Abundant Grace

Introduction

What floats your boat? What gets you excited? What are you passionate about? The same question asked three different ways.

For some it is sports. We keep up with our favorite team; know some statistics; attend a game; follow the team as it goes through the season. For some it is work. You like your job or the idea of working; you can’t wait to get to work; you eat, sleep, and dream about work. For some it is a relationship. Spouse; children; someone we date. We are thinking about that other person or persons. We live to be with them; help them; touch them and be touched by them. For some it is a hobby or vacations or a television show or music or restaurants or hundreds of other possibilities.

For most of us, we get really excited and passionate about something. God made us with a sense of passion. He gave us those emotions. What attracts one will not attract another. We aren’t all passionate about the same things and that is what makes the world go round. It is sad indeed when we are no longer passionate about something. For when passion dies, so does the will to explore and learn and live.

Have you ever thought about passion and your relationship with God? I’m sure like all of us there are times when we feel closer to God or we feel he is closer to us than at other times but I’m not necessarily talking about emotions only. For example, if we follow a sports team, we get excited about each game. We don’t like losing and we exalt in winning but that does not deter us from pursuing our team. In the same way, our passion for God is not dependent upon our emotions. Our feelings come and go, but God remains constant and his mercy is constantly before us.

Today I want us to focus on our relationship with God through the latter part of 1 Timothy 1. Actually, I want us to focus on God which I trust will help to strengthen our relationship with Him. May we be encouraged today.

Grace

Grace. We know the definition—unmerited favor. But do we know what it really is? Paul did. All Paul had to do was take a quick trip down memory lane and he remembered how bad things had been. Blasphemer. Persecutor. Violent man. There was a time that Paul believed in God but not in Jesus. There was a time that Paul was regarded as a great man of faith, but he was really tied to a religion not a person.

There was a time when Paul thought Jesus was an imposter and so he did what he thought God wanted him to do—he spoke against Jesus (that’s the blaspheming part); he went to different places looking to arrest those who believed in Jesus (that’s the persecuting part); and he even assisted in killing at least one believer, Stephen (that’s the violent part). When Paul looks back at his life, he recognizes how wrong he was. He was acting sincerely and as far as he was concerned in faith, but he was wrong.

But then he met Jesus face to face on his way to arrest and perhaps kill believers in Damascus—Acts 9. As we say in our culture “seeing is believing,” Paul saw and believed. Blind for three days he had time to rethink his motives, his faith, and his direction. Being baptized, he began the process of growing a passion that only ended when he drew his last breath. Where did this passion come from? Grace. Abundant grace. Grace that far exceeded his sin. Grace that was undeserved. A second chance. An opportunity to change.

Paul changed from protecting a system to revealing a Savior. From persecutor to preacher. From blasphemer to believer. From death to life. Paul was a sinner. A well intentioned sinner. A sincere sinner. A man who thought he was doing right but a man who fought against God. And when he changed his passion for God grew.

What About You?

Have you ever gotten caught with your hand in the cookie jar? Do you know what it is like to know the depth of sin and be given a second chance? Have you ever experienced grace? Here is a truth: we experience grace to the level that we recognize our sin. That is, unless we know how great our sin is then we will never be passionate about God. Notice that Paul was once a blasphemer, persecutor, and violent man but he is the worst sinner. Was he forgiven? Absolutely. But a sinner he remained. God’s grace wasn’t just needed for change; it was needed for passion.

Maybe that is what happens to our passion. We got saved and then we just go through the motions. Like Paul we are attached to a system and not a person. Over the past several months I have conversations with a number of folks about trying to revive passion. Not just going through the motions but having a heart for God that finds demonstration in life. This is where it starts. It begins with recognizing our sin and knowing that God’s grace and mercy has been poured out on us.

Someone may say well I’m not as bad as Paul. I haven’t blasphemed God, or persecuted people, and certainly not assisted in the killing of anyone. So you haven’t never cursed or taken God’s name in vain or gone through the motions at a worship assembly and acted like God wasn’t here? So you haven’t gossiped about someone or hurt someone with your words or wished someone would fall off the face of the earth to make your life easier? You mean you haven’t gotten caught with your hand in the cookie jar? Don’t you see, we all sin. What appears to us to be greater sin is our feeble attempt to justify our sin and think that in some way we aren’t as bad as others. Don’t you see, that the only hope we have is God’s grace and it is from that mercy that we find purpose, meaning, and passion to live for him.

Paul knew what it was like to experience a second chance. He knew what it was like to be so far away from God that only God himself could rescue him. This is a place where second chances are given because we have all been given a second chance. There are consequences to sin that sometimes last a lifetime, but a second chance means that we are allowed to live for God without our past being held against us. A second chance comes from God’s grace. And when we have experienced that grace then we are passionate about him.

We discover as Paul did that this grace has come so that we can demonstrate the unlimited patience of God to others. In other words, in the same measure of grace that we have received we will reveal that same grace to others. I don’t care what you have done—God will forgive you. Will you accept his grace in baptism? Invitation.

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