Sermon Central
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The Magnificence Of Grace
Contributed by Ken Mowery on Dec 22, 2006 (message contributor)
Summary: Explores what accrues to the believer as the result of God’s grace.
The Magnificence Of Grace
Paul describes the human condition in Titus 3:3.
In verse four of chapter 3 Paul gives us a crash course in salvation.
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, 5He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, 6whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life. 8This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.
God’s Kindness And Love ; His Mercy ; Regeneration And Renewing ; Jesus Christ Our Savior
There is a way to say everything that God has done to save sinners with just ONE word. A one word summation of God’s work of salvation.
That word is Grace.
I think that if we were having a conversation with the Apostle Paul and we were to ask him to define grace, he would direct us to Titus 3:4-7.
Then he would say to us verse 8.
8This is a trustworthy statement; and concerning these things I want you to speak confidently, so that those who have believed God will be careful to engage in good deeds. These things are good and profitable for men.
Grace is God meeting us at our point of need and doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. to save us
The key thing is that God does for us what we can not do for ourselves.
A couple of weeks we looked at a difficult passage in John where Jesus taught about the work that God does in the lives of believers.
Today I want us to look at another passage in John that sheds some light on the working of God’s grace in the heart of believers.
“I will ask the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may be with you forever; 17that is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it does not see Him or know Him, but you know Him because He abides with you and will be in you.
18“I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19“After a little while the world will no longer see Me, but you will see Me; because I live, you will live also. 20“In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you. 21“He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him.” 22Judas (not Iscariot) said* to Him, “Lord, what then has happened that You are going to disclose Yourself to us and not to the world?” 23Jesus answered and said to him, “If anyone loves Me, he will keep My word; and My Father will love him, and We will come to him and make Our abode with him.
1“I am the true vine, and My Father is the vinedresser. 2“Every branch in Me that does not bear fruit, He takes away; and every branch that bears fruit, He prunes it so that it may bear more fruit. 3“You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 4“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you unless you abide in Me. 5“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. 6“If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned. 7“If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.
God’s Work Of Grace Results In Our Justification
“Justification is a legal sentence issued by God in which He pronounces the person in question free from any guild or fault and fully acceptable in His sight.” Steele and Thomas ; Romans an Interpretive Outline
This takes care of the legal status of believers.
Our sinfulness and our sinful nature create for us a very difficult and serious legal problem in which we stand condemned before a pure and holy God.
