them with his hands. He took people aside and had private conversations. He sat next to a promiscuous woman at a well and told her who He was and how he could change her life. He had a posse – he was followed around by lots of people – he had many followers, some who were close to him and some who were kind of far-off admirers. In every town where he showed up, people came to him with their problems, their diseases, their fears, and he spoke to them, listened to them, and addressed their concerns and brought them wholeness. Jesus wore the face of friendship, giving up his place in heaven with the Father and coming to this world to hang out with people like you and me. The sheep went to where the wolves were. And just as you’d expect, the wolves eventually devoured him, just as he knew all along they would. But he did it anyway, because of his grace. We don’t deserve his friendship.
Second, Jesus had the face of fortitude. Fortitude simply means courage. Picture the face as Jesus as he walked up the hill carrying his cross. Courage. Picture the face of Jesus in this scene:
Matthew 23:33-36 (NIV)
33 "You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell?
34 Therefore I am sending you prophets and wise men and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town.
35 And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.
36 I tell you the truth, all this will come upon this generation.
Jesus is described as meek and mild, which frankly most of us associate with weak and fragile. But he was not weak at all, not fragile at all. He had courage – his face was a face of fortitude.
John 2:18-19 (NIV)
18 Then the Jews demanded of him, "What miraculous sign can you show us to prove your authority to do all this?"
19 Jesus answered them, "Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days."
Jesus stands there in front of his detractors and challenges them to destroy him, because here he is predicting both his death and his resurrection, and the temple he speaks of is his own body.
And in one of the greatest acts of courage in Jesus’ life he’s on trial, standing before Pilate:
John 19:9-11 (NLT)
9 He took Jesus back into the headquarters again and asked him, "Where are you from?" But Jesus gave no answer.
10 "You won’t talk to me?" Pilate demanded. "Don’t you realize that I have the power to release you or to crucify you?"
11 Then Jesus said, "You would have no power over me at all unless it were given to you from above. So the one who brought me to you has the greater sin."
Jesus had the face of fortitude. He left the place that was home to him and came to a place that was hostile and unfriendly to him and his interests and his way of life. When he encountered opposition, which he frequently did, he did not shrink from it, but faced it head-on with fortitude, whether it was the courage required from him to confront one of his disciples personally, the courage to publicly stand up to the teachers who were publicly trying to destroy him, the courage to stand in front of Pilate bloody and bruised and tell him he had no power over Jesus, or the courage to put that cross on his shoulders and put one foot in front of the other all the way up that long hill, and lay down and stretch out his arms and take what was coming not to him, but to you and me – we don’t deserve his fortitude. But he showed it anyway.
The third face of Jesus we have to look at this morning is the face of forgiveness. How could Easter Sunday be complete if we didn’t talk about God’s forgiveness?
Forgiveness for Jesus was always an extension of his boundless compassion. Jesus never displayed any hint of forgiving unwillingly or out of duty. Forgiveness was always free and without limit or condition.
Matthew 9:2 (AMP)
2 And behold, they brought to Him a man paralyzed and prostrated by illness, lying on a sleeping pad; and when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralyzed man, Take courage, son; your sins are forgiven and the penalty remitted.
Notice here the interesting fact that Jesus told this man to take courage in accepting forgiveness of his sin. If you’re here this morning kind of on the fence, feeling nervous about letting Jesus be your forgiver and leader, he understands how scary that is. It takes guts – fortitude! – courage to let Jesus do the work in our lives he wants to do.
Luke 7:44-48 (NIV)
44 Then he turned toward the woman and said to Simon, "Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair.
45 You did not give me a kiss, but this woman, from the time I entered, has not stopped kissing my feet.
46 You did not put oil on my head, but she has poured perfume on my feet.
47 Therefore, I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven--for she loved much. But he who has been forgiven little loves little."
48 Then Jesus said to her, "Your sins are forgiven."
We all have much to be forgiven for. But we don’t all realize that. The more we realize our need for forgiveness, the more Christ will shower that forgiveness upon us.
John 8:1-11 (NIV)
1 But Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.
2 At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them.
3 The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group
4 and said to Jesus, "Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery.
5 In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?"
6 They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him. But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger.
7 When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, "If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."
8 Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.
9 At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there.
10 Jesus straightened up and asked her, "Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?"
11 "No one, sir," she said. "Then neither do I condemn you," Jesus declared. "Go now and leave your life of sin."
What we nearly always see in the forgiving acts of Jesus is the bestowal of his forgiveness, combined with a warning or admonition to stop living the lifestyle the people were living. Why? Because we must receive forgiveness from God and then get on about the work of learning the Father’s business, so that we can become friends – have a relationship – with God.
Next, in perhaps one of the greatest acts of forgiveness of all time:
Luke 23:32-34 (NKJV)
32 There were also two others, criminals, led with Him to be put to death.
33 And when they had come to the place called Calvary, there they crucified Him, and the criminals, one on the right hand and the other on the left.
34 Then Jesus said, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do." And they divided His garments and cast lots.
Here Jesus reminds me of a parent whose child has just committed a grievous wrong. The parent realizes the depth of the wrongdoing, but in their deep love for the child, is always fundamentally “on the side” of the child – he just doesn’t understand, he’s just young, she’s just naïve. Jesus actually says to God, “Father, please don’t punish them – they just don’t understand.” That’s the good news of Easter – the news that God, who loved you enough to come to earth and live in your world, and to die in the dirt like a dog next to real criminals – God is on your side. Jesus showed us that God’s forgiveness comes by asking, and is received by taking. We don’t deserve God’s forgiveness – but he gives it anyway, to all who will ask for it and accept it.
Finally, and I’m going to bend the rules a little on this one, finally is the face of future possibilities.
Jeremiah 29:11 (NLT)
11 For I know the plans I have for you," says the LORD. "They are plans for good and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope.
God said this through the prophet Jeremiah hundreds of years before Jesus came. And then Jesus did come, and because of Jesus we have a future and a hope. We consistently see that when Jesus came into a person’s life, it was never the same after that. There was suddenly hope where before maybe there had been no hope. There was a future that was completely different – far better – than what the person had known before. One of my favorite examples of this is found in Matthew 16.
Matthew 16:13-18 (NLT)
13 When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?"
14 "Well," they replied, "some say John the Baptist, some say Elijah, and others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets."
15 Then he asked them, "Who do you say I am?"
16 Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
17 Jesus replied, "You are blessed, Simon son of John, because my Father in heaven has revealed this to you. You did not learn this from any human being.
18 Now I say to you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church, and all the powers of hell will not conquer it.
What rock is Jesus talking about? Well, as I mentioned a few weeks ago, the name Peter actually means “rock,” so Jesus was playing on Peter’s name. But what he really meant was the rock of Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Messiah (the Savior/deliverer), the Son of the Living God. What Jesus is saying, “You know Pete, I can work with that. I can take that belief in your heart and make it into something that will be so strong that nothing will ever overcome it. I’ll take that confession, and the confession of millions more people with that same faith, and I’ll build something out of it that this world has never seen in history. Just wait Peter. You’ll see. I have a future in store for you, my friend.”
And you sit here today because of the future God had in store for Peter, because Jesus kept his promise. He built a church on that confession. And two-thousand years later the church keeps going and nothing has defeated it. Not bloodthirsty emperors and kings, not the failures of parts of the church during the Middle Ages, not the hypocrisy of some people who give a bad name to millions of people throughout history who have shed blood because of their faith that Jesus was who he said he was, and certainly not some incredibly entertaining but demonstrably misleading book like The DaVinci Code. The church has been around a long time, and it’s not going anywhere.
Jesus has a future in store for you. And you know what? If you want the future and the hope God offers you, it will come to you the same way it came to Peter – by way of your confession that Jesus Christ is the Messiah – the deliverer – the Son of a God who still lives today – that Jesus died for your sins, rose from the dead, and one day is returning not as the suffering servant but as the triumphant King of all the earth. God will build his future for you on your confession of who he is. Remember why? Because if you are to be his friend, you must devote yourself to learning the Father’s business, and that begins by acknowledging God for who He is, and getting busy learning God’s business.
You and I don’t deserve the future God has in store for us. None of us deserve it. The future and the hope we have is a grace – it has been given to us without regard for the fact that we do not, and cannot ever, deserve it. But it is a future that starts at the instant you make that confession – Jesus is the Son of the Living God, and my forgiver, and the leader of my life. And it builds from that point on. As Jesus has gradually built the church in our world, he will gradually build his Kingdom, his home, in your heart. If you want him to.
We do not deserve God’s friendship. We don’t deserve the fortitude Jesus showed in walking up that hill to the cross and taking on his detractors and sticking to his guns. We don’t deserve the forgiveness he offers to each of us through his death on the cross that paid the penalty for your sins and mine. And we don’t deserve the future and the hope he extends to us. All of these things are graces to us from God – things given to us freely.
1 Corinthians 2:9 (NIV)
9 However, as it is written: "No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him"--
Thank God for his grace. Let’s pray.
