Our Response to Grace

Tom Shrader opens the study of 1 Corinthians by revisiting the problems Paul addressed in Corinth, including division, unconfronted sin, and neglected spiritual gifts. He then centers on 1 Corinthians 1:4-9, where Paul's thanksgiving for the Corinthians becomes a springboard to explain that saving grace is unearned, undeserved, and cannot be repaid by any human effort or religious activity. Shrader argues that a right understanding of grace begins with an honest reckoning with sin, and that the only fitting human response to what God has freely given in Christ is gratitude rather than an attempt to earn or repay it.

“Our only response to the gift of grace is thanksgiving. There's no act that you can perform, there's no church you can join, there's no consecrated life that you can live that will repay God for what He's done for you.”

— Tom Shrader

Series: 1 Corinthians

Recorded: 2000 at East Valley Bible Church

Duration: 50 min

Themes: grace, gratitude, sin, forgiveness, salvation, church division, repentance, undeserved mercy, new believer, struggling with sin, navigating church conflict, feeling unworthy, questioning salvation, young adult, struggling with gratitude, recovering from church hurt

Scripture: 1 Corinthians 1:1-9, 1 John 2:6, Colossians 3:3-10, 2 Peter 1:3

Theological Themes: soteriology, saved by grace, antinomianism, license to sin, sanctification, spiritual gifts, ecclesiology, justification

Full Transcript

Introduction and Background

Turn, if you would, to the book of 1 Corinthians. Last week we began this study, and it will take us some time to get through the book. We covered all of our background information last week. If you want to get caught up with that, the tape is available, or you can simply go to the website where the message from last week will be available. But I want to remind you of at least one part of that introduction — that as Paul wrote to the city of Corinth, he was writing to a city in which he had been an evangelist. He had shared his faith, people had come to Christ, and a church was established. Now he is in Ephesus, writing back to this church.

What dominates this letter is Paul addressing problems in the church, and in at least three areas. Number one, the church was split over personalities. The church was divided into factions — some followed Paul, some followed Apollos, some followed Peter, and others said they followed Christ. I have to believe that there cannot be much that is more painful to people involved in a church than a church that splits. How difficult, painful, and hard that is.

The Problem of Sin in the Church

Not only was the church split, it was also a church infected by sin. Sin had come into this church, and the leadership team had elected not to deal with it. When I became a Christian — that was in March of 1980 — all of a sudden I learned a whole bunch of new words, met a whole different group of people, and one of the things I kept hearing was, "Don't be legalistic, don't be legalistic, don't be legalistic." My experience with the church, however, is that I found very little legalism. There are pockets of it, to be sure, but in the churches I was involved in and in the body of Christ in general, I don't see a lot of legalism.

What I see instead is what is called antinomianism — or, if you will, license. It is the idea that because I understand I am saved by grace and am certain my salvation is secure, I can live any way I want. That is exactly what was going on in the church at Corinth.

A Pastoral Conversation About Grace and Consequences

I had somebody ask if they could meet with me this week, and I met with them — not anyone from this church, so you don't need to try to figure out who it is. This person said, "My marriage — and I have talked with this person ongoing for three, four, five years — my marriage is just unbearable. I can't take another day of this." By all accounts it is a genuinely painful situation. The question was, "Can I divorce this person?" I said, "I don't get into a lot of specifics. Let me just tell you what the Bible says." After laying that out, I asked whether they thought divorce was warranted on those grounds, and the answer was, "No, not based on those grounds."

Then came the question that was really at the heart of the meeting, because anyone who has been around me knows what I am going to say. The question was, "So if my divorce is a sin, can God forgive that sin? Will God forgive me?" My answer was, obviously, yes. If I am a Christian, there is no sin I can commit that God has not died for. We know that. But the question I had for that person is this — here is something you are contemplating, calculating, and scheduling. It is something you know is contrary to what God would have you do, and you are willing to do it anyway. The first thing you have to wonder is whether you are really His child.

And if your answer is yes, it is just unbearable, then here is a little advice: duck. Because God is not going to put up with this. When you say, "God, I know what You would have me do, but I am not going to do it," there are consequences to that behavior. God is going to take you to the woodshed and discipline you — not merely for punishment, but to bring you to the point where you can endure whatever life throws at you rather than sin your way out of it.

When you as an individual — and more importantly, when we as a church — take sin and institutionalize it, saying, "Well, that's okay, it really is a tough situation, so just go ahead and do what you have to do," we have a problem. That is exactly what they had in Corinth, and that is what Paul was dealing with.

The Third Problem: Unused Gifts

There was a third thing Paul was addressing in this letter. The church was not using its resources — and I do not mean money. The people were not using the spiritual gifts that God had given them.

A Walk Through Verses 1–9

With that backdrop, we look today at verses one through nine. Verses one, two, and three we covered last week, so we will move through them quickly. As Paul writes across nearly sixteen chapters in this letter — a lengthy letter — essentially everything he has to say that is good is contained in these first nine verses.

Here is what we saw last week. Paul identifies himself: "Paul, called as an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God." He declares that there is a calling on his life, and he establishes his apostleship up front. This is his authority. He is coming to criticize and correct these people, and he is establishing his authority to do so. Sosthenes is with him, as Paul seems to travel and minister in pairs, always preparing and developing people for ministry.

He writes to "the church of God which is at Corinth," and he reminds these people of a very important truth. You have been sanctified in Christ Jesus. You are saints by calling. You are set apart — set aside for a specific person, called to be holy, to be distinctive. He is going to address the behavior these people are exhibiting and correct it, even rebuke it. But he begins by reminding them of who they are.

Grace and Distinctiveness in How We Live

You are called to be a saint, and you are not acting like it. John tells us in 1 John 2:6, "The one who says he abides in Christ ought himself to walk in the same manner as Christ walked." Colossians 3 is where Paul deals with this whole idea of walking in an appropriate manner. Here is what he writes, beginning in Colossians 3:3: "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Then in verse five: "Therefore, consider the members of your earthly body as dead to immorality and impurity and passion, evil desires and greed, which amounts to idolatry. In them you once walked when you were living in them, but now you also put them all aside. Anger and wrath and malice and slander and abusive speech from your mouth. Do not lie to one another since you laid aside the old self with its evil practices, and you have put on the new self."

Paul is saying there is a distinctiveness about the way we live. Because we have been sanctified, and are in the process of being sanctified, and because we are saints who are set apart, there ought to be a distinctiveness and clarity about the way we conduct ourselves.

Grace Always Precedes Peace

Then in verse three we read: grace to you and peace. Whenever we see those two words from the apostle, we always see them in that order. Grace always precedes peace. We always have peace with God before we have the peace of God. And indeed, the grace and peace that we receive finds its source, its birthplace, in the Lord Jesus Christ and God Himself.

Last week we talked about grace, and specifically about how when we see grace in our life we begin to see a freedom in our life. This week we are going to spend the bulk of our time talking about grace itself — what it is — and about our response to grace.

To me, there are two key words today. Paul is going to talk about grace, and when he talks about grace, he talks about thanks and thanksgiving. Perhaps this is an ideal message as we head into the Thanksgiving season of our calendar. Paul is going to remind his readers about God's saving grace, and he is going to say that whenever we think about grace, what ought to come to our minds is thanksgiving.

Paul, in chapter four of this letter, says he speaks not to shame them but as a parent speaking to a child. He says that any parent who loves their children wants what is best for them, and that is the mindset he carries as he comes to speak to them.

The Gift and Confirmation of Grace

Now, notice how I have paired verses four and six together, and verses five and seven together, as we work through the text. Here is what he says in verse four: "I thank my God always concerning you for the grace of God which was given to you in Christ Jesus" — and then verse six — "even as the testimony concerning Christ was confirmed in you."

He is talking about the grace of God. Two key phrases stand out: it was given to you, and it was confirmed in you. Take those words and put them together. Both are in the aorist tense in the Greek, which means each describes an occurrence that took place once and was completed. There was a time when the gospel was presented to you. There was a time when you responded to the gospel. There was a time when grace was made available to you, and it opened your heart and your eyes, and you responded. Paul says: I thank God that you perceived and embraced the good news.

Grace Can Only Operate Where There Is Sin

John MacArthur speaks to what grace involves. Here is what he says: grace involves unmerited, undeserved, and permanent forgiveness. Grace can operate only where there is sin. Without need of forgiveness, there is no need of grace. It is impossible for us to really talk about saving grace without also talking about sin.

This past Friday and Saturday I was in Casa Grande doing a men's conference for a church in Utah. I knew many of the men coming from that church, having done a Bible study down there for years. A man stood up to introduce me on Friday night — someone I did not recognize, someone I had no memory of ever meeting. He read a biography, mentioned various things, and then said, "I used to go to Tom's Bible study up at Mount Paloma. And here is what Tom taught me: Tom taught me that I am a sinner." I knew he was one of my students when he added, "Tom taught me that I am pond scum." That is exactly right.

That is really part of the good news. We want to deliver the gospel to people, but we cannot deliver the good news of Christ until they understand that they are sinners. Grace has no place if we do not first understand sin. You are desperate. You are helpless. You are hopeless. And you need a Savior. You have to come to that point in your life.

We are currently in the middle of a four-week series in Primary Living Studies on how to find God, and the gospel and Christ are central to it. The first week was titled "What's the Matter with People?" The whole point was this: when we transgress God's law, we sin. When we commit a sin, we break the law. And every person stands equally guilty before God. The wages of our sin is death — separation from God — and there is nothing we can do to change that. That is our condition.

Grace Is Unmerited and Undeserved

We are helpless and hopeless. You have heard illustrations where it is like a man lying there who cannot move, and then God comes along with the gospel like a message, and the man just takes it. That is a bad illustration. It is not that we are this ill and cannot move — we are dead. It is not that we are drowning and He throws us a life jacket. We are at the bottom of the sea, dead. He can throw things at us all He wants, and we are not going to respond. We cannot handle it. We are helpless and hopeless.

I made that point the first week for forty-five minutes. At the Thursday news study, there were a good number of people there who were not Christians, and on the way out, several felt obligated to step by and say to me, "That was not a very uplifting message." That is a wonderful thing — that is the message. If we are going to talk about grace, we had better make sure we understand grace. We need to talk about forgiveness when we talk about grace. If we are not going to talk about forgiveness, then we are not talking about grace.

When we talk about grace, what we understand is that it is unmerited and undeserved. I am guilty before God. There is nothing I can do. But God, in His grace and His mercy, extends to me salvation. The basic meaning of the word grace is favor. In regard to God saving man through His Son, it always carries a special and distinct sense of undeserved, unrepayable kindness or mercy. It is super-magnanimous giving — giving that is totally undeserved and unmerited. It need not, and in fact cannot, be repaid.

God's saving grace is free and unearned. When we talk about grace, we are talking about something we do not deserve, something we cannot earn, and nothing we can do to make ourselves worthy of. By definition, it is unmerited favor.

Our Only Response Is Thanksgiving

Our response — and our only response — to grace is not to try to pay God back. We cannot pay Him back. Our only response to the gift of grace is thanksgiving. A lot of people are out there very busy for the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the back of their mind, the idea is, "I am going to repay God for what He has done for me." While God has done a great thing for you, there is nothing you can do to repay Him. There is no act you can perform, no church you can join, no consecrated life you can live that will repay God for what He has done for you.

What He has done for you is great — unmerited, undeserved forgiveness of your sin — and you cannot pay Him back. God extends to you a true gift: grace. It is not a loan He has extended to you that you then have to earn or pay back. Should our life change because of grace? Absolutely. We are saved by grace, not by works — grace is the gift of God. But we are saved for good works. Those good works are nothing more than us manifesting before God our thanksgiving to Him for what He has done for us.

The Joy of Received Grace

So when Paul thanks God for the grace given to and received by the church in Corinth, he says, "I thank you." Paul understood that God gave Himself and redeemed us, and He did this because He decided to do it out of His own mercy. There is great proclamation of grace in that. There is a kind of joy. If you are a Christian, even though this is very familiar, I hope there is joy in your life when you hear us talk about God.

What really brings joy to the heart is when you hear somebody who has received that grace stand in their testimony and say, "This is what I was, and now I am this — not because I deserved it or earned it, but because God saved me. Not because of who I am, but in spite of who I am. God did not give me what I deserved." That is a blessing, a breakthrough moment for people.

Faith Itself Is a Gift of Grace

That is why it is so important to understand that we are saved by grace, and that there is nothing you can do to earn it — including faith itself. Faith is a gift of grace. The fact that you are saved is evident in the fact that you have faith. You are not saved by faith — I presume you understand that. You are saved by grace. As God extends that grace to you, the evidence of that is faith. Faith is the conduit by which He extends this grace to us.

God has given to us all of the tools we need in life. In everything, you were enriched in all speech and in all knowledge, so that you are not lacking in any gift. In Him we have been made complete. God has given you everything you need, and as a church, you have all the tools necessary. God has given us everything pertaining to life, and for that we give thanks.