The Freedom of Grace
Tom Shrader opens by establishing the security of salvation through the sealing of the Holy Spirit, drawing from Ephesians 1, Romans 8, and John 10 to show that nothing can separate a believer from God's love. He then pivots to the more challenging concept of grace for living, warning that those who understand grace for life often drift back into religious legalism marked by works, rigid rules, and a judgmental spirit toward others. Using Barnabas's visit to Antioch in Acts 11 as a closing image, Shrader calls believers to embody visible, tangible grace—marked by joy, freedom, and love—rather than a checklist-driven faith.
“It is not a picture of me holding on to God, but it's a picture of Him hanging on to me with a grip that will never let go.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Grace for Life, Grace for Living
Recorded: 2008 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 54 min
Themes: grace, freedom, salvation, legalism, holy spirit, joy, love, security, struggling with legalism, new believer, feeling unworthy, rule-driven christian, spiritually burned out, young adult, questioning salvation, returning to faith
Scripture: Ephesians 2:8-10, Ephesians 1:3-14, Philippians 1:6, Romans 8:16, Romans 8:35, Romans 8:38-39, John 3:16, John 3:36, John 5:24, John 6:47, John 10:22-33, John 8:31-32, Philippians 3:4-8, Acts 11:19-23, Titus 3, Romans 6
Theological Themes: eternal security, sealing of the holy spirit, soteriology, grace for living, regeneration, perseverance of the saints, justification by faith, sanctification
Full Transcript
Picking Up the Series
Open your Bibles to the book of Ephesians, the second chapter, eighth verse, which provides the text for this series titled "Grace for Living." I was not here last week. I intended to be — that was my plan — I taught on Thursday and planned to teach Sunday, but I just couldn't concentrate. So around noon on Saturday I called Tyler and said, "You know that grace thing — have you got it figured out? Because you're going to have to teach it tomorrow."
What I told him is that normally what the guys get to do is come in and teach something they're already preparing elsewhere, but I did not want to break the series. So I said, "Tyler, I want you to teach the sentence: God saves sinners." I had a chance to listen to his message on the web, and he did a great job. Knowing he had less than a day to prepare, that was pretty impressive to me. But I think it flows so much from his heart, and honestly I think it is so much ingrained in who we are here at East Valley Bible Church.
The Foundation: Ephesians 2:8–10
This series finds its origin in Ephesians 2:8–10: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is a gift of God, not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." That is the grace for life. We have spent whatever it has been — four or five weeks — on the truth that we are dead in our sins and trespasses.
Tyler diagrammed the sentence last week: God saves sinners. God — Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the Triune God — saves, delivers, rescues, and does everything that is necessary, from first to last, to bring man into glory. God does that. God saves whom? Sinners.
We talked about how God the Father elects those who would be saved before the foundations of the earth. Jesus Christ redeems us — He dies on the cross for that chosen group of people. Jesus came to save His people. He said, "It is finished," meaning He had completed His work; the atonement was made for us. Then the Spirit, at the appropriate time — and Tyler ended up last week in Titus 3 — regenerates us. We are born again by the Spirit of God.
The Holy Spirit comes into our life, takes out a heart of stone, replaces it with a heart of flesh, convicts us of our sin, gives us the ability to see the gospel, hear the gospel, understand the gospel, and the desire to respond to the gospel. That is a work done completely by God. Salvation has nothing to do with us. All we bring to salvation is our sin.
Helpless, But Not Hopeless
We are dead, and as dead people there is nothing we can do to bring ourselves to life. That is completely a work of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. God saves sinners — God saves people like us who are helpless and powerless and unable to do God's Word and God's will. But not hopeless. When somebody says, "You're helpless and hopeless," that is not true. You are helpless, but not hopeless. The hope lies in Christ.
Last week, as I was listening to Tyler teach, he used the scene from the movie *Amazing Grace* where John Newton is scrubbing a floor and talking with his man. There is a beautiful line where Newton says, "Here is what I know: I am a great sinner, and He is a great God." That is what the doctrines of grace teach us — that we are sinners separated from God by our sin, helpless, powerless, dead, with nothing we can do to change or modify that. We cannot bring ourselves to life. Something has to happen to us.
What happens to us is that God moves — the Father to elect, the Son to redeem, the Spirit to regenerate and then to continue to work in our life. Those are the beautiful teachings of Scripture as they relate to salvation. I think we have done a wonderful job as we have unpacked it this time in saying: let us set aside, for the sake of this discussion, Augustine and Calvin and Luther and all the others — what does the Bible teach? And that is what the Bible teaches.
The Question Everyone Asks
Now there are all sorts of questions that come out of that, and it would be impossible in a setting like this to begin to answer them all. But there is one giant question that arises at this point — a question I get more often than any other once we reach this place in the discussion.
The question is this. Let me read a sentence from an email I received: "What if God changes His mind and decides to condemn me?" Let me say it another way: Is there anything I can do to lose this salvation? Now that I have entered into this relationship with God, now that I know Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior, now that I have come to repentance and faith — is there anything I can do to undo this? Is there anything God would do to undo this? Or is there any sort of external force that could come upon me and somehow sever this relationship?
The Confidence of Philippians 1:6
You are in Ephesians 2. Let me invite you to turn just one page to the left, to Ephesians chapter 1. Paul says it so simply in Philippians chapter 1, verse 6: "I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus."
In Ephesians chapter 1, Paul identifies himself, identifies the recipients of the letter, and then says in verse 3: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will." God did all of that. God redeemed us. There is the picture — God the Father chose those He would save before the foundations of the earth, as we have seen.
The Security of Salvation
A couple of weeks ago we looked at the truth that God's love for us is not because of anything we did, but in spite of us. Jacob I loved, Esau I hated. He will show favor on one and give justice to the other, and give mercy to the other. Our immediate cry, remember, is that that's not fair. Paul anticipates that and says, wait a minute — there is no injustice with God, is there? No. He will have grace on whom He has grace, and mercy on whom He has mercy. God is sovereign and will do as He pleases. No one is ever treated unjustly. There is no one who wants to come to Christ but whom God is holding away. That person does not exist.
Predestined and Sealed
Now look at verse 11. We have also obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after His counsel, to the end that we who are the first in hoping in Christ would be to the praise of His glory. In Him you also, after listening to the message of truth — that is, the gospel of salvation — having also believed, were sealed in Him with the Holy Spirit of promise. The Holy Spirit, who verse 14 tells us, is a pledge of our inheritance. God sends the Holy Spirit into our life. He indwells us, He empowers us, and He works as a seal.
John MacArthur writes this: "When a person becomes a Christian, the Holy Spirit takes up residence in his life. Life in Jesus Christ is different because the Holy Spirit of God is within us. He is there to empower us, equip us, and function through the gifts He has given us. The Holy Spirit is our helper and advocate. He protects and encourages us. He also guarantees our inheritance in Jesus Christ."
Romans chapter 8, verse 16 says, "The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also — heirs of God and fellow heirs of Christ." He is the seal. He is, as verse 14 describes, the pledge — literally the down payment, the earnest money that secures a purchase. The Holy Spirit comes into our life and takes up residence there. He seals us. He becomes the picture of security and authenticity, of ownership and authority. That is what the Holy Spirit does in our life. He who began the work — God — will continue that work through the indwelling Holy Spirit.
Nothing Can Separate Us
So in answer to the question — is there anything I could do, or that God would do, or that anyone else in our lives could do, anything that could usurp or change this plan in any way, shape, or form — the answer is no. Paul says it this way in Romans chapter 8: "What shall we say of these things? If God is for us, who is against us?" And then in Romans 8:35: "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
He then lists a range of circumstances from life. Tribulation literally means to be squeezed under pressure. Distress is the idea of being hemmed in. Persecution is the idea of affliction for the Lord's sake. Famine is the absence of the necessities of life. Nakedness is the inability to even meet our basic needs. Peril is the overarching idea of danger. And the sword — there was actually a small dagger used to perform assassinations, a concealed weapon. If God is for us, who can be against us? What can separate us from the love Christ has for us?
Paul writes this of our relationship with God: "I am convinced that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Is it possible for me to pull myself away from God? No. For God to pull away from me? No. Is it possible that the circumstances of life will become so overwhelming that they would separate me from the love God has for me? No.
Eternal Life Begins Now
There are four passages from the Gospel of John where Jesus Himself speaks about believing and eternal life. John 3:16: "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life." John 3:36: "He who believes in the Son has eternal life." John 5:24: "Truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears My word, and believes Him who sent Me, has eternal life." And lastly, John 6:47 — and there are dozens of these — "Truly I say to you, he who believes has eternal life."
What those four passages have in common is this: Jesus is connecting belief with the possession of eternal life. He does not speak about eternal life in an abstract way or in a purely future way, but in the present. He who believes has eternal life. So think with me now — when does eternal life for us begin? It begins right now. And when does eternal life end? It has no ending. What is Jesus teaching us? If I believe — and this is genuine, orthodox, biblical Christian belief — if I have come in repentance and faith, I have eternal life, and nothing can separate me from that. Nothing can put an end to that.
Jesus Teaches on Salvation in John 10
It would be good, as we close out this first part of the series, to look at Jesus' own teaching, because there is a wonderful passage in John chapter 10 where Jesus teaches essentially what we have been examining as it relates to salvation.
John 10:22 tells us that at that time the feast of the dedication took place in Jerusalem. It was winter. Jesus was walking in the temple in the portico of Solomon when the Jewish leaders gathered around Him. They said to Him, in John 10:24: "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly." These leaders had been waiting for the Messiah for hundreds and hundreds of years, and they press Him directly: if you are the anointed One, say so.
The Testimony of Christ and the Unbelief of the Crowd
If that is you, tell us plainly, tell us in a way we cannot possibly misunderstand. Shoot straight with me. And Jesus says, "I did that." In verse 25, He says, "I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in My Father's name, these testify of Me." He told them. They had seen the miracles. They had seen these things happen. And still they did not believe.
Why did they not believe? Here, in a nutshell, from the lips of Jesus Himself, is the heart of the doctrines of grace: "My sheep hear My voice." They did not hear Him because they were not His sheep. What the Holy Spirit does is open our eyes, so that we begin to see and our hearts begin to understand. Jesus would say at times, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." What He is saying is: you who are My sheep, listen to Me.
Knowing, Hearing, and Following
"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them." This is a picture of intimacy. It is not merely cognitive — not that He simply has information about them. He is saying, "I know them," in the same sense that Adam knew Eve. There is relationship here, there is intimacy here.
And then look at what follows: "They follow Me." They are truly His disciples, and their lives begin to change. They hear the truth, and the truth matters to them. They begin to have a desire to do the things He commands and to avoid what He forbids. It is a heart that is transformed. We put it this way: the heart is transformed, the mind is informed, and now we are living this radical — this supernatural — life.
Even when we talk about something like love itself, we define it not in a vague, feeling-driven way — though feelings are fine — but as Paul defines it, where he says love does not seek its own. Unconditional love is something I have not truly lived up to in my life, not even once. The closest I ever came — and I have talked to a lot of people about this and they tend to agree — was at the birth of my first daughter. Even then it lasted only for a moment. I thought about it and realized that the only reason I was drawn to her was because she was mine. Even that love was conditional. But all of a sudden, God begins to allow us to love and live in a whole new way.
Life as an Open Book Test
We discover that life becomes, in a real sense, an open book test — and here are the answers. That was always my favorite thing about math books: the answers are in the back. I always got them all right, though I never knew how I got there, and honestly I did not care. My goal was a C; I was not as motivated as I should have been. But in the Christian life, it is an open book test, and He tells you in almost every circumstance what to do or not to do — or at least He gives you principles from which you can derive a sound spiritual answer.
The Preservation of the Saints
"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me, and I will give them eternal life." He enters into a relationship that will not be broken. Now let us make sure we understand this clearly. The union is rock-solid. The communion can be shaky — not based on Him, but based on my sin, based on me grieving the Holy Spirit, based on those times when I do not respond to Him. But the union itself is unbreakable.
The classic term used to describe this is the perseverance of the saints. It is probably better stated as the preservation of the saints. "Perseverance" makes it sound like it is me hanging in there. "Preservation" communicates that I am being preserved by Another. The picture is not of me holding on to God. It is not me gripping Him tightly, because here is the problem with that picture: my grip gets weak, my arms begin to shake, and I start to cry, "Come quickly, Lord Jesus."
The picture is not of me hanging on to Him. It is of Him hanging on to me with a grip that will never let go. He has hold of me; I do not have hold of Him. And that is exciting, because He loves to shake things up sometimes — to take you out to the edge of things. But He will never let you go. You have eternal life. "They shall never perish. No one can snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand." That should settle the question of whether it is possible to lose this salvation. The answer is no.
Jesus' Claim to Be God
There is a brief but important sidebar here in verse 30. Jesus says, "I and the Father are one." What does that mean? You do not have to guess. "The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. And Jesus answered them, 'I showed you many good works from the Father; for which one of them are you stoning Me?' The Jews answered, 'For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy, because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.'"
So when you are sitting with someone in the commons, having a conversation about Jesus, and they say, "Jesus never claimed to be God" — take them right to John 10. That is exactly what was happening. The Jews understood the claim Jesus was making. When He says elsewhere, "Before Abraham was, I am," we might read past it. But they did not. They picked up stones. They understood precisely what He meant.
Grace for Life and Grace for Living
They said, "Wait a minute, you're not even 50 years old. How could you have possibly been with Him?" That was Jesus' claim. So the series title is Grace for Life, Grace for Living. Grace for Life meaning we're dead in our sins and trespasses. This is what we looked at, springing from Ephesians 2 into Romans 12, back into Genesis 3, to see that that is the condition of man. Not that we're as bad as we can possibly be — Hitler didn't kill his mother — but we're as bad off as we can possibly be. Sin has filled us, and we're dead in that, and if something doesn't happen to us, we will remain dead.
But we have — back to Ephesians chapter 2, verse 8 — grace for life. "For by grace I am saved." How? Through faith — there is the instrument, there is the evidence of that grace. "Through faith, it is not of myself." It is not from anything that I did. It is not from a decision I made. It is not because of something in me that is intrinsically valuable or good. No, I am saved in spite of me, not because of me. I am saved by grace through faith, out of myself. It is a gift of God.
That is a stake in the heart of religion — me trying to please God. All religion, in every shape and size, is in essence this: a sinful man trying to appease a holy God. Biblical Christianity is about a holy God reconciling a sinful man to Himself. "Not as a result of works, so that no one would boast." That is grace for life.
Then verse 10 gives us grace for living: "For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them." I have spent a great deal of time thinking about the grace for living part. The grace for life part, frankly, is relatively straightforward — we have talked about it again and again, and I personally have spent thousands of hours studying it and feel very comfortable there. The grace for living gets a little tougher, because it is not just the grace that brings me into the relationship, but the grace that sustains me in this relationship.
Recommended Resources on the Doctrines of Grace
I have been thinking over and over again about how to present this to you. By the way, we bring in resources constantly, and my sense is that especially here in the chapel, some of you come in through the parking lot off Elliot and leave without ever getting to the commons. There are two wonderful assets in the commons — the best drinks you will find anywhere, and a phenomenal bookstore. Every time I teach this series on the Doctrines of Grace, we try to bring in some really helpful literature, and this time is no exception. When you walk into the bookstore, right in the front, there is a big table featuring this literature — probably five or six books.
I wanted to highlight one for the grace for life side and one for the grace for living side. The first is called *Chosen for Life: The Case for Divine Election* by Sam Storms. I have not read this book personally, but those who screen these things have. John Piper's endorsement is a single sentence: "I can't know and love and serve God if I don't know the truth about God. This book describes God the way He really is." That sentence alone makes me want to read it, and the other work I have read by Sam Storms is really good.
The grace for living side came from this book: *When Grace Comes Home*, with endorsements from the late James Boyce. Boyce writes of the author, Terry Johnson: "Terry has provided a splendid work on how right theology bears upon worship, character, suffering, witness, growth, and the Christian life." On the front, Boyce also writes, "Whether evangelicals know it or not, their future as a viable movement depends upon the rediscovery of such God-honoring theology." The subtitle is *How the Doctrines of Grace Change Your Life*.
When I was about halfway through that book, I contacted Brenda in the bookstore and said we needed to bring copies in for this series. She came back and told me they were very hard to get — we had to order them out of Scotland because they are published there and not here. So we brought a number of them in. I would not push a lousy book on you, but this is really, really good. I do not know how many are still over there, and getting more was difficult, so I encourage you to pick one up. Both of those resources are excellent, and you need to be reading — and what matters most is that you are reading the right things. The books on that table are genuinely helpful, and I recommend all of them.
The Risky Business of Teaching Grace
As I was putting together the grace for living portion of this series and started talking with various staff and leaders and people in my life, I realized this grace for living part was going to be the tough part to teach. The reason is that it is so easily misunderstood. Martyn Lloyd-Jones — who is no screaming liberal, but a thoroughly orthodox and conservative man who taught at Westminster Chapel with credentials we would greatly admire — writes to those of us who preach and speaks about the risky business of teaching grace.
Let me read part of what he writes. If it is true that where sin abounds, grace abounds much more, then shall we continue to sin so that grace may abound yet further? May it never be — obviously. That relates directly to what Paul said in Romans 6.
Grace Invites Misunderstanding
The true preaching of the gospel of salvation by grace alone always leads to the possibility of a charge being brought against it. There is no better test as to whether a man is really preaching the New Testament gospel of salvation than this: that some people might misunderstand it and misinterpret it to mean that because you have been saved by grace alone, it does not matter at all what you do. You can go on sinning as much as you like, because it will rebound all the more in the glory of grace. That is a very good test of the preaching of the gospel.
If my preaching and presentation of the gospel of salvation does not expose it to that misunderstanding, then it is not the gospel at all. If you teach salvation by works — anything other than grace alone — people will never bring that charge against you. They are going to feel a kind of restriction. But when you talk about grace, there is always the possibility of misunderstanding.
I was walking with a man who comes from a very deep Catholic background, and I was explaining the gospel, explaining salvation by grace alone. He was deep in works. We had this moment, literally, where he stopped in his tracks and said to me, "Are you telling me that if I believe this gospel, and I come in repentance and faith, and I kill somebody tonight, I am still going to heaven?" And I said, "Yes, that is what I am teaching you." We do not, as part of our discipleship, recommend it — it is not something we would say, as in how many people can you still kill today. But that was how I knew I had communicated grace: that it is not based on our works.
I do not enter into a relationship with God based on my works, and that relationship is not continued based on my works. When you start talking about grace for living, people are going to push back. In fact, I received a line in an email a couple of years ago that I wrote down: "If I thought I could never lose my salvation, I would certainly feel more free to sin." That is the natural response. But we are not operating naturally anymore — we are operating supernaturally.
A Charge That Marks True Gospel Preaching
Martyn Lloyd-Jones makes this observation: nobody has ever brought this charge against the Church of Rome, but it was brought against Martin Luther. It was brought against George Whitefield two hundred years ago. It is a charge that formal, dead Christianity has always brought against this startling, staggering message that God justifies the ungodly. And it is a very important point for preachers. If your preaching of salvation has not been misunderstood in that way, then you had better examine your sermons again and make sure that you are really preaching the salvation offered in the New Testament — to the ungodly, to sinners, to those who are dead in their trespasses, to those who are enemies of God.
There is a dangerous element about the true presentation of the doctrine of salvation. What Lloyd-Jones is saying is that grace is risky business, because it can easily be misunderstood. In no way would Martyn Lloyd-Jones, or any other Christian, or certainly not Paul, or the Lord Himself, suggest for a second that we can simply go and sin freely because grace will abound and there is forgiveness. But he is saying, on the other hand, that you have been given a freedom — a freedom to live a life that glorifies God, a life that is not in bondage to some ritualistic, legalistic system.
The Alternative to Grace
About ten or fifteen years ago, I read a book by Chuck Swindoll called *Grace Awakening*, and it was really the first time in an organized way that I encountered this idea of grace and the dangers of grace. Swindoll identifies the alternative to grace, and it is marked by four things. In my mind, there is only biblical Christianity and everything else, so understanding this alternative matters.
The first mark of the alternative to grace is that it emphasizes work over grace. Even among Christians, we talk about a deeper commitment — "Are you sold out to Jesus?" I do not have the foggiest idea what that means. There is a song we sing, and you have never seen my lips move when we sing it — "I Surrender All." I do not surrender all. I surrender some. I surrender a chunk. I surrender and then take some back. But the alternative to grace is works.
The second mark is a list of do's and don'ts. That is what religion is. I am amazed as I talk to some men more my age who came up in a really strict conservative environment — because I was not raised that way — where they did not play cards, did not play pinball machines, did not go to movies, did not dance. There was a whole list of do's and don'ts. My favorite illustration of this was *The Passion of the Christ*, when that film was rated R. It presented a wonderful conundrum for people who would never go to an R-rated movie under any circumstances — suddenly they were wrestling with whether to boycott *The Passion of the Christ*. That dilemma was something to behold. We can spot that kind of legalism fairly easily from the outside.
From Religion to Relationship
You are in Ephesians 2. Turn to the right to Philippians chapter 3. I tried to make this point, both here and in PL, maybe a year ago, and I did not get any response, which is interesting, because it seems so important to me. So let me see if I can make it again, because I think Paul in Philippians 3 is making a case where he is saying: I was religious, but I moved from religious into relationship.
Watch out for the false teachers — verse 4, 5 and 6. He says, here are my credentials, here is my resume, here is my pedigree. And it is all there. He is literally saying — and I do not mean this in a pejorative way at all — "I am the super Jew." But these things, verse 7: "which were gained to me, those things I count as loss for the sake of Christ. More than that, I count all things to be lost in view of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all these things, and I count these things" — this religion, this pedigree — "as rubbish." The King James says "dung."
Here is what he is saying: I had all that religion, all that pedigree, and that stuff is rubbish compared to knowing Christ. He is saying he moved from religion into a relationship with Him. And the point I am making, which I hope comes alongside the point Swindoll is making, is this: you take grace away, and even once you have had this relationship, it becomes very easy to move back into religion. Back into this whole list of checks — what you do, what you do not do.
The Danger of Reducing Spirituality to a Checklist
So I will say to people, "How are you doing spiritually?" And they will tell me what they are reading. That drives me crazy. I did not ask how you are reading. I did not ask what books are new. We need to be very, very careful about this.
I struggle with all of this, and I never know how much to say, but I do not have a particular part of my day that is my quiet time with the Lord. I do not get up every morning and start my day a certain way. I do not carve out a time in the middle of the day, and I do not necessarily get to a specific time at night. Some of you do — you have that time, it is the first thing every day, and it is settled. I am not going to hold that against you, and I would ask you to reciprocate.
We can become very, very rigid in this. All of a sudden, a Christian is defined as one who does this and does it that way. I am not talking about biblical mandates here — we are not saying adultery is okay, go ahead and lie, gossip is fine. We are not saying that. But when it comes to these other expressions and preferential issues, there is not a singular right way, and yet we treat them as though there is. There is no room for a gray area.
Here is what Swindoll writes: "Fellowship is based on whether there is full agreement. Herein lies a tragedy. The self-righteous, rigid standard becomes more important than the relationships."
Rigid Standards Over Relationships
I was not here last weekend, as you know. I was hosting a retreat Monday and Tuesday, so Sunday I went up early, and there was a group of us pastors there. I will tell you, I do not agree with these men on a lot of things — certainly some things. And I am not sure that fifteen years ago I would have even been willing to be around them. I consider this a mark of maturity and growth, not of weakness, not of compromise.
There are certain non-negotiables upon which we cannot waver. But so much of what we fight about is stuff that simply does not matter. And that brings us to the fourth characteristic of grace killers: you begin to cultivate a judgmental attitude toward those who do not agree with you.
The Freedom That Grace Brings
Grace sets us free. Jesus said that. John 8 — He spoke these things and many came to believe in Him. "Jesus therefore was saying to those who believed in Him, 'If you abide in My Word, then you are truly My disciples, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.'"
Free from what? Swindoll writes: free from oneself. Free from guilt and shame. Free from damnable impulses that could not be stopped while in bondage to sin. Free from the tyranny of others. Free from opinions and expectations and demands. And free to what? Free to obey. Free to love. Free to forgive others as well as myself. Free to allow others to be who they are, even if it is different from me. Free to live beyond the limitations of human effort. Free to serve and glorify Christ. In no uncertain terms, Jesus assured His own that the truth was able to liberate them from needless restrictions and bondage, to be free indeed.
Grace for Life Versus Grace for Living
My fear — and I see this among people like us, who I think have grace for life figured out, and I do not mean that in a boastful way, I think we genuinely understand what the Bible says about that — is that we are not the best at grace for living. We become all of those things. We look at people and become almost instantaneously judgmental.
We begin to gather only with those who agree with us, so that I go to meeting after meeting where the same group of men read the same books, pass around the same things, and encourage each other about how right they are and how wrong everyone else is. That really is the meeting. And of course, the alternative to grace is to do exactly that.
Four Expectations When You Live by Grace
So this opening section closes with four expectations. If you really begin to live by grace, here are four things you can expect.
Number one: you can expect to gain a greater appreciation for God's gifts to you and others. When you get over to the bookstore and pick up this book — *When Grace Comes Home* — the very first thing he does is build a case for what he is doing, and then he addresses the theology of —
The Fruit of Grace in Everyday Life
If you want to jumpstart your worship for God, begin to understand how great a sinner you are and how great a Savior He is. How lost you are, how desperate you are, how helpless you are, how powerless you are. And in spite of you, not because of you, He saves you. Now your worship begins to grow. You begin to see Him in all aspects of life, and you understand He is sovereign in all things.
When you start this grace for living, you can expect to gain a greater appreciation for God and His gifts. That is the second thing. You can expect to spend less time and energy criticizing, condemning, and being concerned about those around you — concerned about their choices — and I will add this: concerned about what they think of you.
Grace, Politics, and the Danger of Division
Election times are always difficult, and I think Christians performed exceptionally poorly this election cycle. I received the most foolish emails about 666s and the Antichrist — the kind of material people send out en masse and apparently think is worth forwarding. There was this whole proliferation of the idea that you could not possibly be a Christian and vote for a certain person, proposition, or cause. I know people who love Jesus who voted on all sides of all types of issues and candidates.
To make voting a dividing issue — as though Jesus is a white, middle-class Republican — is driving me crazy, and it is everywhere. There is great freedom in grace here. The third thing you can expect is that you become more tolerant and less judgmental.
You can now begin to engage people. It does not matter whether they have money or not, whether they are black or white, whether they have a green card or do not. None of that stuff matters. I will let the government work that out. He put you here to love people as ministers of reconciliation to a lost world, and we are letting all sorts of things that do not matter get in the way of that. That is not grace — that is a step back into religion.
Grace Produces Maturity
The fourth thing you can expect is a giant step toward maturity. You are going to begin to grow. I was at a funeral about four weeks ago, and it was striking because there were many people there with whom, over the years, we have a lot of history. Afterward, it really struck me — I was with Jerry Smith, Neil was there — how here were people with whom we had very strong disagreements over the years, and ultimately death has a way of resolving all of that.
It made me wonder how much of the stuff we broke fellowship over was truly worthy of something like that. Because grace for living is a risky way to live. I can tell just by looking at your faces — some of you are not liking this at all, and I understand that. Some of you are confused by it.
I am telling you, we have turned this relationship with Christ right back into religion. Right back into walking and thinking in lockstep on every issue, all over again. Got to have your quiet time, got to do this, got to do that, not this, read this, not that one. And that is the risky side of it, is it not? But those of you who know me well enough know I am not simply jettisoning all of this.
Barnabas Witnesses the Grace of God
Turn to Acts chapter 11. There is a little phrase in there that fascinates me. What has happened is the gospel is spreading out — moving from Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria to the outermost parts of the earth. In verse 19, there is persecution, so the church scatters. They arrive in Antioch, and verse 20 tells us they began speaking to the Greeks also, preaching the Lord Jesus Christ. The hand of the Lord was upon them, and a large number believed and turned to the Lord.
Word comes back to Jerusalem — to the church — and there is concern. This is something they have not typically seen, so the decision is made to send someone to verify it. The news about them reached the ears of the church of Jerusalem, and they sent Barnabas off to Antioch. Barnabas is on a reconnaissance mission, out there to gather the facts and see whether what is happening at Antioch is real.
Look at verse 23: "Then when he arrived and witnessed the grace of God, he rejoiced and began to encourage them all with resolute heart to remain true to the Lord." What did he see? He witnessed it — it was visible, tangible. He could see it, feel it, touch it. It was not merely a spirit of Christianity; he was witnessing the grace of God.
What was he witnessing? He was witnessing people being the church. People loving one another, caring for one another, studying God's Word together, praying — the things described in Acts 2:42. He saw people using their gifts. He saw people who genuinely cared about lost people. He saw manifestations of the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, faithfulness, and self-control. He saw them.
If Barnabas Came Here
When I read through this passage, my first thought was: what exactly did he see? My second thought was: if Barnabas came to East Valley Bible Church, would he see the grace of God here? And I will make it more personal than that. If he rode in a car with me for a week, would he see the grace of God in my life?
That is what grace for living is. Grace for life is being born again through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that relationship is sustained through the power of the Holy Spirit. But now I have grace for living — and that is risky business, because it is not uniform. It is not singular. It is not monolithic. There are non-negotiables.
Living Under Grace
There are things upon which we never waver, but God is going to work one way in one person's life and another way in another person's life. It is National Adoption Support Month, and if you go and talk to people who are engaged in adoption, they are strong advocates of it. I do not have one adoption bone in my body — that is not my deal. But I thank God that they do. I do not have a huge vision for international ministry — I am just not a big international guy. But I am sure glad that God has people who are.
Are you living life under grace? You do not do that by looking at others and saying, "They are doing this." I do not care what they are doing. This is not about what they are doing. What has God gifted you to do? What has He given you a passion to do? There are some things that are not optional, and we will talk about one of those in a couple of weeks.
The Mark of Joy
Here is the huge, visible difference between people who are living in grace and those who are not: joy. There is no joy in religion — not even a superficial happiness. But there is joy when you know who God is, when you know you have been set free, and when you know you are forgiven. That does not mean you can go and live any way you want, but it means that as God begins to change your wants and desires, you can pursue them and be the person God created you to be — the person He has forgiven you to be.
So now you can love Him in the way He has wired you. You have people together with all sorts of different passions, and we will flinch toward religion very quickly. But grace for living means we understand who He is and we understand we have been delivered, and we are not about to shackle ourselves to a bunch of rules and regulations and man-made dos and don'ts all over again.
There is freedom in rejoicing that He made you the way He made you — that He has put in your heart this desire to go and do what He has called you to do. I am so happy that He did that. But your thing does not have to be my thing, and my thing does not have to be your thing. Now, some of these are obviously non-negotiable, but within the space of grace, that freedom is a great gift.
Looking Ahead
Here is what we are going to do next Sunday morning at ten o'clock at Mesa Amphitheater. I want to talk about God and the fact that He is faithful — about His promises and the fear I feel all around me. I am talking to people and I am hearing it: fear, trepidation, concern. We have all sorts of words we are using. I want to go to Scripture and unpack some of those common concerns, so it will be a great opportunity — not only because of the different setting, but because it will be a very different environment. It will be a great opportunity for you to bring some friends.
Then the following week I want to come back and close this section of the series. This year we are going to do something different — we are going to take the four Sundays before Christmas and do an Advent season leading up to Christmas. We have never done that before. That will cover the last Sunday of November and the first three Sundays of December. So in two weeks I want to talk especially about those things that God has left to God — the reasons He has left you here. I will give you some of those big bullet points then.
Closing Prayer
Father, thank You for this wonderful truth. God, thank You for the risky business of grace, and I pray that we would resist the temptation to head right back to religion — that we would love what You love, and that we could begin to see people as You see them. Thank You for the gospel — the gospel that delivers us from death to life and the gospel that sustains us.
Thank You for a forgiveness that does not become a license to sin, but a real reality for us: that as we blow it, as we sin, we know we are forgiven. We are Your children, and we cannot out-sin Your grace. God, let this change the way we look at You and at ourselves. Let us begin to enjoy this relationship with You and live in a way that brings freedom to us — not freedom to do whatever we want, but freedom to be who You created us to be. God, thank You for Jesus. We pray to You in His name. Amen.