By Pr. Larry Kirkpatrick. Price Seventh-Day Adventist Church. 22 April 2000

By Pr. Larry Kirkpatrick. Price Seventh-day Adventist Church. 22 April 2000

Organized by, Ally Mluge Jr

Introduction

Scripture Reading:Galatians 1:6-7

I marvel that ye are so soon removed from Him that called you into the grace of Christ into another Gospel: which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ.

This morning, as we begin our talk about grace, we must purposefully make one fact in the background visible, so as to approach our main subject with the proper care. The fact is this:Satan can only win the great controversy by getting us to bite down onto the hook of a false version of grace. Was that clear? If we are going to talk about grace, we are going to attract his undivided attention, and that's why God needs your undivided attention. If Satan can spin God's message of grace between the time that it leaves the pages of the Bible and gets into your heart and mind, then he can plant his flag right there on the mountaintop of your soul.

Surely the devil isn't interested in grace." Oh, but he is. His very existence depends on it. He cannot afford to leave the topic alone. In fact, what better, more unexpected doctrine could be more ideal for him to weave his entangling, soul-destroying lies into? So, watch out. Be sober. Our foe goes about, roaring like a lion, trying to scare us (1 Peter 5:8), yet also goes about singing gently, to deceive us. He comes as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:13-14).

Especially is this true when our understanding of grace is on the table. I assure you--real grace is mutually exclusive--it rules out all false grace. What you are about to hear is either very wrong, or very right. But it's not in the middle somewhere. I do hope you are in the Word these days.

What is Grace?

What is grace? Let's go to our Bibles for an answer. Why not turn with me toTitus 2:11-14:

For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ; Who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto Himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works.

Grace involves how we live, what we are changed from, and what we are changed to. Grace involves salvation. In Titus two, Paul is discussing behavior, and in the ninth verse he points out that it is because "the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" that we will live differently. The very first thing that this grace teaches us is to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. Revelation 21:27assures us that nothing that defiles or makes a lie will enter into heaven. Nothing. Thus it is immediately made certain thatno false gospel will enter heaven. A false gospel is a lie. The true gospel intimately impacts how we live.

Did you notice that the grace of God brings salvation? If I said "I'm bringing you five hundred dollars tomorrow in my wallet," would you want to make a difference between the wallet and the $500 that it carried? I would. The grace of God brings salvation. But it is not salvation. The grace of God is a quality of God, a description of the mercy of His character. It is sent out in search of us. We do not deserve it or merit it, but it has been sent out in search of us since God is trying to bring salvation to us. Grace is that quality of who our heavenly Father is that makes salvation available to us. It encompasses His mercy and a whole host of His attributes. But grace does not equal salvation. Salvation depends on the total application of grace to us.

Through grace God wants to bring us salvation. That salvation means that we will live differently. We will deny ungodliness and worldly lusts. There is a way that we should live under grace, and that is "soberly, righteously, and godly." People want to talk about God's "extravagant grace;" they want to emphasize the quantity of it;but He wants to emphasize the quality of it. And so He says that when, through grace, salvation is occurring in your life, your life will be one bearing the qualities of sobriety, righteousness, and godliness.

Think about those core qualities. Those are qualities of the actual grace that brings actual salvation. If you have grace, you will be awake and clear-headed. If you have grace, your life will be a vivacious orchestra of righteous actions. If you have grace, your life will be a pungent expression of godliness cutting its way through the darkness engulfing the world. These aren't cheap plastic substitutes for the real thing; they are the real thing.

A few years ago I was listening to a presentation about the gospel, and we were told that when it comes to the gospel, "performance always lags." But performance doesn't always lag. Enoch walked with God, and the Father took Him home to heaven. Was Enoch's experience lagging? Not at all. And of course, we would all agree that Jesus' experience was never lagging. We could come up with more examples, but it would be clear that experience does not always lag. If it did, that would make a lie of the passage in Titus. After all, when does our verse say that this sober, righteous, godly salvation experience is supposed to occur? "In this present world," or some translations have it, "in this present age." Performance does not always lag.

We live this way, according to our text, looking for the soon return of Jesus and of God from heaven. Furthermore, we learn in the text that we were redeemed not so that our performance could lag, but "that He might redeem us from all iniquity." Now, iniquity is sin. Jesus has bought us back from sin. Sin doesn't own us anymore. He bought us back to "purify" a special kind of people to Himself, a people zealous for good works--not a people without works or whose works lag. Grace--real grace--means real Christians, changed people, people moving away from sin at warp speed, people who moment-by-moment are living snapshots of purification.

Grace is not about all of this spiritual book-keeping that occurs outside of you, on the other side of the sky somewhere, where angels are dancing on the heads of pins and singing "God You are beautiful" to the sound of applause and raucious drumming. Grace is real. Grace brings salvation. Salvation is real. Salvation showcases grace.

What does your life showcase?

Oh, I know; I'm not supposed to ask that. You see, to ask that is (we are told), to "take our eyes off of Jesus," or to "major in minors," or to risk "interposing ourselves into the salvation transaction."

What a lie from hell.

Those who so piously say that are really saying, "take your eyes off the showcase--don't look!" as if there were something offensive in there; some mysteriously contaminating peep-show hidden away. Why yes. That's the point! The grace of God that brings salvation issupposedto be on bold display in our lives. But our foe is nervous that we will catch hold of what grace means and thenlive itbefore a world in moral-meltdown and a universe filled to overflowing with curious, intelligent, pure, inquiring beings. Friends, angels are stretched across the sky bending down with inexpressible interest in what God is doing down here on this tiny planet, this lesson-book to the universe. He is showcasing His gospel of grace. It is the devil that doesn't want anyone to look!

"No, no, no," they say, "Keep your eyes on Jesus." But our text said that "the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men." This has happened. We have seen Jesus out there, but now we want to see Him in here. We want to behold Him and become changed, and as we behold Him, we will be changed.

Grace means that we change. God's grace that brings salvation has appeared to us. But how do we lay hold upon that grace? How do we get grace?

We co-operate with God.

Yes, that's right. If you have already bought into that version of "the gospel," which Paul calls "another gospel, which is not another," then that was your cue to run screaming from this sanctuary. Satan, with his hypnotic singing, has convinced many Christians today that if we do anything at all, we are somehow adding to the salvation process, somehow being saved by our own works or a blending of our own works with God's perfect work. Man, it is said, can contribute nothing to the salvation process, or more commonly, that he can contribute nothing toward his own salvation. So any human co-operation with God is ruled-out by defining co-operation as "works-salvation."

That's how you make these subtle changes; redefine truth through tiny gradations until you've excluded it. Just shift the definitions. But why should we accept this revising? Who told us that we had to sit back gently while someone else spin-doctored the teaching of the Bible? We are free--free to rightly divide the Word of God! The Bible warned us about the traditions of man. But traditions are not just golden-oldies; they can be subtle-new-ies too. Christians, blankly consenting to be victims are still writing-off the commandments of God and replacing them with the traditions of men. If we really were Protestants, we might have a stronger sense of this. Why will we let this happen? Let's double-check, and make sure that we really are Bible Christians.

Divine-Human Co-operation

The best example of divine-human co-operation on record is Jesus. He was divine--He was God, but He came in the flesh of a man; the humanity that He took was identical to our own, with no special exemptions or exceptions. The gospels record numerous miracles done through Jesus. But they were done through Him, rather than by Him. He sometimes commanded the sea or the grave, and they always complied. Yet before He came here, He "emptied Himself" of His divine power (Philippians 2:7-8) and in His life relied upon the Father as we must rely upon Him in our life (John 5:19, 30).

Because He walked so closely with the Father, His will harmonized with His Father's, and the miracles that were wrought came because of that intimate harmony--that intimate co-operation. He owned the power to do all of those miracles--He had, after all, made the worlds (Hebrews 1:2); but He set that power aside in order to validate the example of His living for us. He gave us the pattern, the example, of how to live (John 13:15;1 Peter 2:21;John 17:19).

How to live by grace.

Jesus didn't need grace as we do. He was not guilty of sin, nor does guilt or condemnation reside in the mere nature of man. A hand is not guilty for stealing or a foot for kicking; such actions come from the brain; the extremities have no say in the matter. These actions result from minds unsubdued to the Spirit of God, and Jesus' mind was ever subdued to the Spirit of God. Jesus never developed the habit-patterns of sin that we have, for although tempted in all points like as we are, He never sinned (Hebrews 4:15). Therefore He never had the propensities (in that sense) of sin.

He lived an un condemnable life, and could thus ask who could convict Him of sin (John 8:46). He was exactly what we needed in a Savior: "holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners" (Hebrews 7:26). But notwithstanding all this, the Father "hath made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Corinthians 5:21). He lived without sinning but took upon Himself the penalty of the sinner. He came to break sin in its lair, to conquer sin in the flesh that constitutes man's broken nature (Romans 8:3).He overcame by the power heaven, so that the grace that God would make available to us would have in it the power to condemn sin in our flesh as well.

Some would say that this isn't grace. But they would be wrong. Grace makes a difference. Grace is not license. Some people see grace as a license to sin (even though, they will say, you shouldn't do it). But Jesus bought us not the privilege of sinning, but the privilege of winning. He came not to give us a placebo, but to give us power. He came, not to please man, but to displease the devil, and to glorify the Father. Jesus came not with cheap prizes from "Publisher's Clearing House Sweepstakes," but to clear the house of religious cheapskates. He came to break the hold that sin has on you and on me, and Hisrealgrace exposes the charlatans and fakes and their teachings.

The real gospel really cleanses the temple by combining divine strength with human effort. The result of this combination is a righteousness from God that fills the life of man with richness, growth, and moral beauty; a righteousness that we could properly say has in it not one thread of human devising; a righteousness that is all of God and thus contains no merit for man. Real grace means that God's power changes those who co-operate with it. We are discussing real grace for real need. And Jesus is our only Source. He came to bring real grace for real people.

Getting Grace into the Life of a Real Person

Jesus went up on the cross and died for us. And when He breathed His last, in triumph He offered up His life to the Father. They took down the body of our Lord of grace, and placed it in a tomb that Friday evening, just as the Sabbath was arriving. They placed His corpse in a sepulcher close-by, and by order of Pilate that tomb was sealed and guarded by soldiers.