Romans Message #61 October 18, 2009

The Key To Spiritual Vitality is Never Getting Over God’s Grace!
Romans 5:20-21

A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of taking a couple soldiers who had just returned from Iraq out to dinner. We had a great time together. And what made it good was that these two soldiers were both believers but what made it even better is that they were believers who had still not gotten over their amazement at how amazing God’s grace was toward them in saving them. I mean they were still excited about the Lord and what He had done for them and so our dinner conversation pretty much was focused on the Lord, His Word, His work, and these soldier’s future plans to serve Christ. I mean we didn’t talk about the weather, or politics, or our problems, or each other, or even other people—we just enjoyed talking about the Lord and His amazing grace. And whereas, I was wanting to minister to them—I have to tell you—they ministered to me because they were just so amazed by their salvation.

What a joy it is to be with believers who haven’t gotten over their salvation and who are still amazed by the fact that God’s grace is greater than their sin and that where their sin increased—grace superabounded to them all the more.

This past week, I also read about two other men who never got over God's amazing grace toward them in salvation. They were John Bunyan and John Newton. If you’ll remember, John Bunyan wrote “Pilgrim’s Progress” while in prison for preaching Christ and John Newton, wrote the hymn “Amazing Grace”, after having been saved by the Lord as a very wicked and vile man who earned his living as a slave-trader. Both of these men had in common the fact that they were great sinners who once they were brought to the point of grace in salvation never got over the fact that God completely forgave them all of their sin.

They never got over “God’s Amazing Grace”. And as a result they lived their lives joyfully for Christ and His glory even when undergoing severe trials and tribulations. They never lost their zeal for the Lord or their joy in serving the Lord or their diligence in remaining faithful to the Lord or their excitement in worshipping the Lord or their power in proclaiming the Lord and His Gospel because they never got over their amazement at how amazing God’s grace was to them as great sinners.

I wonder if the reason why so many believers today quickly tire of serving the Lord and often quit isn’t because they have gotten over God’s amazing grace toward them. I wonder if this isn’t why we often worship so passively and sing so poorly. I wonder if this isn’t why we don’t fight sin with all of the gusto we can muster and if this is why we rarely take the time to share the Gospel with the people God puts right in front of us. And I wonder if the reason so many believers are so content to maintain the status quo and never step out of their comfort zones and take great risks for the sake of Christ and making His Name known to those who have never heard of Him isn’t because we have gotten over Him and His work of amazing grace in our lives?

You see, I think that there is a sense in which when we lose sight of how amazing God’s grace is and how amazing God’s grace is toward us that we become weak, anemic, irritable, pessimistic, grumpy, callous, critical, convenience worshipping, and pleasure-loving Christians who while perhaps can recite the Gospel aren’t doing such a good job reflecting it—for the simple reason we’re no longer impressed and excited by God’s amazing grace. Therefore, I think it is good for us to look and to gaze long at God’s amazing grace toward us so that we might be so amazed at God’s amazing grace toward us that we would live amazing Christian lives that God uses in amazing ways to bring amazing glory to Himself and amazing joy to us. So this morning, lets go back to Romans 5:20-21 and take another look at God’s grace and see a few reasons why it is so amazing because I think one of the keys to maintaining spiritual vitality is to never get over God’s amazing grace.

1. God’s Grace is amazing because it is never withheld or reduced because of our sin. (20)

Note that according to verse 20, an increase in sin did nothing to negatively impact grace so that it would be withheld, reduced, limited, or depleted. In fact, the more sin multiplied and that is really what the word means—the more grace abounded so that it is impossible for a person to out sin God’s ability to forgive him.

Now I realize there are some of you here this morning who are thinking—“Man, this is so basic. I wish he would move on and quit with the ‘grace is greater than all our sin and shame’ thing because I’ve got this truth nailed down.” Well, I understand that this is a basic Gospel truth and that any of our teens and probably most of our children could rattle off. But, just because we are so familiar with the truth that God’s grace is never withheld or reduced or depleted because of our sin does not mean we apply it to our lives. Let me illustrate this for you. Just the other day, I struggled with a sin issue of mine and quite frankly failed in obeying God in the moment of my struggle with temptation. I just decided I knew what was best for me and disregarded God’s Word and plain out--disobeyed God. Well, the Holy Spirit of God convicted me of my sin, so I confessed my sin to the Lord and as He promised, I was forgiven. Now for most of you that would be the end of it….right?! But you see, I sinned smack dab in the middle of preparing this message that I am preaching right now. And after getting things squared away with the Lord again, I came to a part of this passage that was throwing me for a loop and so I did what I always do when I run into a tough passage…….I began to ask God for His help. As I was in the middle of voicing my request to God…..the thought hit me…….”how can you be so arrogant as to be asking God for His help to understand the very Word of God you so blatantly disregarded and disobeyed only a few minutes ago?” After that thought registered in my mind, I actually apologized to God for asking Him for His help to understand His Word after having disrespected His Word by my sin.

Now understand what I was doing…….I was sinning again. Only this time I was disrespecting God’s grace by thinking that somehow my sin earlier in the day had caused me to become unworthy of asking for and receiving God’s help in understanding His Word. I, in effect, was thinking that my earlier sin had rendered me unworthy of God’s grace in my time of need. In other words, I, for just a moment fell into the unbiblical thinking that God’s grace is withheld from the believer because of sin.

Now, I am not the only who does this am I? I mean we sin and after we sin we believe that God’s grace is no longer fully available to us and that our acceptability with God is no longer the same and we have no right to approach Him for anything…….and so we don’t until we feel worthy of His good pleasure. That’s legalism in its purest form……the idea that you need to perform well enough after sinning to make up for your sin so as to come to God.

Listen, if God’s grace super-abounds so that it is exceedingly greater and far more effective to make me acceptable to God than my sin is to make me unacceptable to God—then I must never fall into the trap of thinking God will withhold His grace from me because of my sin. If anything, His grace increased rather than decreased because of my sin!


2. God’s Grace is amazing because it is never granted or increased because we are good. (20)

Just as God’s grace is not withheld or reduced because we are bad—neither is it granted or increased because we are good. Grace is not dependent upon our performance in any way at all. Again, you are saying: “Come on Mark, we already know this—so let’s get on to the meat of the Word.” Well, if you already know this why do so many of you—when you are asking God for something really important to you…..begin to add up all your merits and demerits for the day?

It goes something like this: Lord, I really need your help right now and I know that I haven’t had my devotions in a few days and that I didn’t witness to John yesterday when I had the chance and Lord I admit I have been pretty selfish when it comes to my giving the last couple months but I did stop smoking and I have gotten a lot better with my cussing so could you help me out on this one….please?

Now the reason we pray like this is because we believe God won’t work on our behalf unless we are good and because we know we haven’t been as good as we should we tally up all our bad and good deeds—hoping God will see the good as outweighing the bad and answer our prayer. In other words, we think that the key to receiving God’s grace and to even having it increased in our lives is to live a life that is pleasing to Him. Now I don’t know about you—but if this is how you deal with the Lord—you’re really no different than a good works-oriented Catholic who believes God's grace toward them is based in some way upon their good works and good spiritual perfromance before God.

You see, the minute you begin to think that God’s grace toward you is dependent upon your good works and your solid spiritual performance you have fallen away from grace and into a legalistic works righteousness performance trap that is dishonoring to God irregardless of how spiritual all the rule-keeping makes you feel. See what Paul has to say about this in Colossians 2:20-23. Oh, rules and regulations make a person appear spiritual but they are of no spiritual value in the fight against sin. Only God's grace has spiritual value in the fight against sin because only God's grace has value in His eyes when He is looking at us.

God’s grace toward you the believer is not granted to you in greater measure because you are performing well just as it is not reduced because you are performing badly. As one theologian, B. B. Warfield put it: “There is nothing in us or done by us at any stage of our earthly development because of which we are acceptable to God. We must always be accepted for Christ’s sake or we cannot ever be accepted at all.” God’s grace is not based upon you—it is not dependent upon your own righteousness but rather as verse 21 will teach us—it is based upon an amazing righteousness.


3. God’s Grace is amazing because it is dependent upon an amazing righteousness. (21)

Verse 21 explains God’s purpose in causing grace to super-abound toward all who believe in His Son, the Lord Jesus. The reason why God purposed that His grace, which superabounds toward the believer would be greater than the believer’s ability to sin is “so that, just as sin reigned in death, grace would reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” In other words, the purpose of God’s super-abundant and abounding grace was to rescue the believer from the reign of sin, which leads to death and transfer him to the reign of grace, which leads ultimately to eternal life. And if you look at verse 21 carefully—you will see that God accomplished this purpose of removing the believer from the reign of sin and placing him under the reign of grace through righteousness. In other words, the means or the agency by which God’s grace overcomes all of our sin and all of our shame and rescues us out from under the control and reign of sin is through righteousness.

Thus, grace is dependent upon righteousness. Now, we have already established that our righteousness or lack of righteousness has nothing to do with God’s grace being granted or withheld from us. So, whose righteousness is in mind here? Upon whose righteousness is grace based and in fact, placed in effect by? It is Christ’s righteousness, which was given to us the moment we believed in Him and were justified—which is to be declared righteous.

You see what verse 21 is pointing out is that the grace of God that saves us has been earned and merited—not by us—but by Christ. God’s grace, which is unmerited and unearned by us was merited and earned by Christ on our behalf when He went to the cross in our place as our sin substitute so as to take all our sin upon Him and grant us all of His perfect righteousness. And because of the imputed righteousness of Christ toward all who believe--God sees the believer as being completely clothed in Christ’s righteousness and thus worthy of His acceptance. Thus, whereas our salvation was not merited or earned by us—it was earned and merited by Christ Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from the slave market of sin. As Peter put it in 1 Peter 1:18-19—“Knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers but with precious blood as of a lamb unblemished and spotless—the blood of Christ.” Titus 2:13-14 makes the same point in saying: “looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, Who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.” And then in 1 Corinthians 6:20 we read: “For you have been bought with a price—therefore glorify God in your body.”

In other words, our salvation—our redemption, was not unmerited or unearned or unpaid for. It most certainly was not earned, merited, or paid for by us but it was indeed earned, merited, and paid for by Christ Whose very righteousness was imputed to our accounts so that we might be received and accepted by God. Thus, grace while free for us cost God the Son greatly—which is why the old preacher Phillips Brooks used to say: GRACE is an acronymn that stands for God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense!

CONCLUSION

Now, it was these truths about God’s grace that drove men and women like John Bunyan, John Newton, Martin Luther, Hudson Taylor, Amy Carmichael, Mary Slessor, Jim & Elizabeth Elliot, Martin & Gracia Burnham, and a host of others to attempt great things for God that others were afraid to try . . .

to be sent to prison, to serve in hard places, to endure great hardships, to take their families to new and distant lands, to accept great challenges, to lose loved ones for the sake of Christ, and to even be martyred . . .

because they never got over their amazement at how amazing God’s grace was and thus, they desired to live lives that demonstrated how amazed they were at God’s amazing grace by living lives which demonstrated that Jesus Christ was their greatest treasure and pleasure in life.

Listen, if you want to live an amazing life for Jesus Christ that demonstrates to all that He is your greatest treasure and pleasure in life, all you need to do is gaze long and hard at God’s amazing grace toward you and before long you too will be living an amazing Christian life that God uses in amazing ways to bring amazing glory to Himself and amazing joy to you.

You know Paul was a great champion of grace because he never got over how great God’s grace was in forgiving him—the chief of sinners.

And those whom God uses in the most amazing ways are people like Paul—who have been forgiven much and have never gotten over it.