08-29-10 Change Through the Grace of God

We come this morning

to a concept I understand - at least at some level,

but have found myself extremely frustrated

when it comes to finding ways of teaching it to you.

When my week began

I thought I knew already what I was going to say this morning.

At least I thought I had a pretty good idea.

I’ve taught this passage before

and I assumed that I could use my past notes

as a solid foundation for what we would do together this morning.

When I dug out those notes and read them

I discovered that the last time I taught this passage

I devoted two weeks to the truth we will look at in a few minutes.

I read through those notes

and came away from that reading

amazed at how skillfully I had been able to compose so much truth

that had so little apparent contact with real life.

Everything I’d said was true,

but when I finished reading what I’d written

and then asked myself the key question, “So then, simply stated,

how does the grace of God bring about true righteousness in our lives?”,

I couldn’t answer it - at least not on the basis of those notes.

I spent one whole day fiddling with those old notes,

trying very hard to rearrange the material

so that it would sort of do what I wanted it to do,

and then I finally set them aside

and started all over again.

The problem, you see,

is that we have reached one of the great pivotal truths in the book of Romans,

one of the truths that, if we understand it correctly,

will alter our lives forever.

And if we pass by it without finding ways of looking at it honestly

it will be a tremendous loss to all of us.

But let me first take us back to the passage we’re studying,

and also offer just a short review of where we’ve been so far.

The passage we’re looking at is Romans 5:20-21

And the Law came in that the transgression might increase; but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, that, as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

In that study last week

we saw Paul outlining for us

two vastly different 3 step processes.

We even put them into a little chart:

And before we stopped

we took the time to work our way

through the first of those two 3-step progressions.

We saw the law,

and God’s initial purpose for giving the law,

as God alone could reveal it to us.

We saw why God tells us that, ‟... the Law came in that the transgression might increase...”

The moral law of God

as it was initially given to man

was carefully structured in such a way as to arouse our inner rebellious hearts.

God could have phrased His commandments to us

in a style and language

that would have been far easier for us to receive.

He could have talked with us

about the logical, reasonable,

sensible principles

behind each of His commandments,

enabling us to see clearly

the wisdom of His ways,

and the utter stupidity

of violating His principles.

But He did not.

Instead He simply,

powerfully declared,

THOU SHALT NOT!!!!!!

And as soon as we hear those words,

at the same time we hear another voice from within ourselves,

the voice of our inner spirit of rebellion saying,

‟Oh ya? Well you just watch me!”,

or if we are of a more passive, less overtly rebellious temperament,

a voice that says, “You know, I agree with what You’re saying in principle,

and as a general rule I whole-heartedly agree,

but in this particular situation,

it just won’t work for me, thank you.”

And in the process we set ourselves above God

and declare ourselves to be our own god, our own absolute moral authority.

The problem is not the law, of course,

it is our rebellious heart.

And the law simply forces us to face

what’s really going on within us

at the spirit level.

Picture in your mind

two houses, both of them with huge picture windows facing the street.

In front of one house is a large sign

printed in bold block letters that reads:

Do NOT throw rocks through this picture window!!

In front of the second house

there is no sign.

Which window will get broken first?

The human spirit violently reacts

to anyone or anything

that demands submission and obedience.

We learn to clothe our rebellious spirits

in culturally acceptable facades,

selectively choosing which laws

and which authorities

we will and will not submit to,

but the underlying heart response is the same -

“I will run my own life,

I will determine my own destiny,

I will do it my way,

I will submit only when and where I choose to!”

And God’s first great purpose for His moral law

is to enrage our sinful passions

and force us into overt rebellion against Him.

Now why would He want to do that?

Because our Creator loves us,

and because, from the very beginning

it has never been about our behavior,

it has always, only been about our heart response to Him.

I need to say it once again,

I need to say it so that I can hear it myself -

from the very beginning of everything,

it has never been about us being good

or being bad,

it has always, only been about us becoming aware of our separation from Him,

and being restored to Him as our God,

and to the discovery of His love as our reason for being.

Shall I make it real simple?

Until our hearts respond to Him

no amount of improved behavior will change anything.

Once our hearts respond to Him

He will begin to reshape our behavior from the inside out.

The moral law of God

has never made anyone righteous.

And when we encounter that moral law

prior to the submission of our spirits to Christ,

the Law does just three things:

1. It demands obedience and submission.

2. It arouses our sinful passions, driving us into sin.

3. And then it condemns us as guilty offenders against God

and sentences us to eternal separation from God.

That’s all it can do.

That’s what God designed it to do in our first encounter with it.

And the Law came in that the transgression might increase...

The Law demands obedience,

drives us into sin,

and then sentences us to eternal death.

But that is not where Paul stops,

and it certainly is not where our God stops

in the truth He wants us to understand.

And the next thing Paul says

gives us God’s incredible alternative

to this terrifying, condemning union between us and the moral law of God.

He says,

“...even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

The GRACE of God

brings about righteousness

and eternal life through Jesus Christ.

GRACE brings about RIGHTEOUSNESS resulting in ETERNAL LIFE

And just exactly what in the world does that mean?

Well, it means a whole bunch of things.

One of the things it means

is that if we are struggling with true righteousness in our lives,

in other words, if we’re not living a life of true moral integrity and purity,

then we have not yet understood and received the true grace of God.

That doesn’t mean we’re not Christians,

but it does mean we are still attempting to live out our relationship with God

on the basis of our ability to perform for Him

rather than His grace poured out on us

and His life being lived out through us.

And right here is where I’ve spent a great deal of my churning during the past week,

churning that has driving me to the realization

that we have done something tragically wrong with the grace of God in the Christian community.

We have distilled the grace of God down into a doctrine,

a truth about God

that can be intellectually understood,

a doctrine we can hold at arm’s length,

and examine with our minds,

and discuss and acknowledge and teach

without it ever consuming us at the spirit level.

And let me tell you honestly

that any true encounter with the grace of God

will never remain on the intellectual level.

It will impact our lives,

alter our lives

as nothing else in human experience can ever do.

I have seen this in my own life

and there have been a few times when I have been invited in a deep way

into the lives of others

and seen the same thing in them.

I have seen the way their spirits cry out for a life of true moral integrity,

the way they begin to literally hunger and thirst for righteousness.

I’ve seen the way it allows them to stand with remarkable strength

in the river of moral corruption that now pours out from our society,

and in the face of that current they declare to themselves and to those around them,

“That is not who I am, that is not who I will be.”

And I have seen the way it literally changes the course of their own life forever,

and how it changes the lives of those they get near.

Several times I have seen this amazing work of God

taking place in the lives of Christians who are still in their teens,

and every time I see it

what I see sends thrills throughout my spirit

as I once again see God doing

what only God can do -

building lives of strength and purity and courage and moral integrity

in a world that fights them every step of the way.

It brings back to mind a teenage Daniel

suddenly dropped into a pagan culture,

surrounded by both a culture and an authority over him demanding that he set aside his moral convictions.

But His God gave him both the wisdom and the courage to stand against those forces.

And I see our Lord doing the same remarkable work in our culture today.

But the problem we all run into

with this GRACE producing RIGHTEOUSNESS resulting in ETERNAL LIFE

is that the first step in this process

does not begin with GRACE.

It begins with our allowing the Spirit of God

to show us our desperate need for the grace of God.

It begins with us allowing our God to show us ourselves without Him,

and especially His showing us

our sin.

That is precisely why the first half of this sentence we’re studying

begins with Paul telling us that the LAW drives us to SIN bringing about DEATH.

Sandee came across a phrase in a book she was reading this past week,

a phrase that, when she read it to me,

captured perfectly the only foundation upon which the grace of God can explode within our lives,

accomplishing the work God designed it to accomplish.

The author talked about “...the absurdity of worthiness...”.

Now isn’t that just great!

He was referring to the absolute absurdity

that any human being

under any circumstances

either before or after coming to Christ

could ever even begin to believe

that they are in any way worthy of anything our God does in us, or for us, or through us.

Are we worthy of His love?

Are we worthy of His forgiveness?

Are we worthy of His placing His Spirit within us and living His life out through us?

Are we worthy of His honoring us

with the ability to touch another human being

in a way that eases their pain,

or brings them to the truth,

or frees them from fear or from bondage?

When we see ourselves honestly

what we see is “...the absurdity of worthiness...”.

And yet it is that absurdity

that gives us the ability to truly grasp the grace of God.

And, wonder of wonders,

He does pour out His grace on us,

and when we see what He’s doing,

and see it against the backdrop of our own helplessness

and utter unworthiness,

the response within us is extreme.

Do you know why Paul says that GRACE brings about RIGHTEOUSNESS?

He says it

because he is simply describing what happens within us

when we see ourselves honestly

and then see the truth about the grace of God.

The collision of those two realities

causes us to long for a life that truly honors this God who has done what He has done.

The grace of God

has the power to produce true righteousness within

because when we see it correctly

it brings about a response within our spirits

that causes us to want to live in a way that,

well, as Peter said, ...proclaims the excellencies of Him who has called you out of darkness into His marvelous light... (I Peter 2:9).

Folks, I can’t teach you that.

I cannot teach another human spirit

an overflowing response of gratitude to God

for His endless compassion and kindness and grace

in the face of our absurdity of worthiness.

I can’t do it,

but God can,

and He is right now in the lives of some of you here this morning.

You have worked so very hard

to create that image that hides you from the world,

that image that allows you to tell yourself

and hopefully those around you

that you’re really a very fine person

doing a very fine job with the business of life.

But something has happened recently

that’s causing tremendous turmoil in your life,

something that’s forcing you into the painful discovery of your own absurdity of worthiness.

You can’t hold it together any longer,

you can no longer preserve that facade

that was your hope and your security for so long.

And it terrifies you

and at this point all you can see ahead is helplessness,

hopelessness,

emptiness,

despair.

Or it may be that something else altogether has been happening in your life,

something that is not visible to those around you,

something that no one but you can see,

and yet it’s affect on your life

is just as real,

just as intense,

just as terrifying.

It may be that you have seen something broken within your life,

something broken that you cannot fix,

and the discovery has created fear, anxiety, questions for which you have no answers.

Well, if any of that is going on in your life right now

let me welcome you to the first essential step

in the discovery of the true grace of God

and the kind of true righteousness it can produce.

Now I know that your first response to this time of turmoil in your life

will be to try to fix what’s gone wrong,

and if you can fix it - fine.

But if this really is your doorway into the discovery of His grace

you can try,

but you will not succeed.

And in His love

you will be drawn into a desperate need for your God.

You will need a God who truly does take you right where you are, just as you are,

a God who will take the shattered pieces of your life in His hands,

not with condemnation, not with judgement

but with love, and compassion, and kindness,

offering you the hope

that He both can and will rebuild,

and restore,

and redeem what has been lost.

In other words,

what you need is not the doctrine of Grace,

what you need is the living reality of the endless grace of a living God.

What you need is HIM

giving you the hope you so desperately long for -

not the hope that He will fix things,

but the hope that He will heal you,

and in that healing give you the ability to move on

whether He ever fixes things or not.

Do you know why I cling to my God the way I do?

It’s because, in His kindness to me,

He has allowed me to see myself without Him.

And when He succeeds in showing us ourselves,

and then showing us His grace in the light of that knowledge,

the kind of righteousness it begins to produce within us

is all different than anything the law could ever produce.

You know how the law works.

It hands us a list of external actions,

things we should do or avoid doing.

And we then tell ourselves that,

if we succeed in keeping that list

then we are in some way “righteous”.

But the kind of righteousness that the grace of God produces within us

is completely different.

It is a righteousness that aims not at the fulfillment of a list,

but rather at the creation of relationships

that bring healing and redemption and purpose and richness into our lives

and into the lives of others.

Do you remember that passage from Galatians that I mentioned last week,

that passage that describes for us

the true righteousness that grows out of our response to the grace of God in our lives?

It’s found in Galatians 5:22-23 where Paul says,

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.

I love that passage

because it takes the so called “righteousness” of legalism

and sets it next to the true righteousness of the life of the Spirit of God within us.

And look at what it produces...

love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control...

A few of those are just for our own benefit, of course...joy and peace,

but all the others go to the very heart of the way we relate to the people around us.

We actually love those our God places around us,

we show them patience, and kindness and goodness not matter how they act toward us,

and we bring faithfulness, and gentleness, and self-control into our relationships,

not because some external law has demanded that we do so and we try to paste it on,

but because that is the way our spirits respond to our growing discovery of His grace poured out on us.

We’re about out of time for the morning

but I can’t stop without letting you know

that what we’ve looked at during the past few minutes

is simply an overview of how the grace of God brings about righteousness in our lives.

But this is really just Paul’s introductory statement

to what he then does for us in the next three chapters.

In the next three chapters

he takes this truth

and explains to us that the grace of God

has brought about 4 massive changes in our lives,

changes that, to the degree we understand them and rest in them,

will then bring those practical changes that we long for into our lives.

I’ll simply list them for us now,

and then next week we’ll begin to look at them more closely.

Those 4 changes are:

1. He changes our true identity,

2. He changes our relationship

to the moral law of God,

3. He changes our relationship to sin,

and 4. He changes our relationship to Christ Himself.

But that will make more sense as we move ahead in our study.