24.04.08
Shorter Catechism on God (13) - God is Grace
Read: Ephesians 2:1-10
I got a shock when I typed ‘grace’ into the Google Search Engine earlier on – it came back with 130,000,000 hits (approximately). And when you think of the number of things we use the word ‘grace’ for, it’s not surprising. By far, the biggest users of the word ‘grace’ are Christians – therefore, Christian web-sites dominate the search results display. Grace is so very important to us – it is the heart of the Christian Gospel. Without grace, there is no Gospel. But what is grace, and why is it so important to we Christians? I want to argue tonight that fundamentally, grace means beauty, and that therefore Christianity is all about beauty, delight and attraction.
I want therefore to look at grace from two angles tonight: first, elements in the Bible’s Teaching on the Grace of God, and then secondly, applications of the Grace of God.
1. Elements in the Bible’s Teaching on the Grace of God
As we treated God’s love and mercy, so we will treat His grace, by looking first at Biblical Ideas of Grace and then at Biblical Examples of Grace.
a. Biblical Ideas of Grace – I got the thinking for this section from Principal Donald MacLeod’s marvellous chapter on grace in his book ‘Behold your God’. He argues that fundamentally, grace means beauty. I want to analyse that from three perspectives:
(i) God is Beautiful – the fundamental meaning of grace in the Bible is akin to the use of our word ‘graceful’ as another word for ‘beautiful’. Grace means to be attractive. It is applied to a woman in Proverbs 11:16, to a female deer in Proverbs 5:19 and even to a stone in Proverbs 17:8. In Proverbs 22:11, grace is used to describe the attractive and pleasing speech of the King’s friend. In the New Testament, the word for grace, charis, is derived from the greek word ‘charein’ – to rejoice. Grace is that which causes joy – it is a quality which induces joy within a person who sees it. At its very foundation, when we talk about God being gracious, what we mean is that He is gloriously beautiful – He is utterly captivating and mesmerising – the subject of an eternity’s gazing fascination.
(ii) We Are Beautiful – God is not only beautiful in Himself, but He treats us as if we were beautiful. In His eyes, we are gracious. Now, let’s take a step back here because we are on a completely different zone from our first point about God being beautiful in Himself. You see, the problem is that we aren’t beautiful in and of ourselves – we are rebellious sinners – all our righteousness is as a filthy rag to Him. How then can He find us attractive and beautiful? The answer is that through Jesus, He makes us attractive and beautiful. The grace of God is that attitude of His which will stop at nothing to remove our ugliness and to make us delightfully beautiful in His eyes. He does that by sending His perfect Son Jesus to die for our sins – removing our ugliness – and giving us in return the perfect obedience of Jesus as our very own – giving us beauty. In Christ, we are beautiful to God. When it comes to God, He is gracious in that by nature He is beautiful. When it comes to God showing grace to us, He bestows gifts of beauty upon the undeserving – namely us. But God not only desires to show grace to His people and to make them beautiful, but He actually does make us beautiful. What He wants is inevitably done. His grace is no trickling brook – rather it is, to use Principal MacLeod’s words, ‘an advancing sea’. The first stage of His forceful grace is that He overcomes our hardness of heart – He makes us willing to be made beautiful in the first place. And then He gives us salvation. Paul talks in Titus 2 about the ‘grace which brings salvation’. Grace is powerful or it is not grace. God’s grace is determined to beautify us and He never fails.
(iv) The Church is Beautiful – in the New Testament, we discover that God gives gifts of grace to the Church for works of ministry. The aim is that the Church would be built up, that sinners would be brought to Christ – that literally, the Church would be made beautiful. These are the ‘Charismatic’ gifts – literally, gifts of His grace. All of us have been given gifts by God to make the Church beautiful – some have been given preaching and teaching gifts, others gifts of eldership and administration, others gifts of helps and hospitality – whatever, we have all been given Charismatic gifts of God’s grace to make the Church beautiful. Friends, we are a Charismatic church!
God’s grace means that in Himself, He is beautiful; through Christ Jesus, He makes us beautiful; and through His giving of Charismatic gifts, He makes the Church beautiful.
b. Biblical Examples of Grace – there are so many examples of God’s grace in action which we could go to, but I want to focus on just one.
(ii) Joseph and Egypt – I want to draw your attention to two examples of the beauty aspect of grace in the life of Joseph. Joseph has already been sold by his brothers into slavery in Egypt. He is bought by the Egyptian general Potiphar who quickly makes him overseer of his house – the reason for Joseph’s quick promotion is given in Genesis 39:4 – “So Joseph found favour in his sight” – in other words, there was something about Joseph – perhaps his honesty, his work-ethic, his reliability – which made him attractive to Potiphar as an overseer. Again, having been thrown into prison, it wasn’t long before the keeper of the prison, as we read in Genesis 39:22 “put Joseph in charge of all the other prisoners” – again, there was something about Joseph which made him attractive to the keeper of the prison. Although there may have been immediate causes of that attraction, the ultimate cause is given in both verses as ‘the steadfast love of God’. God made Joseph attractive in the eyes of both Potiphar and the keeper of the prison. God showed grace to Joseph, making in turn Joseph appear gracious in the eyes of his captors. God’s grace makes us attractive not just to Him, but oftentimes to others also.
The Bible has another million examples of grace in action – but I’m using these two as examples because they highlight the appearance aspect of grace – that grace means beauty and that God’s grace towards us makes us beautiful in His eyes, and oftentimes, in the eyes of others.
2. Applications in the Bible’s Teaching on the Grace of God
We owe everything we have and we are as Christians to the grace of God in Christ Jesus. The grace of God impinges upon every area of our lives, but there are three applications in particular I want to commend to you:
a. Praise God for His Grace! – Ephesians 2 tells us that once we were dead in our transgressions and sins – we were alienated from God and His enemies – we were children of wrath, but by grace we have been saved. Going back to our definition of grace as being beautiful, can you believe that God has pleasure in just looking at you! Despite the person you once were, God takes delight in who He has made you in Christ. You may not be able to take delight in yourself; perhaps you feel as if no-one else takes delight in you – perhaps you have very low self-esteem – but God takes delight in you. It’s true that through eternity we will be utterly fascinated by the beauty of God; but have you thought that He also will be fascinated by the beauty of who you are in Christ? Now you can’t but praise God for the wonder of that! When you sing, when you pray, whatever you do – you can praise God that when He looks at you, He takes delight in what He sees. Not only so, but He gives us everything we could possibly need, and even want (if we were in our right minds). We owe it all to His grace!
b. Use the Grace of God! – by His grace, God has given each of us gifts of His charisma. To some, He has given gifts of preaching and teaching, to others gifts of administration and helps – but to every one of us, He has given gifts of His Spirit. One cannot be a Christian without being gifted in this way. These gifts are to be used to build up the Church of God so that He is glorified through us. How necessary it is therefore that each of us uses the gifts God has graced us with. God has given each of us a unique set of gifts with which He has graced the Church here; and if He has given them to each of us then we are to use them to build each other up and to give glory to God. Please use the gifts God has given the Church through you – they are gifts of His grace given to make the Church truly beautiful.
c. Live in the Grace of God! – as I said at the beginning of this section on application, we owe everything to the grace of God. He who was rich became poor for our sakes, so that by His poverty we might become rich. We owe our riches to His poverty. His grace has made us delightful in His eyes. What, by comparison, did we ever do to deserve such riches; how have we ever made ourselves beautiful? Did we save ourselves from our sins or earn our entry into the Kingdom of God? Did we die on the cross to save ourselves from our sins? What did we do? Salvation is by grace, Paul says, so that no-one may boast. God has given us the power for new life, and the gifts to glorify Him in the Church. Let us then live not in the power of our own strength, finding our worth and placing our confidence in ourselves, but let us live in the power of God’s gracious strength, finding our worth and placing our confidence in Him. That is the message of the Gospel and its worth living in forever.
The grace of God is the subject of an eternal lifetime – His gift which we’ll never be able to pay back. We’ll always be debtors to grace and to God. But then, He doesn’t ask us to pay Him back – He’s done it all because He loves us. God is good – benevolent, loving, merciful and gracious. So let’s give Him the fruit of our voices and the glory of our lives. AMEN