How We Are Reconciled to God Through Grace

I'm going to try to slip away and see that this week. Matthew, the second one we'll talk about is Hillary's America.

This is one of his books, and they are very well done as well. Can everyone see the screen okay there? Glares not too bad. I'd like to also welcome the echoes to Mrs. Luecker and to Jason here. Good to have you with us today. Good to see everybody. I actually had several new visitors up in Denver this morning, too, so that was good to see.

Getting into the sermon, I hope you had at least three cups of coffee this morning, because you need to be on your A-game. We're going to cover a lot of material today, a lot of very important material. We're going to be covering a lot of different scriptures and concepts that are very crucial about a very crucial subject as well. I'd like to start out with a story about a psychologist who was conducting a study in a state penitentiary.

He asked a number of prisoners, why are you here? Why are you here? In other words, what did you do? What circumstances led you to being imprisoned here? The answers were quite revealing. One man said, the first one he interviewed, said, I was framed! I didn't do it, I was framed. Somebody else's fault. Another one said, they ganged up on me. The third one said, it was a case of mistaken identity.

I didn't do it. Somebody else did it. They mistook me for him. And another one explained that the police had it in for him. And so on and on it went with every prisoner that he interviewed there. Not one of them said they were guilty. And they were all innocent, at least in their minds. And we, each of us sitting here today, may not have spent time in prison, but have we lived blameless lives? Have we ever done anything that could have affected our relationship with God?

Have we ever done anything that would sentence us to a punishment like these individuals as happened with them? In the first sermon on this series, which is on grace, I talked about an individual, John Newton, most famous for authoring the famous hymn, Amazing Grace, one that probably all of us are familiar with to a certain extent. And I talked about his life and the circumstances that led to him writing this remarkable hymn.

John Newton was a slave trader for a number of years. He captained slave ships that took slaves from Africa to the New World. And at one point in his life, he realized he was doing wrong. He came to see firsthand the evil of the slave trade and slavery, one of the vilest of sins of human history.

And he was caught. Well, his ship was came near, well, was shipwrecked and starting to sink. And he prayed for God to save him, to deliver him. And under circumstances he thought were miraculous. The hole in the side of the ship managed to plug up as the cargo shifted. And the ship was able to safely reach shore, and it saved his life from drowning. And as a result of that, he took that as a miraculous sign from God and wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace, in response to his gratitude for God's mercy, God's forgiveness, God's grace toward him.

This was a reflection of his thinking, of his appreciation and thankfulness for being forgiven. I'd like to share with you part of a letter we received from a prisoner. We receive a fair number of letters from prisoners at the home office on a pretty regular basis. This is a prisoner who is serving a long sentence in prison. And he wrote us thanking us for Beyond Today magazine.

And he writes, quote, I found your magazine to be interesting, informative, and factual, and in accordance with the Scriptures. Your articles reflect not only the problems of this age, but remind me that God's plan has never changed and inspires me to live in prison in accordance with his laws and commandments. I am incarcerated because I broke God's laws by my disobedience. Yes, I also broke man's laws, but man cannot bring about restoration of the soul or a new life. Only my complete surrender to God's will has enabled me to become a new man through Jesus Christ. Your magazine keeps me in touch with the real world as it emphasizes the imminent return of the kingdom of God and his fulfilling grace.

This is indeed good news. I thank you for your ministry. What is it like to come to understand, as this prisoner did, incarcerated for a number of years, that true freedom and restoration can only come from God? No matter how long a sentence you might be serving in prison as he is. How much do we understand and how much do we appreciate the good news of, as he put it, God's soon-coming kingdom and the reconciliation that is available through him, for us, with him, after breaking his law? Because without this, we are in a prison every bit as much as this individual is.

We are imprisoned without that reconciliation on a spiritual death row. Today I want to continue with the second part of this series of sermons on grace by covering an extremely important aspect of grace. And that is how we are reconciled to God through grace.

How we are reconciled to God through grace. It is vital that we understand how God's grace makes it possible for us to be forgiven and to be reconciled to God. Whether we realize it or not, our sin has affected our relationship with God and has cut us off from Him. We are alienated from Him. So what is the solution to that problem? How can mankind be reconciled to God? How can us individually be reconciled? And after that reconciliation, what does He expect of us? These are some of the questions we'll look at today.

It is vital that we do understand the answers as revealed in Scripture from that. Let's start off with a question. How has sin affected our relationship with God? How has sin affected our relationship with God? Let's think about that for just a minute. On a larger scale, how has mankind's sin affected man's relationship with God? On a personal level, how has our sin in the past affected our relationship with God?

If we have not yet repented, if we have not been baptized, how has our sin affected our relationship with God? What does God's Word say about this important question? Let's begin in Romans 3 and verse 23. A lot of the Scriptures we'll be covering today are quite familiar. I want to put them together in a way to address these major questions here.

Romans 3 verse 23 tells us that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All means all. Everyone. We have all sinned and fallen short. Our sin has affected our relationship with God. But in what way? Let's take a look at Isaiah 59 and verses 1 and 2. It tells us how our sin has affected our relationship with God. Again, a familiar Scripture. Behold, God says through the prophet Isaiah, the Lord's hand is not shortened that it cannot save, nor is he heavy that it cannot hear.

So it's not a matter of God not being able to reconcile us to Him, or not a matter of Him not hearing our prayers, anything like that. No, he says something else is at work here. But your iniquities, your sins, have separated you from God, and your sins have hidden His face from you so that He will not hear. So this is quite plain as to where the separation between man and God comes from. It comes as a result of human sin.

It is our sins that separate us from God that affect our relationship with God. And our relationship with God has been damaged immeasurably by that. Mankind's relationship with God has been damaged immeasurably by sin. God didn't separate Himself from sin, but man separated Himself from God because of sin. And what is sin? Of course, we're familiar with 1 John 3.4. Sin is the transgression, the breaking of God's laws. So that has cut us, mankind, off from God. So what, then, is the solution? How can man, how can we, be reconciled to God? How do we repair that relationship?

What do we have to do? What is our part in beginning to have a right relationship with God? We find the answer, part of the answer, beginning a few chapters earlier, Isaiah 55, verses 6 and 7, where God, again speaking through Isaiah, says, So we see here a number of steps that we need to take to start rebuilding that right relationship with God. I've put it down in several bullet points up here for us to look at. First, we see, seek the Lord. In other words, turn to God. The first bullet point, turn to God.

Seek the Lord while he may be found. Call upon him while he is near. Second bullet point, to repent. As it's worded in Isaiah here, let the wicked forsake his way. And the unrighteous man his thoughts. We need to change our ways. We need to change our thinking. So that is summed up in repent and change our ways to God's ways. There's actually an overlap between those two. Repenting does mean to change. To change from our ways to God's ways. And then, if we do that as a result of that, it tells us that God will have mercy on the individual who does that.

And he will abundantly pardon. He will issue a pardon for our sins. The word mercy is mentioned in here. That God will have mercy on the person who repents and turns to him. What does it mean to have mercy? We heard a very good example in the sermonette there, the story of Eva Kors there. The story is told of the French Emperor Napoleon of a mother who approached him seeking a pardon for her son, who had committed a sin, committed a crime, for which the death penalty was issued.

The woman came to Napoleon asking for a pardon for her son. Napoleon replied that the young man had committed a crime, he had been judged guilty, and justice demanded that he be executed. The mother told, explained to Napoleon, I don't ask for justice, I ask for mercy. Napoleon replied, but her son does not deserve mercy. The woman begged, it would not be mercy if he deserved it, and mercy is all I ask. Napoleon then responded, then, after thinking it over, he responded, then I will have mercy. He spared the woman's son from the death penalty.

He showed mercy, not justice. There is a difference between the two. And God is that way with us. He shows mercy, not justice. Because if he showed justice with each of us, where would we be? Well, we would be dead, because that is justice. That is carrying out the sentence that we deserved for our sins. But God does not show justice. He shows mercy. It is not to say he does not. He never shows justice.

He clearly does, in the lives of individuals or in the lives of nations, for that matter. But he shows mercy. And mercy is not something we deserve. Mercy is mercy. Mercy is mercy. And there is a beauty and a simplicity to God's way of dealing with us. Yes, we have been alienated, as we saw there from Isaiah, from God because of our sins. But there is a solution, and there is a way for us to be reconciled to God.

God will have undeserved mercy, as we read there. From Isaiah 55, He will have mercy for those who forsake their ways, and turn from their thoughts to God's ways and God's thoughts. It is interesting that Caleb used this illustration of the parable of the prodigal son, and did a good job explaining that. And what is the parable of the prodigal son? We won't go through and read it, but it is the story of a young man who made a lot of bad decisions.

And his bad decisions compounded. His first bad decision was turning his back on his father's wisdom, his father's judgment and advice, and wasting his inheritance. Wasted everything that the father had given him. And the story goes on, you can read about it in Luke 15, about what happened as a result of his series of bad decisions.

He ends up slopping the hogs in a pagan land on the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is about, for a Jewish boy, a Jewish man, about as humiliating as you can get, living among pagans slopping the hogs. And he finally comes to realize that he would be better off working as a slave or servant for his father than continuing in his lifestyle, because he's reduced to the point he's actually eating the food that he's feeding to the hogs.

And the hogs have got it as good as he does there. So in his humbled and hurting state, he returns to his father, realizing he doesn't deserve anything.

He comes back to his father asking just to be a servant, just to be a slave, because he knows that would be a far better life than what he has become used to there in his sad state. And so he returns to his father, not even expecting to be called a son anymore, but to the young man's astonishment, he is welcomed back with open arms and celebration. And as Caleb mentioned there, the father runs to him and throws his arms around him, and hugs him and kisses him.

And puts a ring on his finger and a robe on him, which are symbolic in that culture of a full restoration to sonship again. He is welcomed back not as a slave, not as a servant, but as a son. And in the story, who is the father who forgives him? It's a story of God the Father and His love for all of His children there. And this is one of my favorite parables because of that, because it is such a profound depiction of God's love, of God's mercy, and of God's forgiveness toward us.

And maybe some of us can look at that parable and read through it and see aspects of our lives where we have done, done, done things, and rejected our parents, or our Heavenly Father, and gone against Him, and come to realize how much we need God's mercy. And His love and His forgiveness. And then we come to our senses and return to God. And He, as we saw from Isaiah, will have mercy, will pardon us, will return us, and welcome us into a right relationship with Him. But it doesn't happen unless we turn from our selfish ways as we saw from Isaiah there, and repent and change, and begin living in a way that is pleasing to God.

So how can we be reconciled to God then? Well, we've noted that our sins have separated us from God, and yet He is willing to have mercy on us if we are willing to repent and change and turn to Him again, as illustrated there in the Prodigal Son, that parable. But how is this reconciliation really possible, or what makes that reconciliation possible? After all, as we know from another familiar Scripture, Romans 6.23, the wages of sin is death. And what are wages? Wages are what you earn by your actions. So what we have earned by our actions, by our decisions, by the way we've lived is death.

That's what we've earned because of our sin. That is what we have earned, and our sins require a death penalty. So you might say that we are prisoners on death row. That's what we have earned. But notice the last part of this verse because there's a striking contrast. We have the wages, which are what we have earned, and then we have God's gift. But the gift of God is eternal life.

In Christ Jesus, our Lord. So we have the contrast between what we earned and God's gift, and what we earned is death, and God's gift is eternal life. A striking contrast between the two. So through Jesus Christ, God offers a gift to us if we do our part. And that gift, as we see here, is eternal life.

Let's notice also Romans 5, verses 9 through 11, where Paul writes, Much more then, having now been justified by his blood, what does justified mean? It means simply being made just. We are made a just person. What's another word for just? Righteous. We are made righteous in God's sight by Jesus Christ's blood. So much more then, having now been made righteous, or justified, by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. So what Paul is telling us here is that through Jesus Christ's sacrifice, offering his own life and pouring out his blood in our place for what we deserved, that penalty can be and is removed. It is removed. And then Paul continues here. Next, verse 10, For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God, so here's this word, reconciled, or reconciliation, which is a theme of the sermon today, if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more having been reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only that, but we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation. So Paul tells us here is something to really rejoice about. The fact that we can be and are reconciled to God again. Yes, our sins have separated us from God, and we earn the death penalty for those sins. But God has mercy on us through the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for us. And that's something, as Paul says here, we need to really rejoice in that. Because, as he explains here, we have now received the reconciliation to God. We are reconciled. We are brought together again. But that's not all, because as Paul also says here, we have not just the reconciliation, but we have another great gift from God, and that gift is being saved. The gift of salvation being saved by Jesus Christ's life. Let's look at another passage that goes into this a little further, 2 Corinthians 5, verses 18 and 19. Some of these I'll read from the New International version because it's more clear, more easily understood. And Paul explains here, all this is from God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of what? The ministry of reconciliation, of bringing people to God.

That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against Him. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ's ambassadors as though God were making His appeal through us.

We implore you on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God. And it reminds me a great deal of the letter that I read just a few minutes ago here about the young man who was in prison and thanks us for our ministry, which in his case has done what? Has reconciled Him to God, just as Paul is talking about here. So God is explaining to us here through Paul that we can be reconciled to Him.

And he says, Paul explains, that we are being implored here to be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ's blood. And that sacrifice is what makes it possible for us to be reconciled with the Father. Because without it, what happens? The wages of sin is death. Without that reconciliation, we are cut off from God, and we suffer that death penalty of eternal death unless we accept Christ's sacrifice and become reconciled to God.

I want to share with you another letter we received from the Home Office. And this person is from a young adult male, and he talks about another aspect of this ministry of reconciliation, as Paul worded it here in 2 Corinthians. And this person writes, I'm really inspired, and am continually seeking God, and your magazine and booklets are one of the ways I am certain that will lead me back to our Father. Again, thank you very much. May you prosper more in order to help millions of believers and unbelievers to nourish their whole being through God's grace.

God bless you always. So this again is a very moving example, illustration of the reconciliation this young man, 22 years old, is having and being brought to God out of a period of unfathomable loneliness, as he described it, being cut off, separated from God. And now, through the efforts, the work of the Church, he and others are being reconciled to God again. But all of this is possible now. Well, it's possible through what? It's possible through God's grace. Through God's grace. It's not because of anything that we can do to deserve this.

We are reconciled to God through the death of Jesus Christ, his Son. As one of the most famous passages in the Bible tells us, John 3, 16, and 17, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through him might be saved. So what this is telling us is God sent his Son into the world to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we could be saved from that death penalty through Jesus Christ taking it on himself.

As we're told in 1 John 1, verse 7, The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sins. This is a verse we typically read every Passover. The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. That's why we take of that cup of wine at the Passover every year is representing the cleansing, the payment of our sins through the blood of Jesus Christ. And through that, God frees us from the guilt that we incurred by substituting the death of Jesus Christ for the penalty that we deserved.

And that is why each one of us bears some responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ. Not any one individual, not any group of people, not any race or ethnic group or anything like that, but all of us had a part, a role, and a responsibility for the death of Jesus Christ because of our sins. For we have, as we read earlier, all have sinned.

All have sinned and brought the death penalty on themselves. And as we read earlier in Isaiah, repentance and turning to God is the starting point for receiving redemption and establishing a lasting relationship with God. Start just briefly about these words that show up a lot in the Bible. We don't have time to go through a lot of scriptures on this. But redeem and redemption. What did that mean? It's not words that we use that often in English, in our modern language. Some of you may be old enough to remember, like I did when a kid, if we wanted some spinning money, we went out and found empty soda bottles in the ditch by the road, and we'd take them down to a store and redeem them.

And we'd get to a three-cents or a nickel or something for those. That's how I learned the meaning of redemption or redeem. You brought an empty bottle back and you got a couple of pennies or a nickel or something for it there. But what did redeem mean in that time period? Again, it's not a word we use that often today, but what did it mean at that time?

It means to be released or set free by a payment. Probably the closest analogy today in our judicial system would be you would pay a fine if you were caught and convicted of a crime, you'd pay a fine. In that time, it was not quite that easy. The fines were significant, the equivalent of years of salary, which your family, your loved ones, spouse, whatever, would pay to free you from a prison sentence, which might be five, ten, twenty years, something like that.

So that's how this word was used at that time. Paul uses this word many, many times in his writings here. Redeem or redemption, that's what it means to be released or set free by a payment. And that is exactly what has happened with us. We were redeemed, we were set free, we were bought back by a payment. And that payment was the death of Jesus Christ, paid in our place for something that we deserved.

And that then frees us. Paul talks about this concept of freedom, or being freed from this in Romans 6, verses 16-18, again from the New International Version. He says, Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey. Whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness. But thanks be to God, that, though you used to be slaves to sin, you wholeheartedly obeyed the form of teaching to which you were entrusted.

You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. And Paul's point here is that we're all slaves. We're all slaves. It's just a matter of who your master is, or what you're enslaved to. You can be enslaved to the God of this age, which is Satan the Devil, which leads to what? Which leads to suffering and leads to death.

Or you can be slaves to God, which leads to what? Which leads to a life of righteousness and eternal life. I went through this whole concept of slavery several years ago in a series of three sermons because slavery, as it was practiced then, was very different from the slavery we think about today based on American history and British history and so on. Very, very different there. So that's very helpful. This is a concept of slavery that shows up again and again in the New Testament there. But having been redeemed, this is where the redemption plays into that, we have been redeemed from that slavery through a price that was paid, the price of Jesus Christ's blood.

And now we serve what? As Paul says here, now we serve a new master, a different master, God. And we live a life of righteousness that leads to eternal life. So again, all of these things, this repentance, the redemption and the reconciliation are all gifts of God through grace, that is made possible through Jesus Christ's shed blood. If we are to be, as Paul says here, slaves to righteousness, what does that mean? What does that look like in a person's life, to be a slave to righteousness? Let's notice Acts 2, another familiar passage.

This is as a result of Peter's message there on that first Pentecost. In the book of Acts, the people are convicted, realizing that they have been guilty of the shed blood of Jesus Christ, putting them to death because of their sins. And picking up the story then, in mid-thought, now when the people heard this, they were cut to the heart. And said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, men and brethren, what shall we do? Then Peter said to them, repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ, for the remission, the removal or the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

So we are to repent, as we see here, we are to repent and to be baptized for what end? So that we can receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. And we do this in faith, trusting in God and in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay that death penalty that we have deserved. And baptism does bring forgiveness through, well, what does baptism picture? It pictures the death of the old person. We go down into that watery grave and the old person dies. Dies with Jesus Christ, as Paul put it.

And a new person comes up. A new person, a new creature, a new life is born there through Jesus Christ. And then through the laying on of hands of a minister of God, then we receive the gift of God's Holy Spirit. As we see, you might write down Acts 8, verses 14 through 18, where people had received John's baptism, but had not had hands laid on them.

And Peter and John could belong and lay hands on them. And they received God's Spirit through a true minister of Jesus Christ. But once that has happened, once we are baptized, once we receive God's Spirit through the laying on of hands, then what? Then those reconciled to God through faith in Christ's sacrifice must continue living in faith.

That is, in harmony with God's laws and God's Word. As Jesus Christ put it, Matthew 4, 4, and Luke 4, 4, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. We have to live by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So God expects us to be blameless after accepting Jesus Christ's sacrifice, to live by every word that God speaks. Some people believe that once you accept Christ, that is all there is to it. And you are free to do whatever you want. We receive a number of letters. When we talk about requirements, conditions for salvation, like being baptized, people will write in and say, oh no, all you have to do is believe, and you are saved.

And they take great exception to that. Well, let them argue. They are arguing with God's Word. So it's not my problem that's their problem there. So they think that once you are saved, you cannot lose salvation. That's summed up in the phrase, once saved, always saved. But we might read what Paul himself wrote in Romans 6, 1 and 2, immediately after discussing how we are saved by God's grace. What does he say? He says, what shall we say then?

Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? And this was actually a teaching in the Catholic Church around the time of the Protestant Reformation that the more people sin, the more God was magnified, because the more grace he would show. And that proved how great God was, how great and wonderful, by extending more and more grace and forgiveness as a result of people sinning more and more. It's just totally backwards thinking. Totally satanic thinking there. And what is Paul's response in verse 2?

Certainly not! How should we who died to sin, died in the graves, the watery grave of baptism, live any longer in sin? It's just ridiculous reasoning there that we are saved by God's grace, and that gift of salvation required the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. And since we figured we died with Him, how can we possibly think it's okay to sin? And, of all we do by that, is put Jesus Christ to death symbolically over again.

So, obviously, we cannot do that, as Paul explains here. We cannot continue a life of breaking God's laws and expect God's grace to continue for that. God does have conditions on His gift of grace, and we'll go through that in a future sermon. Paul talks a little bit more, though, getting back to this thread, of what it means to be reconciled to God in Colossians 1, verses 21-23.

And you who are once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, Paul is here just echoing what we read earlier from Isaiah 59, that God's hand is not shortened, but your sins have separated Him from you. So, how are we alienated? We're alienated as Paul says here, by wicked works, by our sins. Same thing Isaiah said. Those have alienated us from God and made us enemies of God. But continuing on, yet now He has reconciled Jesus Christ.

He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in His sight. So again, we see the necessity of accepting and having faith in Jesus Christ's sacrifice to have our past sins forgiven and being reconciled to God through that death of Jesus Christ. And what happens next? Continuing on in what Paul explains here, he says, this happens if we continue in the faith. So we have to continue in the faith grounded and steadfast and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which you have heard, which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I, Paul, became a minister.

So what Paul is saying here plainly, we have to continue in that faith after accepting Jesus Christ's sacrificial death on our behalf. We have to continue not moving away, as he explains here, from what we have learned about the hope of the gospel of the Kingdom of God and how we can enter that kingdom through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Since faith is brought into the equation here, if we continue in the faith here, let's talk a little bit about the role of faith in this process and what this word faith means and what it meant to people at that time.

Let's start in Ephesians 2 and verse 8, a very key scripture here, which tells us, So faith in God's grace is necessary for our salvation. We're not saved without some action on our part, which includes, as we've seen so far, repentance.

It includes turning to God. It includes baptism, as we've seen earlier. But something else is involved here as well, and that is faith. And that is faith. That means believing, having faith in the sacrificial death, the supreme sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Let's talk a little bit about faith. Let's see. Do I want to cover this now? Actually, let's go on a little bit, and I'll touch on that in just a minute. So what does that faith, that belief, then lead to? Let's pick it up in Colossians 2, 11 and 12, or 11 through 13. It tells us, speaking of Jesus Christ, There's that theme again.

So we need to have faith in God, just as we have faith that Christ rose from the dead, and is saved. And we need to have that faith that we too will be saved, and being raised from the dead, just as Jesus Christ was raised from the grave through the resurrection. So we need to have faith that, yes, God's plan is going to work. That just as Jesus was raised from the grave, that he was raised and glorified, transformed into spirit, we have that same faith that we too will be raised from the dead and glorified, as we read about in 1 Corinthians 15. So we need to turn there and go through that for lack of time. But then Paul continues in verse 13, And so we believe through faith in this working of God, this miracle that he's carrying out in our lives. We believe that we are forgiven of our sins, and that we will be resurrected to eternal life, just as Jesus Christ was resurrected and restored to eternal life. And the obedience is necessary for continued spiritual understanding. This doesn't mean that obedience in our part entitles us to those things, because, again, it's grace and mercy. It's God's gift. It's not anything we can do to deserve any of that.

But he also expects us to do his part, because in this reconciliation process, God does his part. We've talked about that a lot, which is the sacrificial death of his son to reconcile us to him. But we have a part. We have a part to play in that reconciliation as well. We've talked about some of that. We've talked about repentance. We've talked about turning to God. And now we're talking about the role of faith in that. How does faith play into this? What does faith mean? To us today in English, the word faith basically is a very simplified version that just means to believe something. That's essentially all it means in people's consciousness today. To have faith in something means you believe it. In biblical times, faith was much, much deeper than that. It wasn't just a matter of belief. In the Bible, the concept of faith means that you are automatically expected to live out the implications of that belief. In other words, if you believe something, then you are obligated to act and to live your life according to that belief. There's absolutely no separation between the two. In our world today, we have what people believe, and we have how they live and how they act. All too often, there's a huge gap between the two of them. But faith and the biblical thinking, there is no separation between the two. They are so intertwined. What you believe is how you live. And how you live is what you believe. They are intertwined. They are inseparable in the Bible's use of faith here. A good summary of this is found in the book of James, chapter 2, again, a very familiar passage here. Was not Abraham our father justified by works when he offered Isaac his son on the altar? Do you see that faith was working together with his works, and by works, faith was made perfect? They are intertwined. They are inseparable in the life of Abraham, is the illustration that James used here. Here we see how faith is played out and how we live by using the example of Abraham. And anybody who really digs into this chapter, which we want for lack of time, James teaches that faith is more than just good thoughts, or thinking, believing, something that's nice. No, it demands that a believer, a Christian, prove his faith by his actions, by how he lives. We prove we have faith by how we live. After we accept Jesus Christ's sacrifice, we prove our faith by our works, by our actions, as James explains here. And as he concludes in verse 26, for as the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead also, because it's useless, because it's worthless. Because faith without any action on that doesn't do you any good, doesn't do anybody else any good, so it's useless. That's why James says it's dead. He also says, you might write down verse 19, he says, even the demons believe. The demons have faith. They have faith in God. They have faith God is carrying out his plan. Does it affect them in their mindset? No.

So you can believe whatever you want, but if you're not acting on it, if your life is not, if you don't live in accordance with that belief, what good is it? It's dead, as James worded it here. So just believing doesn't cut it. We have to live our life according to our faith. And that's why Paul says, over in 2 Thessalonians 1, verses 11 and 12, he says, He says, we constantly pray for you that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith.

So Paul is saying the same thing that James said, every act prompted by your faith. That's what demonstrates that your faith is alive and well and not dead. It's demonstrated in every act that you carry out. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you and you in him, according to what? According to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. So as we see here, good acts, good works, are actions that we carry out in our life. The way we live our life is prompted by our faith, our belief in what God is doing in us and through us. And this all works together, and as part of the same interrelated equation of these various concepts we've talked about, a faith of works, of actions, of forgiveness and mercy in God working out his purpose in our lives of transforming us to become like him. And our faith and subsequent obedience is a necessary part of receiving God's grace, as we saw here, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. And it's vital that everybody who trusts in God remember that we have to live a life of godliness after baptism, as Paul reminds us. Let's notice here's a passage of Scripture that is just jam-packed with meaning.

Titus 2, verses 11-14. How does it start off? What does it start talking about? Grace. For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might redeem us, and to be a God of God.

There's that word, redeem, or redemption again. From every lawless deed and purify for himself his own special people, zealous for good works. We see all of these concepts being brought in tight and together in this passage. Let's notice six bullet points. I'm not going to show these very long. If you want them all, you can write me about it later. Let's notice some bullet points that are brought out in here.

First of all, it is the grace of God that brings salvation. It's part of God's grace that brings salvation. This grace of God also teaches us that we are to deny ungodliness and worldly lusts and live soberly, righteously and godly. It transforms us to a different lifestyle, a different way of living, a way of living that is based on our faith. Third bullet point, this grace of God leads to an expectation of looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, of looking forward to Jesus Christ's return.

As pictured by the upcoming Feast of Trumpets in a few weeks here. And what happens at that time at the seventh trump, the last trump? What happens? The saints of God are raised and transformed and glorified to be like Jesus Christ. A couple of other bullet points in this passage here, these few verses, that Jesus willingly gave his life for us to redeem us, to pay a price to set us free from what?

From every lawless deed that enslaved us to sin and brought the death penalty on us. Another bullet point, the purpose of Jesus giving his life to redeem us was to purify for himself his own special people. That's why he did it, to redeem us, to purify for himself his own special people. And finally, having been redeemed and purified for Jesus Christ, where to be, as it said there, zealous for good works? All of these points are taken straight from these few verses here, Titus 2, 11-14. There are probably other points you could bring out. I just hit the more obvious ones here as well. So does it matter how we live after we are forgiven?

Absolutely. Absolutely. Because God looks at how we live, he looks at the works, the actions of our lives, he looks at how we treat people, how we treat one another. As he redeems us from our lawless deeds. He expects us to be growing, to be learning, to be developing. What is the bar that is expected of us? What's the bar? Matthew 5, 48. Really simple one. Be perfect.

Be perfect, therefore. How perfect does he want us to be? Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. Be perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect. That is the bar. That's the bar to be perfect in character, in nature, as God the Father is perfect. How is that possible? Humidly, it's impossible. There's no way any of us could do that.

But that's the bar, so how do we get there? We know we're not going to make it in this life, but hopefully at the resurrection, that will be how perfect we are. Well, that's only possible through one way, and that is through God living in us, through His Holy Spirit. Let's take a look at that. Let's look at Jesus Christ's last instruction to the apostles the night that He has betrayed. He'll be arrested later on that evening. So this is John 14, verses 16 and 17, and verse 23.

And He tells Him here, And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that he, or yet, may abide with you forever, the Spirit of Truth, which the world cannot receive, because it neither sees it nor knows it, but you know it, for it dwells with you, and will be in you. So He tells His followers here that God's Spirit, this other Comforter that He's going to send, the Helper, the Encourager, depending on which Bible version you use there, will live in you.

And we have in the past tended, and I've done this, I know, tended to simplify God's Spirit as the power of God. And that is true. It certainly is the power. There are a number of scriptures about this. You can read our booklet on the Trinity or Who is God and see those passages. But one aspect of that we may have overlooked a little bit is it's more than just the power of God. It is God's essence. It is part of God Himself within us. That's what God's Spirit is. It's part of His divine essence within us. His holiness, His character, His nature. It is part of God's nature living within us as a result of God's Spirit dwelling in us.

Continuing, verse 23, let's see that demonstrated here.

And other versions, you can look at it in several others, and I recommend you do. Others will translate this as we will make our dwelling with Him, or we will live with Him, or we will live in Him.

All of these are concepts that come into play here. Do you think that sounds too far-fetched? Initially I did, but then I thought about Galatians 2 and verse 20. And what does Paul say there? I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.

Christ lives in me. And the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God. There is that faith again, living by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. Again, we see a lot of these concepts we have talked about coming together here. But the part I want to point out is that he says very plainly, Christ lives in me.

And because of that, I have been crucified with Christ. I died with Christ. And my life is no longer my own. It is not me. It is Christ living in me, being transformed by God's nature, by the fruit of the Spirit that are produced in our lives. The fruits of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, the character in the nature of God. That is developed within us through that Spirit, being led by that Spirit, being transformed. So how and why do we attain that bar of perfection? We do that through surrendering to God's Spirit, working within us, allowing God the Father and Jesus Christ to live again within us, dwelling and living within us to help perfect us as they are perfect. So we are expected to become perfect, and we do that by putting away our old self, our old way of life, our old sins. And in 2 Peter 3 verse 18 tells us to grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. So we have to strive to live a life of righteousness as we are reconciled to God. That is part of the reconciliation process. God has done His part. He gave His only Son that man might have eternal life, and now we do our part, responding to that, being led by His Spirit. Being transformed.

So another question might come up. When we do repent, when we are baptized, when we have hands laid on us to receive God's Spirit, what sins are covered by Christ's blood? As we saw earlier, at baptism, God did forgive all of our past sins. Those are left in the grave there with our old self. That forgiveness is total, and this is very encouraging.

As David writes in Psalm 103 verse 12, How far are sins removed? As far as east is from the west. So far has He removed our transgressions, our sins from us. As far as east is from the west. I love living here in Colorado where you can see a hundred miles in every direction. You can see how far east is from the west here. But think of that on an infinite scale. Think of that on a cosmic scale as God does.

And that's how far He's removed our sins from us in our forgiveness and forgiving us of our sins. As we saw earlier in Romans 3 and verse 23, For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. That again is a blanket statement that covers all of us who have sinned and separated ourselves from God.

And it's not until we return to Him and become reconciled to Him, and accept Jesus Christ's sacrifice that things begin to change. And how do they change? Well, let's continue with what Paul says here. All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But then Paul continues, and our justified, there's that word again, justified, being made righteous, just.

And God cites freely how? By His grace. By His grace through the redemption, through the buying back that came through Jesus Christ. So once again, we see how this is all possible through God's grace, and through the blood of Jesus Christ. Verse 25, God presented Him as a sacrifice of atonement. Atonement's another word that we don't use in English today. But you can look it up in a dictionary, look up the origin of atonement, and it means at one.

At one-ment. What's that sound like that we've been talking about today? It's reconciliation. Becoming at one, being reconciled to God again. So God presented Jesus as a sacrifice of atonement or reconciliation, through faith in His blood and His sacrifice. He did this to demonstrate His justice, because in His forbearance, in His patience, He had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished.

There's the mercy again. He did it to demonstrate His justice at the present time, so as to be just, and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus. So again, the role of faith in there, those who have faith in Jesus. We have to believe and have faith that Jesus Christ's sacrifice will do this for us. That He died to pay for our sins and to lead us to repentance. And He never intended that we misconstrue grace and forgiveness as permission to continue in a life of sin in any way.

Instead, He taught, as we've seen earlier, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God. We have to live by every word of God from that point forward and complete surrender to Him.

What happens if we blow it to Him if we sin? Which we will, because we are human. Well, God provides the answer to that too through John 1 John 2 verses 1 through 6. My little children, I write to you that you may not sin. But if, or and if anyone does sin, which we are human, we are weak, we are fallible, we screw up, we blow it at times, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

So we are not supposed to sin, as we've seen many, many times. But ever when we do, Jesus Christ is there as our High Priest to intercede, so that the Father will again apply that sacrifice for our sins. Continuing, and He Himself is the propitiation—there's another long word that we have never heard, except we've read it in the Bible— propitiation means an atoning sacrifice, or a reconciling sacrifice, that reconciles us to God.

He is a propitiation, an atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. By this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments. He who says, I know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar. And the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in Him. And there's that word perfection again, that standard.

By this we know that we are in Him. He who says He abides in Him ought Himself also to walk just as He walked. As we see here, we are expected to walk as Jesus Christ walked, to live exactly as He lived.

As I've talked a number of times in the Gospels Bible studies, what is the purpose of a disciple? What is the goal of a disciple? The goal of a disciple is to become just like His Master, just like His Rabbi in every way. It's not to learn what the Rabbi knows, not to know what the Rabbi knows, but to become just like your Rabbi in every way. And that's why they lived with the Rabbi 24-7 there.

So that is how we learn to walk, just as He walked. So why do we need God's grace? Let's bring this to a conclusion here. Why do we need God's grace? Well, as we've seen, nothing that we can do can earn us forgiveness or salvation. Forgiveness and salvation are God's gift because of who and what God is, because He is a gracious God. And we are saved by that grace, as we see in Ephesians 2. Let's read a little bit further from where we left off earlier here.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. There's faith playing into that again. And that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God. Even the faith we have is a gift of God. Not of works, lest anyone should boast. Again, there's nothing we can do. Not enough money or wealth that any of us can have. There's nothing we have that God needs or wants other than our lives. But there's nothing we can do to earn that grace of God. It is a gift, but it doesn't end there.

And Paul goes on to say that as a result of our being saved by God's grace through faith, we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for what? For good works. For a transformed life. A different set of priorities. Not our own wants and needs, but the wants and needs of others. The wants and needs that God would have us carry out. Which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. So yes, grace is a gift of God, but we're still expected to live a life of righteousness after receiving that gift.

And the Bible is very clear and consistent in many, many scriptures. That salvation is a gift of God, but even though it is a gift, we are expected to obey God and live a life of good works if we are to receive that gift. Let's notice what Jesus Himself said about this, Matthew 7 and verse 21. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.

So there's something clearly that we have to do here. Certainly forgiveness and salvation are the gifts of God because of His grace toward us. And those gifts cannot be earned. But Jesus also tells us we won't turn there, but unless we repent, we will all likewise perish. That's what He told those whom the Tower of Siloam fell. He said, unless you repent, you will die like this. So if we don't repent, we will perish. So we have to accept that gift of God, that gift of God's grace, that gift of salvation, and then act and live accordingly.

Through repentance, we don't earn salvation, but repentance is a condition, it is a prerequisite for that salvation. We have to seek to have our sins forgiven. So, yes, we do need God's grace for that forgiveness. But there's nothing that we can do to earn that. It is God's grace, His mercy. And then He expects us to live and act accordingly, and thankfulness for that gift. A good way to describe God's grace would be to think of it as God's unearned and undeserved favor. But it goes far beyond that because it's actually everything that is motivated by God's love.

And His mercy, and His kindness, and His love toward us, especially those who accept His offer to enter into that relationship and be reconciled to Him. It encompasses all of God's grace, all of God's goodness, everything good that He does that is directed toward us, that He graciously gives to us. I'd like to close with a quote that somebody sent me after hearing I was working on this.

Sent this to me from the book, Seeking Him, and how this book defines grace. It says, quote, If a young man is killed through some random act of violence, and his father tracks down the guilty person and kills him, we would call that vengeance. If, however, the father calls the police and the murderer is arrested, tried, convicted, and executed, we'd call that justice. If at the trial the father pleads for the guilty man's life to be spared, and the judge and jury consent, we'd call that mercy.

Now imagine this. In addition to pleading for the guilty one to be spared, the father actually appeals to the judge to release the offender into his custody and care. And miraculously gaining approval, the father takes the young man into his heart and home, adopts him, and takes him, and loves him as his own son. That would be grace. And that is what God does for us through grace.