Sermon Central
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The Grace Of God
Contributed by Sam Mccormick on Dec 28, 2017 (message contributor)
Summary: God's grace as the avenue of salvation is sometimes seen as being in conflict with obedience of the believer as a requirement, without which salvation cannot be obtained. Which is it, or is it a combination? Can this dichotomy be satisfactorily resolved?
“All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” Isa 64:6
B. None of us are near heaven in the absence of grace.
We must realize--in spite of our most excellent performance--just how far we are from salvation, without grace. In Janet’s version, she believed herself oh, so close the mountaintop, just needing a little nudge. But without grace she is not oh, so near the mountaintop. She is farther from heaven than the farthest star in some undiscovered galaxy.
It is the same with the yardstick. A million times a million yardsticks cannot measure how far from heaven we are without grace.
B. God provided grace through Jesus, as a gift.
It is a gift that is engaged in humans through faith.
Eph 2:8-9 “by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Rom 5:1b-2 “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
Faith occupies the position of a channel or conduit. Grace is the fountain and the stream; faith is the aqueduct along which the flood of grace flows down to refresh thirsty souls.
From before the time of the fall of Adam and Eve, God had a plan to save the race, and the plan of salvation was grace – favor not deserved but freely given.
Use John 1:14-17 – read
Jesus, son of the Father, full of grace and truth (v14)...grace came through Jesus (v17).
Rom 5:21 “Sin has reigned unto death, but grace reigns through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord.”
He became the righteousness of God in us.
2 Cor 5:21 “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”
How do we get faith? Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17), and reading is a sort of hearing.
V. Resolving the conflict
A. Since grace is obtained through faith, yet obedience and works are required, are we not left with a dilemma?
It may seem that since grace is a gift and cannot be earned, our actions do not matter; no matter how vile and harmful our practices are.
On the other hand, do not the scriptures say:
• “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. (Matt 7:21 [ESV])
• "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and not do what I tell you? Luke 6:46
• “He that hears these sayings of mine and does them, will be likened to a wise man who built his house upon a rock.” Matt 7:24
• …and others.
In the presence of this apparent conflict, it may be frightening to talk about grace too much because we might emphasize it to the point we are steered away from obedience and duty?
What my friends in Virginia feared was that an overemphasis on grace seemed to water down another biblical reality--that we are to “work out our own salvation with fear and trembling.” Phil 2:12
B. But this is not to be understood to mean men can obtain for themselves eternal salvation by their own doings; for such a sense is contrary to the scriptures, which deny any part of justification and salvation to be of works, but ascribe it to the free grace of God.
