Go On by Grace

John Ortberg is an author and speaker you need to check out if you aren’t familiar with him.  I was listening to a video message he presented at a prominent church in Atlanta recently and was reminded that many Christians struggle with the concept of God’s grace in their lives.  I thought it was an observation that deserved some attention on this blog.

Many of us were quite comfortable with our need for God’s grace when we were unsaved, unknowing sinners. Our rationale is that, no matter how sinful our lives were, we didn’t know any better. Because of our “ignorance,” God was glad to pour out his saving grace on us. And so we live a life of joy for a few months after coming to Christ filled with the knowledge that all is forgiven because we have been saved by grace through faith and not by anything we have done or by any merit we have earned.

But for many of us, a subtle or not so subtle sense of condemnation begins to creep into our lives. Perhaps the condemnation comes as a steady whisper from the enemy or it comes through well-intended but somewhat misdirected teaching from our churches.  An unspoken belief begins to take root inside of us that we were saved by grace but we must become Christ-like by our own efforts and if we are not growing by leaps and bounds God is unhappy.  Somehow we begin to think that grace was available when we didn’t know any better but now that we know what constitutes right and wrong, we better toe the mark by our own efforts if we want to continue in God’s good graces.

At that point, our Christian walk becomes a burden rather than a joy and a source of condemnation rather than a life of freedom.  Have you ever noticed how hard it is to find the fruit if the Spirit in many long-time Christians?  I’m not talking about morality or good works. We can find those things.  I’m talking about the first three expressions of the fruit of the Spirit that are listed in Galatians 5 – love, joy, and peace. Week after week I see believer’s come forward during our ministry time at the end of each service and they are burdened, troubled, and joyless.  I’m not talking about those who just lost a loved one or found out that their spouse has been unfaithful.  I’m talking about believers who live year in and year out without a true sense of love, joy, or peace.

I believe two things are missing.  One is the transformation that Jesus offers to every believer. His promise and mission is to extend God’s grace to all who will receive it through the preaching of the gospel.  It is also to heal broken hearts and set captives free while exchanging garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness (Isa.61).   Many of us have heard the good news of forgiveness but not the good news of transformation and freedom which also stands on the grace of God. If believers have no expectation for significant change in their hearts and in their lives, they will not change.

The other missing component is the belief that I am not only saved by grace but also live by grace  – even when I fall short and even when I knew better.  Living by grace is not having a cavalier attitude toward sin. Rather it is believing that God’s grace is always much bigger than my sin. It is knowing that, by my own invitation, God is working in me every day by his Spirit to transform me into the image of Jesus Christ.  My part is to make myself available to him and ask him to do his work in me.  His part is to transform my heart which will then transform my actions.

In my book, , I speak of a position / condition paradigm for understanding our sanctification (the process of becoming like Jesus).  The writer of Hebrews tells us “by one sacrifice he has made perfect forever those who are being made holy” (Heb.10:14).  That means that the grace of God, through the sacrifice of Jesus, has given us a sinless status before the Father and he always relates to us on the basis of Christ’s righteousness which has been credited to us.  While doing that, however, he is also working on our condition (sinfulness and brokenness) to make us like Jesus and to bring our condition in line with our position.

We get focused on the ugliness of the process while the Father is only focused on the end product.  Builders have a very clear picture of what the home they are building will look like in the end. They don’t focus on the weed-choked lot where the house will eventually rest.  They don’t despise the ugly pieces of plastic PVC pipe sticking up out of a fresh foundation. They don’t get hung up on bare lumber sticking up into the air or all kinds of trash on the lot that will be cleared out later.  For the majority of the process, a stately home looks like a chaotic mess that will never amount to anything.  The master builder, however, knows what the end product will look like so he doesn’t despise the process. The same is true for our lives.  We condemn ourselves for the chaotic process while God is confident in his finished product.

A life lived by grace, remembers that Jesus is the carpenter not us. It remembers that God always views us through a lens of righteousness not failure or sin, and that God is quite aware of our condition and is faithfully working on that.  You are God’s project. He does not hold us responsible to transform ourselves, but only to invite him to do the work and trust him while he is doing it.  In that environment love, joy and peace can develop and, like trees alongside the river of God, can bear fruit that heals the nations.

Remember – you were saved by grace and you go on by grace every day.  Rejoice in that truth and live in its warmth. God’s grace is sufficient and we must trust in it now as we did when we first came to Jesus. When the church is filled with loving, joyful, and peaceful Christians, the world will flock to Jesus.  After all, those are the very things everyone is looking for and those are the things the world is selling.  It’s just that the world is selling “knock-offs” rather than the real thing.  When the world finally sees the real thing in us, they will beg to know where we got ours.  Living by grace after being saved by grace is the answer.  Be blessed.