I want to challenge us this week with growing in grace. It’s not difficult, really, but not something we often think through. As we gather with the church this week and participate in the fellowship, the songs, the prayers, the offering, and the sermon, let’s pick one grace from which to learn and grow. Just one.

There is a difference between a person who runs to maintain and person who runs to gain. A person who runs to maintain, runs for general health. They can pick up at any time and chug out a couple of miles. A person who runs to gain has a goal in sight, and they intentionally increase their mileage, mixing those days with speed work–short bursts of gut busting speed. Over time, they become more fit and faster.

Many of us are spiritual fitness maintainers. We go through the motions– can pray a decent prayer when called upon, will give at least a semblance of correct doctrine, and show occasional zeal for the things of Christ. But the Christian life necessarily includes growth.1 Thessalonians 4:3: “For this is the will of God, your sanctification.” His will for us is to grow, and since He is both the Author and Perfector of our faith (Hebrews 2:12), we will grow. We will gain in our spiritual growth.

Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God (Hebrews 12:1-2).

Physical fitness and spiritual fitness are two very different things. Physical fitness may make you an elite runner. Spiritual fitness will not make you spiritually elite. Quite the contrary. When we are growing in spiritual fitness we become less arrogant, less prideful, less consumed with our desires. Growth in Christ means dying to ourselves and living for Christ. The end prize to which we are to fix our eyes is not our fitness but looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith.

Let not conscience make you linger,
Nor of fitness fondly dream;
All the fitness He requires
Is to feel your need of Him.
This He gives you, this He gives you,
’Tis the Spirit’s rising beam.
– Come Ye Sinners, Joseph Hart

Let’s pick a grace this Sunday . . . something that challenges our selfishness and requires us to change. Let’s pray for that grace to gain a foothold in our lives. Let’s pray for forgiveness for its absence in our life and ask the Lord to replace our selfishness with His grace. Let’s trust Him to do it, and we will find that new graces are ever gaining.

Romans 6:14
“For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace.”

This week I have been thinking through how you preach/teach this truth to someone like the men at Overcomers – a drug and alcohol addiction program.  How do you say, “for sin will have no dominion over you”?  How do you tell people who have great addictions (we must admit that is all of us) that sin does not have dominion over them?

It does not mean we will not sin.  John says in I John 1:8 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”  It does not mean that we will not struggle against our sin.  Hebrews 12:4 says, “In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood.” 

It does mean a couple of things:
First, for the Christian it means that sin is no longer the domineering force in your life.  Once sin held sway over every aspect of your life.  You were motivated by selfishness in every thought, word, and deed.  Even your most philanthropic deed was done, not from faith in God through Christ, but from your self in constant rebellion against God. Therefore it was sin-ladened from start to finish.  It’s as if you were marked from before birth with a brand that said “sinner” and you could do nothing but act according to your brand.  Now, though, you are united to Christ by faith.  You have been branded in new birth with “grace.”  Even though you continue to sin, your new nature causes you to see your sin as sinful and grace as something right and good to pursue for the glory of Christ.

Second, because of new birth in Christ, the sins you commit are no longer held against you in the court of God.  Prior to new birth, you claimed your own righteousness therefore you stood on your own righteousness as your defense in God’s court.  You were “under law.”  But now, you are under grace.  Your sins do not condemn you any longer. What it does mean is that sin is no longer counted against you? The sway that it once had over you as a condemning law is no longer present.  In Christ, you are no longer considered guilty before the Judge of God.

The warfare of trying to appease God with your good efforts or beat yourself up with your guilt before God is over.  The battle has been won.  Christ is your Victor.  But we must believe this to be true.  How often we forget our freedom and victory and attempt to enter back into the warfare with our own efforts at covering our sin and attempting righteous works on our own merit!

Even as God declared the warfare of Israel ended, they were still to wait for the consummation of all things.  In the meantime, there would still be skirmishes, but God was their God and their future was secure.  So too, we feel the weight of sin and experience its consequences.  But one day, even those will be gone forever.  The war has been won.  It is finished.  We are promised victory and will reap the rewards for eternity which far outweigh the pain and misery of today.

But like many bold pronouncements made against God and His followers, there is irony to the bumper sticker jab.  The same thing occurred when the religious leaders in Jesus’ day asked Pilate to set guards over the tomb of Jesus to make sure His body would not be stolen by His disciples.  That very act proved to be more condemning on the authorities and provide more verifiable evidence to Christ’s resurrection (Matthew 27:62-28:4).  So too, the bumper sticker actually bolsters the Christian message rather than squelches it.  How?

Look at the statement again: God was my co-pilot . . . until I crashed into the Andes and I had to eat him.  In the end, who saves whom?  Isn’t it in the face of unthinkable cannibalism that the ‘co-pilot God’ provides life to the ‘pilot’?  Who is the desperate hungry one in the scenario?  Wasn’t the ‘death of God’ the impetus of life for the man?

And so it is for the Christian message.  Jesus Christ gave His life for the many.  Christ was falsely accused and His life taken.  But the real victory was His.  It’s what we celebrate in the eucharist, or the Lord’s Supper; His life taken, so that those who recognize that they are utterly helpless, starving to death for what their own righteousness can not obtain, can find life in Him.

“Children have I reared and brought up,but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner,and the donkey its master’s crib,
but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.”

     I believe that to understand our position before God as children to a Father is one of the most, if not the most, vital theological concepts to grasp as a Christian.  Our adopted position before a heavenly Father has practical implications that range from the believer’s sincere obedience, to assurance of their acceptance, to their confidence in every providential circumstance.  If we attempt to find security and confidence in anything but the Father’s love we will act as estranged children.

     Sinclair Ferguson writes, “No short-cut that tries to bypass the relationship to him as his children, can ever succeed in providing long-term spiritual therapy” (Children of the Living God, p.14). But, if you know, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that the Creator and the Sustainer of the universe loves you with an incorruptible love that never fades or wanes, then your life will demonstrate an assured, bold, compassion that is unshakable in the face of any circumstance.

     Henry Lyte’s hymn lyrics in “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken,” reveal such a confidence:

Go, then, earthly fame and treasure,
Come disaster, scorn and pain
In Thy service, pain is pleasure,
With Thy favor, loss is gain
I have called Thee Abba Father,
I have stayed my heart on Thee
Storms may howl, and clouds may gather;
All must work for good to me.

     How do we know God loves us this much?  How do we know that we are that secure?  The humility of Jesus coming in the flesh and suffering throughout His life and on to the cruel death of the cross is the picture of His love.  The resurrection is the sacrifice accepted by the Father in our stead revealing that He is satisfied.  “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9).  His grace is the giving of His Son on our behalf as our substitute.  That grace is all we could possibly ever need.  It is that complete . . . that final.  That “finished” (John 19:30).

     As we find our confidence in the Fatherhood of God, then all of our relationships change.  We no longer have the need to feel rejected by our spouses, parents, or peers.  I John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.”   The Father’s perfect love shown in Christ is the confidence we have for all relationships.  We can then love as Christ has loved us without expecting any reciprocal love from those for whom we pour out our service.  In fact, when we do not receive anything in return, it only confirms what the Scripture says about not putting our confidence in the flesh (Phil. 3:3).  Our gain is not to be received from others, but only from Christ.  Therefore, when we do not receive what we might expect or want, we ought not be shaken.

     Do we grasp the outward effects of such confident Father-love for us?  When our confidence is in His love for us, then we become an effective witness to His gospel.  Our spouses and children and friends find a gospel power of confidence in us.  Gospel light will shine brightly as it radiates from our whole countenance.

     Jesus Christ is the perfect Son given for us, the estranged sons.  “God’s final purpose is nothing less than a new race of men and women, restored to what they were intended to be, through their relationship to the divine image-bearer and Son, Jesus Christ” (Sinclair Ferguson, p.10).

“Thus says the Lord GOD: This is Jerusalem. I have set her in the center of the nations, with countries all around her.  And she has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations, and against my statutes more than the countries all around her; for they have rejected my rules and have not walked in my statutes. 

The church today is as God’s people of old, a city, or a grouped people after God’s own choosing, commissioned as ambassadors of His grace and mercy.  Matthew 5:14 reads, “You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden.”

In relation to the church’s commission in Matthew and Ezekiel, I like how one author challenged me to think differently about church membership. We are members certainly.  But his challenge was to think of membership as partnership.  Partnering together for the gospel of Christ.  We are to be, like no other institution on earth, the uniquely designed people who labor together to bring life to a death-filled world.

But contrary to witnessing the beauty of the church as a partnering institution which bears life-giving and light-bearing testimony to the surrounding culture, often we see the opposite; a back-biting, self-absorbed, rule-breathing, treacherous and exclusive society.  A church which has rebelled against my rules by doing wickedness more than the nations.

Rules, even God’s laws, can be uglier than the compassion of a godless society.  Who hasn’t witnessed great compassion and philanthropy from the hands of unbelievers, often much more gracious than many a professing Christian?  You see, doing the rules does not a grace-channel make.  In fact, that’s what got the Jewish authorities in Jesus’ day their self righteous attitude and actions.  God’s rules can be done with wicked intent.  If our purpose in obeying God is to lord our obedience to Him over others, then we have broken the very law we say we keep.  When God’s laws create an “us and them” attitude (us being those in the church, them being those outside the church.  Or, in some cases, us in this particular church, and them in their particular church, practice, etc.), then we have entered the downward spiral of losing our first love:  “But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first. Remember therefore from where you have fallen; repent, and do the works you did at first. If not, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent” (Revelation 2:4-5).

Remember.  Remember from from where you have fallen.  It was to the church in Ephesus that Jesus was directing his attention in this Revelation passage.  It was Ephesus that contained a mixed bag of Jews and Gentiles (different practice, baggage, etc).  The letter written by Paul to Ephesus some forty or fifty years earlier stressed the unifying power of Christ.  It was a breaking down the “us and them” paradigm.  Apparently, by the time of the Revelation of John, their unity was leaking.  The church at Ephesus was taking on the same characteristics as Israel in the days of Ezekiel.

When the theology or ethic we hold begins to create a people who see the law as the means to Christian virtue, then backbiting, judgmental attitudes, and exclusion will occur.  Gone will be the influence of light into a dark world, because gone will be the influence of grace and mercy within the people of God.

Repent.  Repent from using the law of God unlawfully; i.e. not as it was intended to be used.  Recognize your sinful attitudes and actions.  See how Christ has had compassion on you, a law-breaker, by removing the condemning power of the law over you . . . that same condemning power you have desired to hold over others!  See how Christ has given you the law as a great protection and directive for bringing Him glory as you wield it well and rightly.  See the law of God as good when we use it to bring life and light into other people’s lives with an attitude of mercy.  Pray for this attitude.  Choose today to love those around you the way Christ has loved you and without expecting anything in return.  As we as individuals grasp the mercy and grace of Christ, then we as a church begin to see the influence of Christ through us as a church within our community.  For a city set on a hill cannot be hidden.