A Supremely Baptist Excuse: “I’m just a sinner saved by grace.”
This is something that we love saying and we mean it as a way to emphasize that there is no way to earn your way to heaven. That is absolutely true – salvation can only come by grace through faith.
Too often, though, we emphasize this truth without balancing it with other key spiritual truths (which we’ll get to in a minute). The result is that we act like we can use grace as an excuse for staying in our sins.
“I know I can’t do any better – I’m just a sinner saved by grace.”
“I’m nowhere near perfect – I’m just a sinner saved by grace.”
“God will forgive me doing that – after all I’m just a sinner saved by grace.”
“I’m not perfect, just forgiven.”
Really?! Is that all we are – forgiven? We’re not called to anything higher than being forgiven? I can sympathize with the need to maintain some humility and not act like we’re all-that-and-a bag-of-chips, but there’s got to be something beyond being “just forgiven.”
With that mindset, when we encounter a verse like verse 48, we presume that the task before us is impossible.
“How in the world could I ever be perfect the way God is perfect?”
We don’t know what Jesus meant, but it’s obviously something so ridiculously impossible that we really don’t need to worry with it.
So we go back to using grace as a justification for living in our sins because obviously what God is asking of us here is not humanly possible.
The Big Point Of The Sermon On The Mount: Jesus has not come to excuse our low behavior, but to open the door to something higher.
- Matthew 5:17-20, 21, 27, 31, 33, 38, 43.
There is a difference between forgiving sin and excusing sin.
When we excuse something, we’re effectively saying, “It wasn’t a big deal – don’t worry about it.” Conversely, when you forgive someone for something, the act of forgiving them says, “What you did was wrong and it hurt me, but I’m forgiving the offense.”
Jesus doesn’t excuse sin. He doesn’t look at our sin with a wink and say, “It’s not a big deal – don’t worry about it.”
Jesus forgives sin. He acknowledges that what we did was wrong, was an offense to Him, was sufficient to separate us from God, but through His death He is able to say that He forgives our sin.
As you look at the verses listed in your sermon outline, what we’ve already gone over in the Sermon on the Mount has a consistent pattern: raising the standard.
Over and over He says, “You’ve heard it said, but I say to you” and then shares something that is more challenging.
Review verses.
So, whatever Jesus is up to, it’s not an attempt to excuse our sin. We’re being drawn higher.
So, then, what is the goal He’s drawing us upward toward?
The Goal: He became like us so that we can become like Him.
- Matthew 5:48.
The goal of Jesus dying and being resurrected is not us being able to sin without guilt.
The straightforward goal of what Jesus did is that we would be able to become like Him. This is true not only for eternity, but also for this life.
He became like us – He put on flesh and walked the dirty roads of this earth. He ate and slept and cried and bled. He did that because it was the only way to save us. He did that because it was the only way to rescue us.
He did that so that we could become like Him.
a. This is true in the sense of getting rid of our sin that stemmed from the Fall.
b. This is also true in the sense of our lives bringing glory to Him because of the difference between where we were and where Christ has brought us.
Is that a goal that’s appealing to you?
The truth is that for too many Christians the answer is “No.” They admire Jesus. They think He did some interesting stuff. They appreciate His sacrifice on the cross. But they don’t necessarily really want to become like Him.
Here I don’t mean that they find it unattainable (though that may be true also). I mean that they don’t find His life attractive. They don’t find the way He lived to be worth emulating. They don’t find His lifestyle to be the best of all lives.
When you speak to American Christians about what they long for, you’ll hear answers about happiness, family, wealth, and success. Rarely will you hear that they want to become like Christ.
We’re tainted by our culture and find it difficult to see beyond what it says is important.
We need to see Jesus as the greatest person who ever lived, as someone that we should be eager to follow.
The perfection we’re talking about is not becoming coldly above-it-all (like Spock) but becoming radiantly loving, deeply peaceful, persistently joyful, etc.
The command that Jesus gives here to “be perfect as your Father is perfect” is easy to dismiss out of hand. It seems so difficult and so high a standard that it’s not even worth taking the first step down this road.
It certainly is a high standard. Perhaps it would help us to think of it as our destination. As I follow Christ, I am going to be moving closer and closer to perfection – not someday, but daily. What’s perfection? To be like Christ, who was without sin and completely followed His Father’s will.
Like all the statements in the Sermon on the Mount that we were just talking about, this is not a command we’re going to completely fulfill perfectly right off the bat. I’m not going to immediately get rid of all the lust in my heart or speak without sometimes lying. But that doesn’t mean I get to quit or dismiss Jesus’ words.
In a parallel passage to this one (Luke 6:36), at this point in His message, Jesus says for us to merciful even as our Father is merciful. Mercy is something that’s going to have to grow through experiences in my life.
Every day as a Christian I can get closer to Christ’s perfect example.
The beautiful thing to consider here is that this is indeed our destination. I will someday be able to speak without a trace of deception or deceit. I will someday be able completely without lust in my heart. I will someday have no selfish anger. I will someday be able to forgive with an open hand.
We will never be completely without sin in this life. 1 John 1:8 reminds us that to say we’re without sin makes us a liar.
But that doesn’t mean that we can’t make enormous progress down this road. That’s doesn’t mean that we can’t become significantly more like Christ.
I heard Chuck Swindoll preach one time that he believed that we could get to the place where we could go for days without sinning. Wow! What an awesome thought.
What That Looks Like: At my core, I am a new creation guided by God’s own Holy Spirit.
- Romans 6:6-7; Romans 8:9; 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:15; Ephesians 4:23-24; Colossians 3:10.
Where is the line between soul-stifling guilt from the weight of trying to maintain perfection versus sin-embracing cheap grace?
On the one hand, if we try to pursue God’s perfection in our own strength, we’re quickly going to become frustrated by our inability to maintain the standard. This can be seen in legalistic churches where people try to keep up the standards that someone in the church has dictated as being essential. This leads to crushing guilt.
On the other hand, as I mentioned early, we can misuse grace as a blank check for our sin that allows us to sin without remorse. This notion earned a strong “God forbid” from Paul as he spoke of it in Romans.
What we need to understand is our salvation is not do-it-yourself. . . and neither is our spiritual growth!
God has not only given us all the resources we need to be saved, He also has given us all the resources we need to become Christ-like.
He has given us a new heart.
He has made us a new creation.
He has given us the Holy Spirit to live within us.
Review the Romans verses listed.
There are theologians who argue that the gospel that Jesus preached and the gospel that Paul preached are contradictory.
Jesus, they say, preached that people needed to obey God and do the commandments.
Paul, they say, preached that people are saved by grace through faith.
In truth, Paul (teaching after Jesus’ death and resurrection) is merely explaining how God is enabling us to do what Jesus said we should do.
As Jesus said, we are to obey God and do the commandments. In our own strength, that’s impossible. But, as Paul teaches us, God has made it possible for us to live a life that’s pleasing to God first by giving us an opportunity to have a relationship with God through the cross of Christ and second by giving us the spiritual resources we need to live that life out.
God wants us to be able to live out a life of being like Christ. That happens, not by our do-it-yourself effort, but through what God has provided for us to utilize. But we have to actually use the resources He’s provided.
We need to see this as the incredible opportunity that it is. God is giving us the chance to live beyond our sin!
How deeply do we long to be changed? How badly do I want to dump the sin in my life? Do I view my sin as a pimple (inconvenient and a bother, but not really dangerous) or as a cancer (deadly and spreading)? Do I long to embrace all of Christ’s life and love that I can?
What small portion of our available resources do we utilize because of our paltry vision of what’s possible in our spiritual life?
Where That Leads: Expect maturity and victory.
- Romans 6:1-2; Romans 6:22; Romans 8:4; Romans 8:28-39.
Cf. to working on your computer because it’s been acting up. You do what you’re supposed to do to fix it and you try it out. And it works. . . first try! You’re totally shocked not only that it worked at all, but that it worked after one attempt at fixing it.
That’s not unlike the emotion a lot of people feel when something goes right in their spiritual life.
“I prayed and God answered it!”
“I opened up the Bible and found the answer I needed!”
“I forgave that person and it actually made me peace!”
Our expectations are so incredibly low that we act amazed at any progress or positive result.
This has the effect of causing us to become stalled in our spiritual growth because we don’t expect to move forward, we don’t expect to grow, we don’t expect to see God move.
And so nothing happens.
It’s important to understand that when I say that we should expect maturity and victory, I am not at all suggesting that our spiritual life will be without struggles and significant problems.
In fact, our maturity will often come through the difficulties we go through.
In fact, you can’t really have a victory unless you have a battle.
But within that and through that, we can have great things happen.
