Message #10 ~ 2 Corinthians 1:12 "Living In And By Grace"

A Roman slave named Androcles once escaped from his master and fled to the forest.  As he was wandering about he found a cave and entered inside to find shelter. To his horror, he came upon a roaring, growling, and quite angry lion that also appeared to Androcles to be in great pain. At first he turned to flee, but finding that the lion did not pursue him, he turned back and carefully inched closer to him.  As he came near, he saw that the lion’s paw was swollen and bleeding from a deeply imbedded thorn in the center of his paw. In spite of the lion’s growling and shaking of his mane, Androcles pulled out the thorn and bound up the paw of the lion, who was soon able to rise and gently lick the hand of Androcles.  But shortly afterwards both Androcles and the lion were captured, and the slave was sentenced to be thrown to the lion, after the lion was deprived of food for several days. The emperor and all his court came to see the spectacle. As soon as Androcles was led out into the middle of the arena the lion was let loose from his den, and rushed hungry, bounding, and roaring towards his victim. But as soon as he reached Androcles he recognized his friend, and fawned upon him, and licked his face like a friendly dog. The emperor, completely amazed, summoned Androcles, who told him the whole story. The emperor released both the lion and the slave—telling his royal court that the only thing that could turn a wounded, hurt, angry, mean, and wild lion into a tame, gentle, calm, and loving friend was love.

Love, indeed, is a powerful thing.  It can tame and soften the wildest and hardest of hearts…..but only if it is believed, embraced, and experienced. And the fact is, that there are many within the church right now, who although knowing Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior are still struggling with the wounds of their past which tends to make them act more like wild lions than gentle sheep. And the reason for the struggle is they simply have not begun to orient their lives around the Gospel and its good news of what Jesus has done for them. They are so fixated on what they think God expects of them and with earning His approval and with the insecurities that come from constantly feeling like they have to do more to experience His pleasure that they really do not understand Christ’s love for them and thus cannot enjoy it. They keep working harder, staying busier, doing more, all the while enjoying their Faith and the Lord less and thus, have become grouchy Christians—thinking that working for God is the same as worshipping God. 

Whether you serve God with joy or merely serve Him out of duty—whether you enjoy Him or endure Him has everything to do with what is motivating you. A sense of having to continually earn God’s favor, and make up for past failures turns ministry into misery, service into slavery, obedience into lifeless orthodoxy, enthusiasm for God into endurance of God, and delightful worship into dead works . On the other hand, the knowledge that you already have His favor and cannot lose it, that you are completely and comprehensibly acceptable to God, that you already have all of His approval, and that you have nothing to make up for in terms of your past and present sins—turns insecure, self-centered, overly critical, defensive, proud, hurting, wounded, and mean spirited believers into loving, kind, gentle, powerful spiritual warriors—who are also a joy to be around.

And that which makes the difference in what kind of believer you are is whether you know and understand the grace of God toward you and then live your life in and by this grace. You see, it is one thing to know, understand, and believe the Gospel of God’s Grace—but it is entirely another to experience it in such a way that it fundamentally changes us so that it becomes the source of our identity, strength, security, and joy.

You see, the grace of God toward us who believe is meant not only to be known and understood but also the very truth we orient our lives around.

That is what Paul did—that is how he lived his life in the world and in the church. And before we move out of 2 Corinthians 1:12, I want us to take another look at this verse and consider what it means to live our lives in and by the Gospel which he simply identifies as living in the grace of God. Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 1:12.

Two weeks ago, we saw what Paul said about our conscience and this week we’ll see what he says about living our lives as believers in the world and in the church as those who are living in the realm of God’s grace and enjoying it. Let’s look at what he says in this verse. He makes the point that his conduct both in the world among unbelievers and with believers in the church in Corinth was the same. He didn’t live one way with believers and another way with unbelievers. And his conduct in both spheres was characterized by living his life for God so that everything he did was done with God’s glory and God’s best interests in mind. That is what the word the NASV translates as “holiness” and the ESV translates as “simplicity” and the NIV translates as “integrity” really is talking about—living your life selflessly for God and His glory—holding nothing back. It’s a hard word to define but that is the basic gist of it.

Paul is saying is that he lived his life for God and God alone with really no thought given to what mattered to him and this brought him joy—its what he lived for and was even willing to die for according to Philippians 1:21 where he says:  “For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”  And then he says that he lived his life in godly sincerity which simply means he was the real deal.  He wasn’t putting on an act or airs.  He really meant what he said—God was his life and his joy!  And then he tells us why he lived this way by first of all stating what he was not motivated by and then what he was motivated by.  He says, that he lived for God, served God, and did really hard things for God and essentially was willing to give up everything for God both among unbelievers and believers, NOT “in fleshly wisdom” BUT “in the grace of God”.  In others words he was not motivated to serve God and please God and live for God out of fleshly wisdom.

 So, what’s fleshly wisdom?

Fleshly wisdom is that wisdom that unbelievers use and live their lives by.

It is the world’s wisdom or the world’s way of seeing and living life. It is a wisdom that promotes and honors pride, personal achievement, self-reliance, a win at all costs attitude, a believe in yourself mentality, an “I’ll earn my own way type of independence” that is often manifested in a  religious, moralistic, I am responsible to earn God’s approval, works-based righteousness.  Paul makes mention of it in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 when he makes the point that people who operate by the wisdom of this world or “fleshly wisdom” as he describes it here--want to be able to stand before God and man and say—“I made it.  I was good enough.  I pleased God and He is so impressed with me that heaven will be honored to have me as a resident.”  And Paul makes the point in this passage in 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 that no one will be saved by this kind of thinking and that God has ensured that in saving people—no one will be able to boast at all in their salvation.  And what Paul is saying in our passage here in 2 Corinthians is that this attitude of trying to impress God with our religion, our lives, our works, our service, and even our sacrifices has no bearing with Him.  It is the opposite of living in and by grace and it should never serve as our motivation as believers.

You see, Paul was NOT living his life for the Lord and desiring to honor Him by doing the things that pleased Him out of an attitude of fear or of having to earn or keep God’s approval, or attain to God’s standard, or measure up to other believers, or to be pleasing to God, or to remain acceptable to God.

Rather, in living for the Lord and giving his all for the Lord, Paul’s motivation and enablement was the grace of God.

Now what does that mean?

It means that he was not loving God and serving God and obeying God to get something from God or earn his acceptance with God or become more acceptable to God or feel more pleasing to God or become more important to God or to earn God’s approval or to keep God from bringing bad things into his life.  Rather, he was living for the Lord, serving the Lord, loving the Lord, and even sacrificing for the Lord because he knew he already was fully acceptable to God and completely pleasing to God, and as important to God as he could ever be, and altogether absolutely perfectly approved by God.

In other words, he lived a “grace-oriented” life in which he did not have to perform for God so as to earn God’s approval, acceptance, love, mercy and help.  Rather, he was able to relax in his Faith—knowing that as a believer in Christ he was as accepted by God and as acceptable to God and as approved by God and as pleasing to God as he would ever be regardless of what he did or did not do.  That is what it means to “live in and by grace”.  This is what it means to believe the Gospel as a believer!

The Gospel is not about what God wants us to do for Him!

It is about what God has done for us!

That’s why He is The Initiator, The Lover, The Worker, The Giver, The Blesser, The One Who Saves and we are the responders, the loved, the worked for, the receivers, the blessed, and the ones who are saved.

And so when we serve the Lord and give to the Lord and sacrifice for the Lord it is not to get or to be blessed it is because we have been blessed and have received and are continuing to receive from Him.  We don’t obey God to become accepted by Him—we obey Him because we already are accepted and loved and approved as much as we will ever be--completely—that’s grace—that’s the Gospel!

But we struggle with this because as Martin Luther wrote back in the 16^th century—“Religion is the default mode of the human heart.”  You see, even though we know what the Gospel is and that we are saved by grace not our own works—we continually are pulled in the direction of thinking that our acceptance with God and our being pleasing to God is the result of our works.  And that is what “religion” is all about—man trying to approach, relate to, and find acceptability with God by his own merits and works.

Listen to this tyrade on “religion” from an Episcopalian priest named Robert Capon who, by-the-way, died this past Friday.

“What role [or room] have I left for religion? None. And I have left none because the Gospel of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ leaves none. Christianity is not a religion; it is the announcement of the end of religion.

Religion consists of all the things the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God. About those things, Christianity has only two comments to make. The first is that none of them ever had the least chance of doing the trick: the blood of bulls and goats can never take away sins (see the Epistle to the Hebrews) and no effort of ours to keep the law of God can ever finally succeed (see the Epistle to the Romans). The second is that everything religion tried (and failed) to do has been perfectly done, once and for all, by Jesus in his death and resurrection. For Christians, therefore, the entire religion shop has been closed, boarded up, and forgotten. The church is not in the religion business. It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the ecclesiastical turkeys through two thousand years who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade.  The church, instead, is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. It is not here to bring the world the bad news that God will think kindly about us only after we have gone through certain creedal, liturgical and ethical wickets; it is here to bring the world the Good News that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.” It is here, in short, for no religious purpose at all, only to announce the Gospel of free grace.”

Wow!  He hit the nail right on the head!

So, if you are basing your personal relationship with God and your acceptance with God and whether or not you are pleasing to God on your performance rather than upon His grace—you are practicing religion not Biblical Grace-oriented Christianity!  And if this kind of unbiblical “religious” thinking is not corrected by becoming Gospel-centered in our thinking it will make us radically insecure in how we think God feels toward us.

Thus, the need to live in and by grace.  But we can only do this if we understand and orient our lives around what God says is true about us in Christ. But keep in mind, we will never live by God’s grace and enjoy God’s grace and display God’s grace until we come to that point in our Christian experience where we accept the fact that we are perfectly accepted by God because of Christ. And so briefly let me tell you two things about yourself and how God sees you if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Number One—your identity before God has been completely changed.  Look at Galatians 2:20.

“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.”

The personal pronoun “I” in this verse is referring to your personal identity and Paul says that if you are a believer in Christ—your personal identity which includes everything about you including your sin has been crucified with Christ.  This means that in God’s sight your identity as a sinner—as one who was hostile to God and in fact, the enemy of God and one who was condemned by God has been destroyed and no longer exists—it was crucified with Christ at the cross.  This is the doctrine we refer to as the believer’s “union with Christ.”

Thus, all of our sin and even our identity as a sinner no longer exists in God’s sight. Therefore, God is not holding any of our sins, past-present-or future against us because our personal identity as a sinner has no bearing with God. As a believer in Christ—your sin is no longer your identity. Your sinful mess was paid for and removed from you by God’s Messiah so that who you are now has nothing to do with who you were then! You have been given a NEW identity and that new identity is Christ. Your identity before God has absolutely nothing to do with you and your failures or your successes.  Rather your identity has everything to do with Christ.

That’s what the verse means when it says—“It is no longer I who live but Christ Who lives in me.”  God sees you and me as having Christ’s identity—as being Christ Himself in His Perfect Sinless Humanity.  Who Christ was and is in His perfect sinless humanity is who you are—that is your identity before God. That is how God sees you--He sees you as though you were Christ—such is the grace of God that Christ’s status, stature, and standing before God are now ours because we have been given His identity. And as a believer you gain all the benefits of Christ’s life, His reputation, His acceptance with God, His approval by God, and the very credit for His righteousness.  His life is your life in that His identity is now your identity because God sees you in union with Him.

Therefore, you right now are as acceptable to God in Christ Jesus as you will ever be. You are as approved by God as you will ever be.  You are as pleasing to God as you will ever be because you are as pleasing to God as Christ Himself is. Listen, it doesn’t get any better than this.  You are as pleasing to God right now in Christ Jesus as you will ever be and in fact there is no way you could be any more pleasing to God than you are right now!

Now, the second truth I want to leave you with that will help you to fight the insecurity of feeling as though you need to earn God’s favor and love is found in Ephesians 3:14-19.  God is telling us here that instead of worrying about how much we love Him—we should be concentrating on how much He loves us!  His concern is not how well we perform and how much we do for Him but how well we comprehend and experience his love for us!

He wants us to know that we are loved beyond comprehension and that nothing absolutely nothing can change that.

Therefore, you cannot do anything to become more loveable or pleasing or acceptable to God.  We do not serve God to become more pleasing to Him.  We do not obey Him to become more acceptable to Him.  We do not work for Him to be more pleasing to Him. Rather, we do these things because we are already accepted and as pleasing and as loved as we can possibly be.

In fact, Zephaniah 3:17 says concerning those whom the Lord has saved:

“The LORD our God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.

He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you,

but will rejoice over you with singing.”

And this applies to everyone who is in Christ Jesus.  There are no exceptions to the rule!

This is the battle of Faith for every believer—believing that regardless of what you feel about yourself, know about yourself, and find hideous about yourself—that in Christ Jesus—God delights in you and finds you perfectly pleasing and acceptable in His sight—because Christ is your new identity.

And recognizing and orienting your life around this truth is what it means to live in and by grace.