This week we’re exploring how following Jesus impacts our lifestyle by one principle: grace. Grace is one of the most important, life-changing aspects of Christian story. Here’s how the Bible talks about grace:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
(Ephesians 2:4-10 ESV)
Here is an easy way to remember the meaning:
God’s
Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense
A friend had a young child at home, and a baby on the way and his mother loved to help out by cleaning up the house. One particularly stressful time she was coming down to decompress the situation by cleaning up the house. My friend came home that day to find his wife madly cleaning up the house, before the mother in law arrived. She didn’t want her mother-in-law to see a messy house, even though she was there to clean it as a gift.
We so often we think that we have to have cleaned up our lives before we can accept what God wants to give us. We don’t have to have sorted ourselves out before we can accept God’s free gift of forgiveness, his grace.
When you ask someone why they don’t like Christianity…you’ll often hear “it’s just a bunch of rules.” I don’t need a book to tell me how to be a good person. If that was true, I wouldn’t want to be part of this religion either.
But it’s not true…that’s the religion that Jesus came to get rid of, and not his hope for us. Here’s the version of Christianity that people are usually describing:
Obey God’s laws
God will accept you
He’ll provide you with loving care
He’ll give you a new status, as a servant of God.
This is a law religion, the kind of thing the Pharisees liked to promote. Jesus didn’t have very nice things to say about that!
The problem is – no one has ever obeyed God’s laws perfectly enough to earn God’s love. Actually, there was one person – Jesus. He knew our hopeless situation, and did something about it. Jesus was all about grace. This involves the same steps, but in a different order:
God loves and accepts you…unconditionally
God will provide you with loving care. He wants to be part of your life today, not some day in the future.
God will give you a new status: Child of God adopted into his family
You now return God’s favour with thanksgiving and living in his way.
In grace…we are given God’s love, care and fatherhood as free gifts, even before having proven ourselves worthy, and that gives us a lot to live up to!
Question: Where have you typically seen laws and rules in your faith? As the way to earn God’s love, or respond to it? Why?
Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
Loading Content...
Share a Link to this Message
The link has been copied to your clipboard; paste it anywhere you would like to share it.
We saw yesterday how Jesus said one goal mattered more than even day to day concerns like food and clothing: his kingdom. He said, “seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be added to you.” What does that mean?
First of all, it doesn’t mean seek only God’s kingdom as some spiritual distant concept and ignore the realities of day to day life. Jesus doesn’t meant we should never eat or sleep, or that those things are inherently bad. He says quite clearly, when we seek first the kingdom, “then all these will be added to you.” He knows we need them, and wants to be the one to give them to us, but in their proper perspective.
For example, consider food. We need food to live, and good food is an enjoyable part of living. But that good thing can be made into an ultimate thing, and when that happens, it becomes a very bad thing. When we elevate food to become more than it was meant to be, and it becomes our source of comfort, emotional stability, we are in both physical and spiritual danger.
Instead, Jesus challenges us to seek kingdom of God. God is the creator sustainer of the whole world, including its food sources. He created, called it good, and wants us to enjoy the world’s sustenance so we can do our daily work and enjoy his provision. When we find our true satisfaction in God, then we can enjoy good things for what they are…we don’t have to overdo it, and we don’t have to hate it. This applies to food, and any number of other good things God created.
In the Christianity 101 course, we sometimes illustrate this with a wagon wheel. The hub is special – it’s particularly strong, and has a unique shape to do its job. The spokes are meant to be all connected with, and delivering power from the hub to the rim.
If we try to remove the hub and replace it with a spoke, you know what happens, it all falls apart. It’s the same with our lives. We were made to have God at the center of our lives, providing meaning and purpose to the whole. Unfortunately the human race tried to remove God from the center long ago, and have been trying to shove spokes in ever since, whether it be money, career, sexuality, power, or any other good thing God created that can be abused. This is a good definition of sin: When we take good things, try to make them our ultimate good, and that’s ultimately really bad for us.
Question: Make a list of good things in our world that can be abused.
Reminder: We are reading the Bible in sync as one community - so check out today's reading here.
Reminder: The best way to grow spiritually this year is to join our Christianity 101 in the Cafe Course in Pickering starting tonight. Register for you and a friend today!
When our computers get bogged down and unmanageable, we know to hit a reset button to simply start over. Wouldn't a reset button be great in life? We know it would be complicated, with all our responsibilities and routines to consider, but imagine the freedom and refreshment of a new start in life! What would you do differently? What would you pay more attention to, and what would you ignore? How would you avoid getting bogged down and broken again?
The great news is, in coming to earth as Jesus Christ, God has begun to "reset" our universe, our world, and even us. We're invited to start over with him, in what he calls his kingdom. We're invited to start a new life with a clean slate.
What gets wiped clean, and lived differently, when God resets our lives? We'll explore how God resets these key areas of our lives:
Reset: Goals
Reset: Time
Reset: Money
Reset: Work
Reset: Body & Food
Reset: Sex & Marriage
Reset: Family
Reset: Compassion
Reset: Nature
Reset: Society
Reset: Death
Join us for the next several weeks, and invite God to reset your life.
