For the last several weeks we have been studying from the Book of 1st Peter. And for at least two of those weeks I have concentrated on and stressed the grace and mercy of God. Today, I would like to continue that theme and perhaps build upon the foundation already laid. But before I begin let’s go over our definitions for grace and mercy. Mercy is that attribute of God that causes Him not to give us what we deserve while grace is another attribute of God that causes Him to give us what we do not deserve. Now as Christians the term “grace” is not unfamiliar to us. We have all heard of grace especially as it pertains to salvation for the scripture says: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” (Eph. 2:8)
And yet even though many of us know intellectually that our salvation is a gift given through the grace of God, and that it cannot be earned, grace is one of those theological terms that we rarely internalize or make personal. And as a result how many Christians live their Christian lives as though they did need to earn salvation? For instance, how many give money in the offering plate because they think they have to in order to be saved? How many attend church every Sunday because they think they have to in order to be saved? And how many talk to others about Jesus and what’s contained in the Bible because they think they have to in order to be saved? Far too many Christians do the things I’ve just mentioned not because they are trying to please God, but they do them as sort of insurance, just in case this grace thing is not all it’s said to be. And yet if they understood the grace of God there would be no need for insurance, or a backup plan otherwise known as plan B.
But there are Christians who live that way because they are confused about the grace of God. And why are they confused, because too many of them have listened to others who are just as confused as they are. Let me give you an example. When I was a boy my family joined the World Wide Church of God headquartered in Pasadena California. Now at that time the World Wide Church of God was a cult. And it was a cult because not only did the Pastor General of the Organization deny the personality of the Holy Spirit but he also insisted that in order to be saved you had to keep parts of the Law of Moses. After seven years I left that Church to join the Navy, not because they were cultic but because I was sick of religion. But unbeknownst to me when I left the Worldwide Church of God I took what they had taught about God and salvation with me. Now during the entire time I was in the Navy the Lord had been graciously working with me and when I was discharged several years later my new wife and I both felt compelled to go to church. So we did, and a short time later both of us confessed Jesus as Savior and we were baptized at the First Baptist Church in Broomfield Colorado. But there was a problem, because even though I was baptized and said I believed in salvation by grace I still carried in my heart the idea of salvation by works. And I did that for several long years.
Now some of you are probably thinking that I must have been pretty dense to be able to sit under the teaching of a godly pastor (which is exactly what I was doing) and still think I had to earn my way into heaven. But it had nothing to do with my ability to understand what he was saying it had to do with what I was taught in the past and what the pastor was teaching in the present. You see, while it was true that our pastor always taught salvation by grace it was equally true that he would also say or imply that: “if you’re a real Christian you’ll tithe, if you’re a real Christian you’ll be in church whenever the doors are open, if you’re a real Christian you won’t smoke, drink, play cards, go to movies, or dance. Your women will wear dresses and your men won’t have long hair.
And if you did any of the things you weren’t supposed to do, or didn’t do some of the things you were supposed to do, you weren’t a “real” Christian, you were just a pretender and God would weed you out of His kingdom like the parable of the tares and eventually cast you into the lake of fire. That was a real rough period of time for me and as a result my wife and I stopped going to church for quite some time. And do you know why? Because I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t live a life good enough to meet God’s standards, let alone the standards of man. I was miserable and for several years I actually contemplated suicide on a regular basis, wishing I had never heard of the Good News because it wasn’t Good News to me. Now do you want to know why I never took my own life? There were two reasons. First of all I was really terrified of God and didn’t want to stand before Him any sooner than I had to. And the second reason was that deep inside of me there was a faint hope that God would be merciful to me and that He would dispel the clouds of doom and gloom that I had become enveloped in and I clung to that hope. I found out later that this hope didn’t originate with hopeless me, but that it had been planted in my heart by the grace of God. And then in the early 80s something happened that changed my life forever. A couple that my wife and I had befriended during the blizzard of 1982 invited our daughters to go to vacation Bible school at their church. While they were there the kids learned some cute songs and we were obligated to go and listen to them sing at the end of the week. The people were so friendly that we decided to go back the next Sunday and we stayed there for the next 8 years. And do you know why we stayed? It wasn’t just the friendliness of the people; that’s what got us into the church, but we stayed because in that church my wife and I finally learned what the grace of God was all about. And once I finally understood that I was saved from the wrath of God by the grace of God through His Son Jesus Christ, those dark clouds I mentioned earlier disappeared. And the fear I felt of God gradually disappeared as well as I came to know about Jesus and the God who loved me so much that He sent His only Son to this earth.
And that is what I want to share with you today. Because you see if you are not relying on the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ to save you from eternal damnation then you have to be relying on something else and that something else is your own performance, your own ability to do whatever you think pleases God, which is exactly what I did for so many years. But is it possible to be right with God through performance? Theoretically – yes, it is. In the Old Testament Moses said in Deuteronomy 6:24-25:
“And the Lord commanded us to observe all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God, for our good always, that He might preserve us alive, as it is this day. Then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us.”
And so according to Moses if Israel would just obey the things that God told them to do He would credit them with righteousness for their obedience. But how does salvation through obedience to the Law look? Well in the Book of Luke, chapter 18 beginning at verse 9 Jesus told a parable to some people who trusted in their performance under the Law of Moses, and trusted that because of their performance they were right with God. To those people Jesus said:
“Once two men went up to the Temple to pray – one, a Pharisee, the other, a despised tax collector. The Pharisee stood there and began praying about himself, like this: God, I thank You that I’m not like other men – greedy, deceitful and unjust, unfaithful in their marriages, or even like that detestable tax collector over there. I go without eating two days a week, and I give you one tenth of all my income. But the tax collector stood apart from the others, and didn’t think he was good enough to lift his eyes to heaven as he prayed. He was so sorry for what he had done that he just kept beating upon his chest and saying, O God, have pity on me! I’ve been such a terrible sinner.” (Luke18:9-13 LDB)
Jesus finished the parable by saying that this man, not the Pharisee, went back to his home justified before God.
Why? If Moses, the friend of God and the giver of the Law said you could be righteous in the eyes of God by keeping His commandments, why was the law-abiding Pharisee rejected while the tax collector was accepted? Well you need to understand two things about the Law. When you try to get right with God by keeping the Law you either become self-righteous, because you’re doing such an outstanding job, or you become crushed by it because you know you’re not obeying it as you should, nor can you. The tax collector was crushed by the magnitude of the Law, but accepted by God because he trusted in the grace and mercy of God. There was nothing else he could rely on because he already knew his performance couldn’t help him. The Pharisee on the other hand was rejected because he self-righteously thought he was doing such an outstanding job and he didn’t realize that the righteousness that comes from the keeping of the Law is credited only to those who keep the whole law perfectly as explained by James in chapter 2 and verse 10. And what did James say, he said:
“…whoever obeys all that God has commanded, except for one command that he neglects or refuses to obey, is just as guilty as if he had broken every command.”
Did the Pharisees keep the Law of Moses perfectly? Absolutely not for in Matthew 23:27-28 Jesus said:
“Woe to you, scribes and Pharisee, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but inside are full of dead men’s bones and all uncleanness. Even so you outwardly appear righteous to men, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.”
And what is lawlessness, according to 1 John 3:4 it’s anything you do that violates the law of God. Do you understand what Jesus said to these Pharisees? He told them that even if they obeyed God’s law outwardly they were still guilty of breaking it if they did not keep it inwardly. And remember, the righteousness that was promised through obedience to the Law of Moses came only to those who kept that Law perfectly, both inwardly and outwardly. The Pharisee in the parable did not keep the Law perfectly and as a result was rejected by God. Now based upon what I have just said, how many of you can go through one day, let alone your entire lifetime, and never sin by disobeying what God has commanded? And even if starting today you could obey God perfectly, what of the sin you are already guilty of? How could you ever make up for that? You can’t, and that is the one of the big problems with salvation by works. Not one of us can keep the Law of the Lord perfectly and not one of us could ever make up through our own efforts for the sin we have already committed.
And people, if that’s all we had to depend upon, our own self-efforts, we would be doomed. Doomed because inevitably no matter how hard we tried we would end up violating God’s commandments over, and over, and over again. And as a result of our failure to live up to the righteousness of God we would be banished from His presence forever. Doomed to spend eternity in utter darkness, a darkness so oppressive the Bible says we wouldn’t be able to do anything more than grind our teeth in pain and agony, knowing that it would never end. And it never would end because just as those who enter God’s kingdom will never be cast out of it, so too those who have been cast out will never enter into it.
And this is the end that each and every one of us deserved. But in His mercy God didn’t give us what we deserved. Instead, through His grace He offered us freely the salvation that we did not deserve, could not earn, and could never pay for. Why? I don’t know why. How can I explain to you what I don’t completely understand? How can I explain how God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but would have eternal life (John 3:16)? And what makes His grace even more difficult to understand is in the fact that God did all of this for those who hated Him. And yet in spite of that it says in Ephesians 1:5 that “…because of His great love for us, He decided even then that because of what Jesus Christ would do for us, He would bring us right into His family as His very own adopted children. And He made all these plans for no other reason than His own great delight in doing so.”
And that is why grace is superior to works. That is why the apostle Paul was constantly trying to keep the Christians under his care from falling back into a legalistic system of salvation by works. You see grace never weakens - but your willpower will. Grace never grows weary - but your fleshly determination to obey God will. But thanks to the grace of God you don’t have to worry about it because when it’s all said and done your admittance into heaven will be based upon the grace of God and nothing else.
And it has to be that way because in Galatians 5:4 Paul says that if you try to earn the gift that God freely gives to you, then you have fallen from His grace and are attempting to save yourself through self-effort. And what is the result of salvation by works? Judgement and separation from God for all eternity because you can’t do it and salvation is either all of God or it is none of God. You see, God will not allow you to share in the glory that He receives through your salvation, and that is what salvation by works is really all about, man trying to brag about what he has done for God. Now that we have talked about the supremacy of grace let’s talk about the danger of grace. When the pure gospel message of salvation by grace through faith was resurrected during the Reformation period there were many who opposed it because they believed that if you told people that they were saved by God’s grace through faith in the Lord Jesus alone, those people would live like the devil. And unfortunately that has happened to some extent. But is that what salvation by grace is all about? Because you are saved by the grace of God does that mean you have no obligation to honor God with your life, and that you can live any way you want to? Absolutely not! Several years ago my youngest brother spent some time in the Adams County Jail. While he was there a woman preacher would periodically visit the jail and lead Bible study classes for those who were interested. Having nothing else to do my brother would go to those classes quite often. But do you know that to this day my brother does not follow the way of Christ, and do you know why? Because that woman taught him and others that it didn’t matter what you did once you believed in Jesus, you could live any way you wanted. Want to sleep around – no problem. Want to steal, lie, cheat, or do anything else that God has called evil – no problem. Just believe in Jesus and everything will be just fine. Now it is true that you can take bits and pieces of the Bible, take them out of the context into which the Holy Spirit placed them, and make them say what this woman made them say. For even Paul, that great preacher of God’s grace said that some took what he said out of context and were slanderously reporting that he was saying the more we sin the greater glory God receives! But you know that’s the chance you take when you preach the grace of God to people. Some will use it as a license to sin, others will take it for what it is. Paul knew that, but at the same time he was determined to set the record straight and so in the book of Romans he said: “…shall we sin that the grace of God might abound?” And then he answers himself by saying: “God forbid!” (Rom. 6:1-2) So you see, even though Christians are not saved by obeying the Law of Moses they are at the same time not free from their obligation to honor God with their lives. As a matter of fact Paul tells us in Romans 12:1 that because of what God has done for us through Jesus Christ we should gladly present our bodies to Him as a living sacrifice. Now someone is bound to ask: ‘but if I still have to live a good life, and if I still have to be moral and ethical in my dealings with others, isn’t that the same thing as trying to earn salvation through doing good things?’
Now that’s a good, honest question. So let’s ask it and answer it. What is the difference between the Law of Moses and the Christian life? Both require obedience to God don’t they? Yes they do, but the loyalty each requires is required for two different reasons. Do you remember what Moses said about the Law? He said: “…then it will be righteousness for us, if we are careful to observe all these commandments before the Lord our God, as He has commanded us.”
According to Moses, God would credit the nation of Israel with righteousness if they obeyed all of His commandments. But in order to obtain this righteousness and the blessings that came with it, their obedience had to be complete, including all of God’s commands. If they failed to obey any of the commands of God in any way they were subject to His curses, not His blessings. And so the Old Covenant that God made between the nation of Israel and Himself was based completely on their obedience. They had to work to obtain what they wanted, and that for a God they did not know and who they often feared.
But under the New Covenant the Christian obeys God for a completely different reason. You see, in the first place we know God because we have met Him through Jesus Christ. When Jesus healed the sick, fed the hungry, and raised the dead we saw God’s compassion towards us at work. We know what His motives are towards us because Jesus said He came to seek and save the lost. And we know how much He loves us because He proved that love by giving His only Son to die physically and spiritually for us. And He did all of these things because He is gracious. So the Christian’s motive for obeying God is different. We don’t have to earn anything and we don’t have to pay anything back. So why do we obey Him, we obey Him because we love Him, and Jesus said, “…if you love Me, keep my commandments.” Notice He didn’t say if you want to be saved keep My commandments or if you want to be righteous keep My commandments. He said if you love Me, keep my commandments.
Do you want to know if you have been saved by the grace of God through faith in His Son Jesus, then look at your life. Do you do what He asks you to do because you love Him, or do you obey Him grudgingly out of necessity. You see when you understand grace it causes you to love the One who first loved you even though you didn’t deserve that love. And that’s why we obey Him because we love Him, not because we hope to earn His acceptance through our obedience and not because we are trying to earn our way into heaven. Why, because we are already accepted by God through His Son, and you can’t get anymore accepted than that. And why do we love Him? We love Him because of what He has done for us. We love Him because when we were destined to spend eternity in a very real and a very literal hell, and could have cared less, He saw the danger and His love for each of us compelled Him to do what only God could do. And by His grace the King of the universe stepped down from His eternal throne and launched the greatest rescue operation ever known, a rescue that we and the angels will talk about for all of eternity. And He did it all by His grace through His Son Jesus Christ.
