Grace Alone (Sermon)

Grace Alone

You can watch this message on YouTube: https://youtu.be/STeBSHI9TWE 

 

Last week we looked at Romans 1:15 and 16 where St. Paul writes: “So, for my part, I am eager to preach the gospel to you also who are in Rome. For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” 

Those two verses are important context for what comes next, in verse 17: “For in it (i.e. the gospel) the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, “But the just shall live by faith.” (AKJV)

The word Paul used for Just – some translations render it ‘Righteous’ means tdo be innocent, without guilt, approved of or acceptable of God.

In this statement, the former Pharisee, quoting from the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk (2:4) makes a theological point that is crucial to our understanding of salvation AND to our freedom in Christ. “The just – meaning the virtuous, the guiltless before God – the just shall live by faith.”

When God revealed that truth to the St. Paul, I imagine he fell to his knees in unreserved joy for the grace of God. He must have labored – as did all religious Jews of his day – never sure if they could be good enough, or do enough, or confess well enough to be awarded heaven after they died.

Look a moment at Acts 15. The debate at the council centered around the underlying issue, do Gentiles coming to Christ have to become Jews and follow Moses to be saved? Here is how Luke records Peter’s defense: “After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, “Brethren, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles would hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, testified to them giving them the Holy Spirit, just as He also did to us; and He made no distinction between us and them, cleansing their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you put God to the test by placing upon the neck of the disciples a yoke which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? ¹¹ But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.” (Acts 15:7-11)

I hope you caught that last verse: But we believe that we are saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, in the same way as they also are.”

The apostles recognized salvation is a gift, given through and on account of God’s merciful grace, His undeserved favor. They knew salvation was NOT in the least rooted in works. They knew – to paraphrase one commentator – they knew that men and women could stand sinless – yes, sinless – before a holy God. They knew men and women could absolutely know that they HAVE eternal life. And to top it all, they understood that they --  as religious Jews – were now FREE from the futile and fruitless frustration of trying to earn righteousness and heaven. The only requirement for it all was faith in God’s promises of redemption through the substitutionary and sacrificial atonement of Jesus.

Listen! If anyone knew about a works-based salvation, if anyone knew about the kind of unbearable burden Peter spoke of, it was the former Pharisee known to us as St. Paul.

The Law of Moses formed the foundation of Pharisaical rules. Many people incorrectly believe the Law of Moses consists of only the Ten Commandments. But those commandments are only ten of a total of 613 commandments given to the ancient Israelites.

Now, while adhering to 613 commandments would be impossible enough, over time Jewish rabbis slowly added layer upon layer of interpretations to the 613 commandments. This mountain of interpretations is called the Mishnah, which was already quite voluminous in Jesus’s day.

Let me give a quick example of how the rabbinic interpretations of those 613 Laws burgeoned into the impossible yoke Peter spoke of.

One of the Ten Commandments is to keep the Sabbath holy. In simplest terms, that commandment meant that Jews were not to work on Saturdays. But to explain what ‘work’ meant, Jewish scholars created thirty-nine separate categories of what “work” means. But they did not stop there. Within those thirty-nine categories were multiple sub-categories which resulted in literally thousands of rules Jews were required to follow – all of which were formed from the one simple commandment: Keep the Sabbath holy.

Like every good Pharisee, Saul believed salvation could only be obtained through meticulous, and legalistic observance of all the rules piled on top of each other by multiple schools of rabbinic thought. A pious Jew’s life – as Peter stated – tended to become one endless effort to avoid ceremonial uncleanness. And as for Saul, he considered himself a “Hebrew of Hebrews; as to the Law, a Pharisee; as to zeal, a persecutor of the church; as to the righteousness which is in the Law, found blameless.” (Philippians 3:5-6).

But then he met Jesus on the road to Damascus – and the Holy Spirit opened his eyes to the thread of God’s plan of salvation which is by faith and found throughout Jewish Scriptures. So, Paul would later write to the Philippians: “But whatever things were gain to me, those things I have counted as loss for the sake of Christ . . . [that I] may be found in Him, not having a righteousness of my own derived from the Law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which comes from God on the basis of faith.

What was that thread of justification by faith Paul discovered in the Jewish Scriptures? We’ve already looked at Habakkuk 2:4. But then there is Genesis 15:5-6 “And [God] took [Abram] outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness.”

Four hundred years before God gave the Law to Moses, God credited righteousness to Abram on the basis of his faith – his TRUST in God’s promises.

Let’s look at only one more example of a sinner saved by grace through his faith in God’s mercy. We looked at David in our Bible study early in March. But we should revisit it again here because it makes the critically important point about the righteousness that God credits to our account by faith.

In fact, Paul references David’s sin to make a point many people miss because they do not clearly understand the Law of Moses. Paul writes in Romans 4:6-8 “David also speaks of the blessing on the man to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds have been forgiven, and whose sins have been covered. “Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will not take into account (or, impute).”

 

The king willfully broke three of the ten commandments in the incident with Bathsheba (coveting, adultery, murder). According to Moses, there was NO GOOD WORK OR SACRIFICE that he could have performed to expiate his sin (e.g., Number 15:30). According to the Law, David had to die.

 

The king knew his case was hopeless. But what did God do? He forgave him on account of his FAITH in God’s mercy. Listen to what David wrote in Psalm 51:16-17 “For You do not delight in sacrifice, otherwise I would give it; You are not pleased with burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; A broken and a contrite heart, O God, You will not despise.”

 

And in Psalm 32: “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!  How blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not impute iniquity.”

Because God opened Paul’s eyes to the thread of righteousness by faith throughout the Old Testament, Paul understood – and he  tells us: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ . . ..” (Romans 5)

We MUST understand this concept of justification by faith alone. We did nothing to earn salvation. Indeed! We could not do anything to earn our salvation because we were dead in our sins (see Ephesians 2:1). The Greek word Paul used in Ephesians 2:1 is the word from which we get the English, ‘necrotic.’  And dead people can do nothing for themselves – because they are dead.

But Paul continued in that Ephesian passage: “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ . . . . . For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. (2:4-9)

See? It was and is all about what GOD did, and not what WE do.

The reason we must understand this truth of salvation by God’s undeserved favor through faith alone is because so many Christians convince themselves that although they did not do any works to BE saved, they now must do works to STAY saved.

As I stated a little bit ago, that was the very error the Jerusalem council had to address in Acts 15 – Did Gentiles have to follow the Law of Moses to be saved? That was the same heretical issue Paul had to address with the Christians at Galatia. “This is the only thing I want to find out from you” Paul wrote. “Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the Law, or by hearing with faith? Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh? (see Galatians 3:1-3)

I must bring this message to a close because of the time, but the issue of saving faith begs two questions – what is saving faith, and do we no longer have to follow God’s commandments?  

Well, and not surprisingly, the Holy Spirit dealt with those two questions early on through the apostolic writers. Saving faith demonstrates itself in obedience to God’s commandments, and by acting like Christ in our interactions with others.

For example, Paul wrote to the Christians in Galatia: “Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, which are: immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, factions, envying, drunkenness, carousing, and things like these, of which I forewarn you, just as I have forewarned you, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom of God." (Galatians 5:19-21)

And God tells us through James that saving faith is DEMONSTRATED by what we DO with and by our faith:  “But someone may well say, “You have faith and I have works; show me your faith without the works, and I will show you my faith by my works.” . . . But are you willing to recognize . . that faith without works is useless? A few verses later he adds: “For just as the body without the spirit is dead, so also faith without works is dead.” (James 3)

Christians obey God and perform good deeds NOT to stay saved, but as evidence that we ARE saved. That again was the whole point of Paul’s comment in Romans 6:3-4, “Or do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus have been baptized into His death? Therefore, we have been buried with Him through baptism into death, so that as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.”

Saving faith is really all about our heart, our MOTIVES. Obedience to God’s commandments and our good deeds for others should be because we love God and want to please Him.

Let me close with this email I received earlier this week. I share it to make the point one more time how our love and thankfulness to God will always result in our obedience to Him and in our good deeds for others:

“I grieved when I read the stations of the cross in my missal when I learned English in the second grade. I stopped grieving when I turned 13 and found that God still had not delivered me from the housing projects, or from my father’s alcoholism and abuse at home.

“I grieved again a few months after I had been thrown out of law school and found myself packing garbage in the compactor room at Macy’s. I had an Ivy League diploma and at 33 years of age, was doing the same job my dad was doing at a hotel (he had been cutting sugar cane since he was 6). He had been given away by his mother and lived in a shack next to the main house in Puerto Rico .

“God found me again in that compactor room and restored my inner man. I began to celebrate His Resurrection and knew by faith that He was alive all the years I had thought He was still on the cross, and no longer moved the mountains of indifference and pain that kept me away.

“Jesus the Christ had been crucified outside the city on a heap of garbage called Golgotha where the city’s garbage was burnt. He would rise on the third day, having died for all of us while we were yet sinners.

"He pulled me out of the sewers of life and has spent all these years cleaning me from head to feet. Now the challenge is to be grateful with each passing hour.

"Thank you" will never equal the sacrifice and promises of eternal life with Him in heaven. The only expression of gratitude I can offer is that I would give Him the balance of my days, to glorify Him whether in sickness or in health. The body will continue to perish, but He lives in me. It is the power of His Resurrection.”

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We are saved by God’s grace through our faith. It is God’s work alone in us that we have become – not will become – we who are in Christ have become the righteousness of God. It is all by faith – a faith that we demonstrate is real faith when we live in obedience to His commandments and reach out to our neighbor in need.