Is Grace Really Enough?

Introduction

Let me give a brief story of two people and then we’ll ask just one question at the end. The first is a woman who is not a church goer. She is not known for any good works. She lives most of her life in relative obscurity and with few friends or sphere of influence. The second person is a man highly esteemed by peers. He is a faithful Christian. He is a preacher celebrated by colleagues. He has spent all of his adult life preaching and leading a number of people to love Jesus. Here’s the question — which one of them needs more grace, the man or the woman? Don’t answer, just think about it. And when you think you have an answer with a reasonable explanation just raise your hand.

Several months ago this contrast actually became clear to me. Dick and Honey asked me to do the funeral for the woman. I didn’t know her, but thanks to their compassion they didn’t want her to be buried without any service. Those in attendance that day at Mrs. Stancliff’s funeral excluding the funeral director numbered three. Mrs. Stancliff’s funeral took place at the mausoleum at Memorial Park. At the very same time inside the funeral home another funeral was taking place for Emerson J. Estes. It was a contrast not only in numbers and good works, but in honor for the deceased. The chapel for the preacher was filled; my words echoed off the walls of the mausoleum because there were so few. Which one needed more grace? The truth is that they needed exactly the same amount of grace — abundantly.

Tonight we are going to discuss why this is the case. Why did such a God honoring man need as much grace as one who didn’t necessarily profess any faith in God? We will answer that question and in the process we are going to challenge our thinking about God and his grace and our works.

Wrong Thinking

“God helps those who help themselves.” Do you believe it? If so, you are not alone. According to a 1997 study by the Barna Research Group, eighty percent of Americans believe that it is found in the Bible. Barna also found that most Americans believe that spiritual salvation is an outcome to be earned through their good character or behavior. Fifty-seven percent believe that if a person is generally good or does enough good things for others during their lives they will earn a place in heaven. Interesting. How do you measure “generally good” or “enough good?” How much do you need to help yourself before God steps in to help. Is salvation seventy-five percent us and twenty-five percent God?

Listen to James 2:10: “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” Jesus made it more difficult for the “good person” to go to heaven when he preached the Sermon on the Mount. Listen to Matthew 5:20: “I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Righteousness must exceed that of the most meticulous law keepers his generation had to offer. If those law keepers weren’t righteous enough then what chance do we have.

Romans 3:23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. The word for “sin” means to miss the mark. Imagine that God is on one side of the Grand Canyon — ten mile wide and one mile deep — and we’re all on the other side, trying to jump across. So we all line up. God is on the other side waving at us to jump. We step back about ten yards in order to get up a good head of steam and we hit the edge just perfectly. We get good lift, good extension, good height and every one of us plunges to our death. Some of us might stay up a little longer; some might go out a bit further, but the result is the same for all of us. And then we do the dumb thing — we begin to compare ourselves to others. “I got out there farther than he or she did. I’m not as bad as those people.” But the result is the same for us all. Better still resulted in death. Better didn’t help us hit the target. If we are guilty in one point of the law, we are guilty in all.

We tend to believe that our salvation is based upon performance. So when we sin, we rightly feel guilt. We repent and then we redouble our efforts not to do that again. But the problem is kind of like the boy with his finger in the hole in the dike. About the time we plug up one hole the pressure brings another fracture. And before long we are doubling and redoubling efforts trying to stop the water and worse yet we begin to believe that we are personal failures and start to condemn ourselves. The cycle leads us to feeling bad when we sin and feeling better when we do well. So we want to feel better and so we focus on doing more things right. This is the curse of sin. We can only feel good based on how well we do. Because the problem is we can’t ever do good enough.

So we continue this terrible cycle of comparing ourselves to others, feeling good because we exceed the righteousness of some and feeling bad because we don’t do things perfectly. Condemning ourselves when we mess up and feeling better when we do right. And feeling at some point, too often much of the time, I’m not doing enough for God.

Real Grace

One of the hardest concepts to teach is the idea of grace. The curse of sin is overwhelming. Performance is what we measure. It is hard to get away from us and look only to God. Galatians 3:10 says: “All who rely on observing the law are under a curse, for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who does not continue to do everything written in the Book of the Law.’” Everything includes just that. You can be better than others and the best you can be, but unless you are perfect there is no heaven. So if it’s humanly impossible to keep the whole law, then it’s humanly impossible to go to heaven. Right?

God knew that we couldn’t do it all. He knew that we would try too. There is no reassurance in being able to say “I’m a pretty good person” because there is always someone just a little better. To make it on your own you would have to score one hundred percent. You can’t and neither can I. But God took care of this matter through Jesus. He scored one hundred and offered himself as the perfect sacrifice. He took my sins and suffered the consequences. Inconceivably, all my sin and shame were transferred to Jesus. And when I come by faith to God accepting the sacrifice of Jesus as being completely sufficient to take care of my sin, then Christ’s perfection is given to me. Romans 3:21-22: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from the law (my religious efforts), has been made known. This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe.” Paul will write in Galatians 3:13: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us.” Jesus didn’t just redeem us from the curse of sin. He has liberated us from the curse of the law, or the need to score a one hundred.

We’ll agree that we are saved by grace, but we aren’t so quick to agree that it is grace which keeps us saved. Performance still matters we say. You can’t live like the devil and still be saved. I would agree but what about just everyday sinning. Watch how someone defines true spirituality and you will discover how much emphasis on performance is the norm. That’s the question in Acts 15. The Gentiles are coming to faith in Jesus. Everyone is excited. But then there are some who are saying that faith in Jesus means Jesus plus something and the something is circumcision which will only be the beginning before the food laws and holidays and customs and you can see how tough this is getting. So there is a big conference while everyone has to decide if salvation is Jesus plus something or Jesus plus nothing. And in God’s providence the result comes out — the grace of God found in Jesus is quite sufficient.

How strongly did Paul believe in the sufficiency of grace. Just read Galatians. 1:6-7: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ.” Strong words. In Galatians Paul is outraged that anyone would add anything to grace. The next two verses speak of his determination to correct the problem: “But if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let him be eternally condemned.” And then he repeats himself. Strong words indeed. 2:20-21: “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law (our own righteous deeds), Christ died for nothing.” 5:4: “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace.”

I didn’t become a Christian by grace, only to set grace aside after I got saved, because my righteousness did not come to me through my own effort in the first place. Righteousness could never be gained by the law, and if we go back to trying to keep the law, then in effect we are saying that Jesus died for nothing. When Jesus died, if he did everything to make my salvation possible then my relationship with God is based on Jesus plus nothing. If I believe that my salvation is based on Jesus plus what human effort I can put in then Jesus died for nothing. There is no middle road. If I add human effort to my salvation, I am watering down the work of Christ on the cross. Jesus died to save me completely — not just my past but my future as well because I am utterly helpless from beginning to end. That’s why I need the grace of God not only to save me but to sustain me.

Somebody says, “Dana, you make it sound as if it doesn’t matter what we do, God will save us.” I’ll say more about that in the next lesson, but I will say this Paul dealt with the same misunderstanding in Romans 6. That would be a good place for you to read. Here’s the truth — real grace empowers me to change. Grace with human effort drags me away from Jesus. The Jerusalem conference recognized that truth in Acts 15:10-11: “Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of the disciples a yoke that neither we nor our fathers have been able to bear? No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that we are saved, just as they are.” Jesus plus something places back into subjection to rules and under the power of the law and trying to perform to perfection. That is a curse not good news. And Jesus is about good news.

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