Misplaced Grace
Today we continue our series on Virtue Signals, the ways the world SHOULD recognize that we are Christians.
Faith, Hope and Love are recognized as virtues. Our topics for today and next week are not so much virtues as important signals to the world as to what we believe about God and HOW He has saved us. These are signals the world needs to see. Today we look at the most basic tenet of Christianity: that we are saved by God’s Grace. As one pastor said, “No Grace, no Gospel.”
Grace is the defining characteristic of Christianity and makes it totally different from all the rest of the world’s religions. In every religion humans have constructed, humans must reach toward God by doing the right activities and sacrifices. However in Christianity, the only true religion, which God defined, God reached down toward humanity. He gave Himself as a sacrifice so we could be in relationship with Him. That’s God’s Grace – the Good News of the Gospel.
The problem is that many non-Christians don’t see Grace when they look at Christians. Instead, Christians are often viewed as judgmental and angry.
A 2007 study on what the typical American thought about Christians showed that almost 90% of people in their teens and twenties thought Christians were judgmental. How do you think they got that impression? Quite a few of them probably had attended church a bit growing up, and they had heard about all the “should” and “shouldn’ts” and how people spoke about those who didn’t follow all the rules.
That’s the impression I came away with as a child, and it wasn’t intentional at all by the adults in my life. In fact, I thought it was good that we could judge ourselves as better than others because we did the things that made God happy. I used to look down on my Baptist best friend because people in his church didn’t speak in tongues like people in my church did. How silly!
Perhaps others of this 90% see Christians as judgmental because they have been on the receiving end of a well-meaning Christian’s explanation of God’s judgment. What they heard may have been true, but it probably came across as unloving and judgmental. So, whether this 90% of young people built the idea of Christians’ judgment from inside the church or on the outside, we know the church has clearly been sending the wrong signal to the world.
We Christians believe we are so loved by God that He sent His Son to give us the free gift of forgiveness now and an eternity to rejoice with God. Yet the people of the world see us as judgmental against all their wrong behavior, and angry that the world isn’t going our way.
Do you see the enormous disconnect here? We don’t have the ability to show Grace in the way God does, but our belief in and understanding of Grace should equip us to give the world an impression that is different from judgment and anger.
God’s Gift and His Standard
I want to show you why I am including Grace and Truth (next week) in our series on the Virtue Signals. These are the two bright, shining lights that emanate from the One we worship, Jesus Christ. Let’s look at what John tells us about Jesus in the first chapter of his Gospel.
John 1:14-17 – 14The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. 15John testifies concerning him. He cries out, saying, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me has surpassed me because he was before me.’” 16From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another. 17For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
“Full of Grace and Truth.” “Grace and Truth came through Jesus Christ.” These are enormous statements! John is setting the stage to show how the incredible Grace of God was about to be most visibly demonstrated not just through how Jesus lived and taught, but through His sacrificial death on the cross. He took the penalty we all deserved so we could experience eternal life.
We can’t separate Truth from God’s Grace. Together they give us the full and balanced picture of how God relates to us. One is His gift to us and the other is the standard by which He will hold us accountable. However, if we cling too tightly to Truth, without any Grace, we give those around us the impression that being a Christian is all about judgment. That’s why it is so important for all of us to fully understand what God’s Grace means for us; and to do that, let’s turn in our Bibles to Ephesians chapter 2.
Ephesians, Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus, is loaded with doctrine. In many ways it parallels topics covered in the book of Romans (also written by Paul). Ephesians 2 has four lessens on Grace for us to learn.
Ephesians 2:1-9 – 1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9not by works, so that no one can boast.
What lessons do we learn in this passage?
1. Saved by Grace.
This passage says this directly – twice – so this is clearly the main point Paul is trying to make. This is where we begin.
Our salvation is solely the work of God’s Grace toward us. As I said earlier, in all other religions of the world, salvation comes through human efforts and achievements and by following a series of steps. But God did it the other way! We are saved solely by the work HE DID FOR US! This includes (as this text says) being saved from God’s wrath, being made alive in Christ, and being assured of our future in the heavenly realms. All of it comes from God’s Grace!
2. Grace is a Gift.
Notice that Paul refers to Grace as a gift – unearned favor. I think this is a very helpful way to think about God’s Grace. It’s like a surprise we don’t get to choose for ourselves, but instead it is chosen for us by the true Gift Giver. He knows what we need.
This has to come from God and not from ourselves. Look at the beginning of the passage: we were dead in our trespasses – our sin. Dead people can’t make themselves alive again or gain any spiritual achievement. Only God can do that, and He does that as we put our faith and trust in Him to be our Savior. In NO WAY does anyone earn this favor! If they could, then they could boast about it; but since we can’t earn it, no one can boast.
This all makes sense when you think of Grace as a gift because only spoiled brats boast about the gifts they got for Christmas and think the gifts were owed to them. Thankful children are too wowed by the special gifts Mom and Dad chose for them to go around bragging.
3. Love leads to Grace.
Grace is the outflow – the result – of God’s great love for us. Typically you give gifts to people you care about. Your attitude toward a person makes you inclined to do good to them. That’s where God’s Grace comes from; He gives us salvation because of His incredible love for us, His creation. He saw our pathetic plight and knew we were unable to do anything about it because we were spiritually dead. So His love intervened even though it came at a staggering cost.
4. God is expressed in His kindness to us.
God expresses His Grace not only through salvation, but also through His kindness toward us and His blessings in our lives. We must recognize that everything we have is from the Grace of God: each new day, the rain, the harvest, health, roofs over our heads. All these are blessings from the hand of God. When we see all of life as Grace, we live with attitudes of thankfulness and appreciation rather than entitlement and thoughts of having done all this ourselves.
Grace Before Judgment
So that’s what God’s Grace toward us looks like. Theologically speaking, God places His righteousness on us so that when the Day of Judgment comes (and it will come) God sees us as pure and perfect just like His Son, Jesus. God’s Grace is the contrast to His judgment. Both are true, but they are different aspects of God’s Holy Character.
Grace is a free gift that cannot be earned. No pile of good deeds could ever merit God’s Grace.
Judgment, on the other hand, is based on evidence. In a court of law, a judgment is pronounced by a judge and you receive what you deserve, either good or bad. You might be sent to prison, or you might win the lawsuit and receive a sum of money.
God’s Grace is like winning the lottery and being given more than we can ever wrap our minds around. In fact, it’s even better, because many lottery winners end up worse off after five years of wasting their gift than they were before they won the prize.
If you won the lottery, don’t you think you would be the happiest person in the world? In the same way, the world should see our joy at what God has done for us – regardless of our circumstances – because our faith and our hope tell us we know how our lives will end up.
Too often, however, Christians are so focused on the judgment of God, on obedience and righteousness, that they project that standard onto those outside the faith. If someone is not a Christian and all they hear about is what they’re doing wrong, they feel judged because that’s the side of God’s character being presented to them. Then they get the idea that they have to clean themselves up before they can come to church. They don’t see the first step that changed our lives – that we are a people saved by Grace. They don’t understand the gift that is available to them.
They see only the standard and feel it’s up to them to meet it. Do you see how that twisted version of Christianity makes it no better than any of the world’s religions?
What’s most upsetting about this picture is how upside-down we, as Christians, have made non-Christians feel because we have forgotten about the most important piece of the Gospel: God’s Grace. We have failed to take into account the words Jesus spoke in His Sermon on the Mount:
Matthew 7:1-5 – 1 “Do not judge, or you, too, will be judged. 2For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
Some of you might say, “But, Pastor, that passage still ends with helping take the speck out of your brother’s eye.” It does, but it shows that telling a person about something they are doing wrong should be done only after you have lovingly considered your own life and can speak out of kindness and love, not defensiveness or attack.
As sinners saved by Grace, we have to stop leading with judgment and instead lead with loving graciousness. One day God will be their judge. Until that time, our job is to let everyone see that the same Grace that was available to us is available to them.
Showing Grace to Others
Here’s how I want this message to impact all our lives going forward.
Ephesians 5:1 – Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
As imitators of God, we can’t offer saving Grace to others like God does for us, but we can show others the outworking of Grace in our acts of kindness and mercy and forgiveness.
The verse before the one we just read says the following:
Ephesians 4:32 – Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.
Last week we talked about the virtue of Love. Living a Grace-filled life is the outworking of that love, doing for others what they don’t deserve and what they could not earn. As we live that counter-cultural life, as we live with joy in knowing our salvation is secure (not of ourselves, but through Jesus), we want the world to notice we have something different. They shouldn’t see judgment and anger, but kindness, generosity, and joy.
Conclusion
Grace is one of the most important concepts for us to understand about our God and our salvation. Grace is truly what makes the Gospel Good News! Let’s make sure we are not part of the problem in misrepresenting our faith to others who think all Christians are judgmental and angry. Be part of the solution! Let’s show them by how we live that Christians are joy-filled, thankful, and kind – that we are people who live out the love and Grace Jesus has shown to us.
May this be the signal we shine out from our lives to let people know that Jesus isn’t just Good News for us but that He can be Good News in their lives too.
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