What Are the Obligations That Come With Grace?

Earlier this year, I gave a series of sermons on the subject of grace, as I was writing a booklet on that for the United Church of God. That booklet is consumed most of the last year of my life and is now off to the printer. It was scheduled to be printed Thursday of this week and should be bound and shipped this coming week to the home office. You should be receiving a copy of it here in the mail within a couple of weeks here between now and the feast. But there was one aspect of the subject of grace that I did not cover in that series of sermons. That is the subject that I'll be covering today.

I was still researching that aspect at the time, so I did not cover it at that time. But that is the topic of today's sermon. And that is the obligations that come with grace. What are the obligations that come with grace? Since we are the recipients of God's grace, does that grace come with strings attached, you might say? What does God expect of us who are the recipients of His grace?

Does He expect anything in return? And what does the Bible tell us about this? So let's first ask the question, is grace free? Is grace free? Is the idea of free grace biblical? How would you answer that if somebody asked you that particular question?

Well, as we saw in that earlier sermon series there, grace is indeed a free gift of God. In that sense, it is free. It is God's free grace, free gift of grace. God, as Jesus Christ said, sends rain on the just and the unjust. I talked about the example of ancient Israel in the Exodus. Who were the Israelites at that time? Well, they've been in slavery for a number of generations. They were about as pagan as their Egyptian overlords. They were worshipping Egyptian gods.

They were a group of pagan idol-worshipping slaves, which we see as soon as they escape and go out into the desert. Moses goes up and doesn't come back when expected as he's getting the Ten Commandments. What do they do? They create an Egyptian bull god and start worshipping that with sexual connotones and activities and so on like that. But yet God still extended his grace to them. Grace is a reflection of God's loving nature and character. But the fact that grace is a free gift from God has been misunderstood, it's been misapplied, it's been misused, by people who argue that there are no requirements for continuing in God's grace.

And this abuse of the idea, the concept of God's grace, started very early, only a few decades after Jesus Christ's death and resurrection and the founding of the early church. False teachers very early on began spreading the idea that God's grace made obedience to his laws unnecessary. And because God's grace does bring forgiveness, they argue that we can continue in sin and God will forgive us no matter what we do, no matter how corrupt or degenerate we get.

And that ties into the common idea of once saved, always saved, or the eternal security of the believer. But are those concepts accurate or not? Well, this whole idea that you can continue in sin because God will always forgive us and extend grace is a hideous perversion of God's grace. Jude, the half-brother of Jesus Christ, blasted this lie in his epistle to believers in Jude, verses 3 and 4. This is from the New International Version. And he says, I felt I had to write and urge you to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to the saints. For certain men whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you.

So these are people who had infiltrated the church with this abominable teaching. And Jude goes on to say, they are godless men who change the grace of our God into a license. What is license? License is permission. A driver's license gives you permission to drive legally here. So they turn the grace of God into license or permission for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only sovereign and Lord. So Jude here tells us that these godless men were abusing the mercy and the forgiveness that comes through God's grace by turning it into license for immorality, for permission to sin, in other words.

And by continuing in sin rather than abandoning an evil lifestyle and teaching others to do the same as they were doing here, they were, as Jude wrote, denying Jesus Christ by their actions. They were turning their back on the sacrifice of our Lord and Master who gave his life to pay the penalty for the sins of all mankind. So by their actions, they are denying Jesus Christ's sacrifice and everything that came with that. And those who would make the same argument about grace, permission to sin, are actually just perpetuating the same lie that was condemned by Jude back in the very first century.

So clearly this is not what God intended or the biblical writers intended by grace. Grace clearly does not mean that we are now free to do whatever we want because we have received God's forgiveness. I'd like to go back and do a quick review of a very important point covered in the last of those series of sermons on grace.

And this helps us understand when Paul is using this word, grace, which is charis, in Greek, C-H-A-R-I-S. That's a word that is commonly translated as grace. But what did it mean here? How did Paul understand this word when he used it? He uses it far more often than any other biblical writer. It appears 156 times in the New Testament, mostly in the writings of the Apostle Paul when he's writing to or speaking to a predominantly Gentile audience.

Now Paul has two audiences. He has the Jewish or Hebrew audience and an audience of Gentiles. These are the Romans, these are the Greeks, the Gentiles, many of whom are wanting to know more about the God of the Bible, the God of the Jews. So what did this word charis mean to them? When Paul uses this word, it had a very specific meaning. And it's quite fascinating when we understand the background of this word and why Paul choose to use this particular word.

And I must say, when I learned this about a year ago, first came across this concept, it just totally blew me away because it makes such perfect sense when we understand this. So to understand the significance of this word and why Paul chooses to use this word of God, of our Creator and Maker, we need to understand something about the Roman culture of that day that is very different from our culture today. It's very, very different. And if we don't understand that, we totally miss what Paul is trying to teach us about grace by using this particular word.

So I'm going to read a fairly long passage from an academic paper written by a scholar by the name of David De Silva. And he is a scholar, teaches Greek language and teaches about first century biblical culture. And it's quite fascinating here. He writes about contrasting the way we do things today with the way things were commonly done in the Greco-Roman world of the first century here.

So I'll start quoting from him here. Again, this is from an academic paper. He says, quote, We tend to get what we need or want by means of buying and selling, where exchange is precisely measured out ahead of time. And he's talking about today. We buy and sell things commonly. He says, continuing, You do not leave a department store owing the salesperson a favor, nor does the cashier at a restaurant owe me a good turn for the money I gave after dinner.

When we seek employment, most often we are hired on the basis of our skills and experience by people we do not know. We prepare for employment not so much by cultivating connections, although this is still useful, as by equipping ourselves with the knowledge and skills that, we hope, a potential employer will recognize as giving us the necessary resources to do the job well. When we fall into hard times, there's a massive public welfare system in place, access to which is offered not as a personal favor, but as a bureaucratized right of the poor or unemployed.

If an alien wants citizenship and the rights that go along with that, he or she applies and undergoes the same process as every other naturalized citizen. It is not a favor granted personally by an individual in power. So what he's saying here is, in our world today, our transactions aren't based on who we know, but we have an institutionalized system where things are bought and sold, and there is not a personal obligation that goes along with those exchanges there.

This is very, very different. Then he goes on to explain how things were done in the first century, the world in which Paul wrote about this word, Charis, translated grace. So continuing with a quote from his article, The world of the authors and readers of the New Testament, however, was a world in which personal patronage was an essential means of acquiring access to goods, protection, or opportunities for employment and advancement. Not only was it essential, it was expected and publicized.

The giving and receiving of favors was, according to a first century participant, the quote, practice that constitutes the chief bond of human society. End quote. This is from the Roman author, Sinica, who says that this practice of patronage constitutes the chief bond of human society. So again, things weren't just necessarily bought and sold. It depended on who you knew, who could give you favors, what they could do for you, and what you could do for them in return.

It wasn't like our highly structured capitalism system is today. So continuing on from his paper, to enter their world and hear their words more authentically, we have to leave behind our cultural norms and ways of doing things and learn a quite different way of managing resources and meeting needs. For everyday needs, there was the market in which buying and selling provided access to daily necessities.

For anything outside of the ordinary, one sought out the person who possessed or controlled access to what one needed and received what one needed as a quote, unquote, favor.

So what he's saying here is that if you, you know, for your daily bread, your food, that you needed, vegetables, meat, things like that, you'd go to the local market. You'd go to the local Walmart, equivalent of that day. And that's where you'd buy the food you needed on a daily basis. Your bread, your vegetables, your meat, your things like that. Your bowls, your cooking plates, your sandals, your belts, your clothing, and so on. You'd go to the marketplace and buy that, do that. The super Walmart of the day, whichever city had its own marketplace there. So for routine things, that's where you went and you bought and sold very much as it's done today. But if your needs were different, if you needed something different, if you needed a job, if you needed a loan or something, then what do you do? They don't have banks at that time like we have banks today. If you need money to start a business, to, let's say, you were in a drought and your crops failed that year, and you and your family are going to starve, and you need money to tide you over, what are you going to do? You had to go to other means. You couldn't go to a marketplace and do that. So this is where this system becomes very, very important. So continuing with his article here, The ancient world from the classical through the Roman periods was one of greatly limited access to goods. The greater part of the property, wealth, and power was concentrated into the hands of the few. And access to these goods was through personal connection rather than bureaucratic channels. The kinds of benefits sought from patrons depended on the need or desires of the petitioner. They might include plots of land, or distributions of money to get started in business, or to supply food after a crop failure or a failed business venture.

And then Seneca, Roman writer of the first century, describes the type of favors a patron would give. He said, quote, help one person with money, so somebody needs a loan, another with credit, somebody wealth, somebody needs a cash in and out, somebody else needs a loan, another with influence, influence say in getting a job, another with advice, somebody's dealing with a dilemma, just doesn't know what to do, so you help in that way, and another with sound precepts, again, good advice on what to do. So this is the way Seneca, first century writer, describes this concept here of Charis. Charis translated grace. Continuing with this academic paper, if the patron granted the petition, the petitioner would become the client of the patron and a potentially long-term relationship would begin. This relationship would be marked by the mutual exchange of desired goods and services, the patron being available for assistance in the future, and this is very important, the client doing everything in his or her power to enhance the fame and honor of the patron. In other words, publicizing the benefit that he had received and showing respect and honor to the patron, remaining loyal to the patron and providing services whenever the opportunity arose. So this is a scholarly summary of what this patronage system, it's also called the patron-client system, the patron is the one who is giving gifts to the client, another person who needs something, and they become the client of the patron. You can see today, if you own a business, you have clients. By the way, I think, Brian, you probably need to start hiring smarter employees there for your company there. Just a word of advice here, free advice. But no, that was called the patron-client relationship because all the money, the power, the influence, is concentrated in a very thin slice of the upper crust of Roman, Greco-Roman society. And everybody else is way down the ladder. So if you need a loan, if you need money, kind of circumstances that were described here, you go to somebody who is wealthy and you ask for a gift from them. Gift of money, gift of a loan, gift of influence, gift of help in finding a job or buying some land or something like that. So this is what is being talked about here. And the patron gives it, more or less, out of his generosity, he has the wealth to do that.

But the obligation, and this ties back with the title of this sermon today, the client, something is expected of the client in return, the recipient of this gift. They are expected to do everything in his or her power to enhance the fame and honor of the patron, of the one who gave those gifts.

So consider the client. The client is poor. If they borrow the money to start a business, there's no way that they have the money to pay that back. The amount is just too much. They won't be able to do that for many, many years.

But what they can do is show their gratefulness, and showing absolute support for and loyalty to their patron. So again, we have somebody who is very wealthy and generous, who gives gifts to somebody who can never repay that debt. And it wasn't expected they would ever repay the debt monetarily.

What they would do is repay the debt in other ways, by their actions, by their loyalty, by their faithfulness. So this Greek word that is used for this gift that is given from a patron to a client is this word, caris. Caris, the word that is commonly translated, grace, in the Bible, in the New Testament here.

And again, this is the same word we've been talking about during this series of sermons on grace, the word translated grace. So when Paul uses this picture and he talks about grace, what is he conveying to us? His audience would have perfectly understood it because they're living in that culture. They know this is the way things are done.

You have patrons who give caris to those who are less well off and who can never pay them back here. So the picture Paul paints is there is a generous benefactor who enjoys sharing what he has with others because he is kind and generous. And he gives caris, he gives grace to people who can never repay him.

And this is a picture that was, again, very common in that society, in that culture there. And literally everybody knew about it. That's just the way you got things done in that culture of the day. And this is the picture that he uses to teach us about God.

That God is the patron who gives caris, who gives grace to his clients, who can never repay him. Who are the clients? Well, that's us. That's you. That's me. That's every one of us. We are the ones who can never repay God for the wonderful gifts that he has given us.

But, again, back to the subject of the sermon, what is the obligation of those who have received these generous gifts from a kind and merciful and generous patron? What is our obligation? They can never repay it. They'll never have the means to repay what they've been given because they don't have the means to do that.

So what is their obligation? Well, their obligation is summed up in a word Paul uses, which is pistis. P-I-S-T-I-S. Do you recognize the word? It's the Greek word that is translated faith in the New Testament. Faith.

A better word in English would probably be faithfulness because, for us, faith is belief. But the word actually means much more than that because, as I've explained in a number of messages before, in biblical uses in Hebrew, if you talk about faith, if you believe something, there's an absolute obligation on you to act on that belief.

If you believe there is a God, then obviously you are going to act on that belief. You are going to obey that God. You are going to seek to worship and honor that God. So faithfulness is actually a better word there because, if we believe God exists, then obviously we have to be faithful to that God.

That's more the idea in which Paul uses this word faith or pistis here.

This is really an exact parallel to the patron-client relationship that Paul used that existed throughout the Roman Empire.

This is why Paul uses that analogy there to teach us about God's love, about His mercy toward us, about His generosity toward us, and our obligation to Him in return.

Paul's use of the words carris and pistis show us that we have a generous and loving and kind God who gives us carris, who gives us grace, who gives us gifts of many kind, gifts that we don't deserve and are so valuable we can never pay them back.

Our obligation in return is to show pistis or faith or faithfulness to God in return for the grace that He has extended to us.

So again, faith is not just believing there is a God. That's not what faith is. Faithfulness would be a much better term here.

So God is a loving and generous giver who has given us gifts we can never repay.

And as a result of that, we are absolutely obligated to show in return our loyalty and devotion to Him as our grateful response.

And we do anything and everything that He asks of us.

Everybody understood that at that time. That's what faith is as the Apostle Paul used a word there.

And again, quoting from the Roman writer, Seneca, about how this was understood by everybody, he wrote, quote, not to return gratitude for benefits is a disgrace and the whole world counts it as such.

So if you had received a gift from a patron to not show appreciation for that and to return gratitude for that, you were viewed as a disgusting and worthless human being. A waste of good oxygen there. You had no respect. Everybody just viewed you as utterly contemptible.

So it's commonly understood that if you received a gift of Charis from somebody, you repaid it by your faithfulness to the one who gave you that gift.

And this too has obvious parallels in our relationship with God.

That is true of us today because having been the recipients of God's grace, which we are, and favors and gifts he has given us, which we can never repay in this life, we do have an obligation. And that is our utter and complete loyalty and devotion and gratitude to God, our great giver, and to do anything that he asks of us.

That is what real faith or faithfulness or pistis is, as Paul used the term.

And to more or less understand where we are legally before God, before he calls us and forgives us, imagine that you are called before God's throne and asked, how do you plead? How do you plead that the charge is against you of this sin and this sin and this sin and this sin and this sin and so on?

Every sin you've ever committed, how do you plead?

Well, could you plead not guilty?

Well, no, you couldn't because God has all the evidence. He's got the video evidence. He's got the audio evidence.

He's got the eyewitnesses to every sin you've ever committed. He's got the DNA evidence.

So he's got all the evidence that shows and proves that we're guilty beyond the shadow of a doubt.

He has it all there and there's no question that we are guilty of those sins that we have committed.

So if you can't dispute the evidence, you can't plead not guilty, can you plead for justice?

Well, you can, but all the evidence says you're guilty. So if you plead for justice, sorry, you've got the death penalty coming to you. That is justice. Justice is the penalty that's carried out there.

So you can't really plead in that regard. You can try to make excuses for your behavior.

You can try that, but it's not going to do you any good because you have no excuse.

And you can plead to try to justify your sins, but can you?

Not really, because there's no way to justify our sins.

So our sins are inexcusable, they're unjustifiable, and unjustified as well.

And that is where God's grace and where God's mercy comes in because we're guilty, no doubt about it.

We have no excuses. We have no justification. And we can't ask for justice because justice means the death penalty is carried out.

So all we can do is store ourselves on the mercy of the court, you might say, on God's mercy.

And that's what repentance is.

In a sense, repentance is admitting you're wrong, you have no excuses, no justification, you are dead wrong, and you throw yourself on God's mercy.

And ask for his forgiveness and for his help moving forward.

And we know that we need the sacrifice of Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins, if we are to avoid that death penalty that we earned because of our sins.

And instead, we receive God's priceless gift of eternal life, and that is grace.

All aspects of that process are grace, as we'll see here.

So how do we respond then to God's mercy and approach his throne of grace to receive that kind of grace?

The Apostle Paul wrote to the Ephesian members in Ephesians 2 and verses 8 and 9, and this is a verse many people misunderstand here, but Paul wrote, By grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works lest any one should boast.

So Paul says very clearly here that eternal life comes as a result of God's grace and mercy.

It is his gift. It is not something we can earn, not something we deserve by any stretch of the imagination, and none of us will ever be able to boast that we have earned the gift of salvation and forgiveness.

None of us can ever argue that we deserve the gift of eternal life.

We can't do that because what we deserve is death, eternal death, not life.

But let's add some balance to this equation here, because God is not only a God of justice, but also a God of mercy.

Let's notice the last part of the second commandment, Exodus 20, verse 6.

God describes himself as showing mercy to thousands, but who are those thousands?

To those who love me and keep my commandments.

Those are the ones who receive God's mercy.

Those who love him and keep his commandments. So God balances justice on the one hand with an insistence on obeying him, on keeping his commandments.

And also by considering what is in the person's heart.

God is not willing that any should perish. We read about that in 2 Peter 3 and verse 9.

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some count slackness.

But his long suffering toward us, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

So this is God's attitude. He doesn't want anyone to die.

He says, well, I won't go there, but God doesn't want anyone to die.

He wants everyone to come to repentance and to receive his gift of eternal life.

And a lot of that depends on our attitude.

And we can be thankful that God does consider our attitude because a person who is willing to sin no more is eligible for God's mercy rather than condemnation.

You might think of the example of the woman caught in adultery in John 8 and verses—I'll just pick up the last part of the story there—in verses 10 and 11.

The woman is caught in the act of adultery and the men are standing around ready to stone her. And Jesus confronts them, which we've covered before in a previous sermon here. And Jesus stood up again and said to the woman, after everybody leaves, he says, where are your accusers? Didn't even one of them condemn you?

No, Lord, she said. And Jesus said, neither do I. Go and sin no more.

So God, here Jesus Christ, extends grace to her. He saved her life, literally, from being stoned to death right there on the spot.

And that is God's approach. He extends mercy. He wants to extend mercy because he's a loving and generous and merciful God.

But it comes with a string attached. Go and sin no more.

Go and sin no more. And there's a lesson here as to the right response. To God's grace and mercy. The right approach, after we are forgiven, is to sin no more. To sin no more.

Grace has to lead us to a change in our thinking and action, which is known as repentance.

And we should obey God's laws according to their full spiritual intent, and not by just doing the bare minimum to get by.

You might think about the examples Jesus gave in the Sermon on the Mount. He explained that not only, to give one example, should we not murder, which is violating the sixth commandment, you shall not murder, but we should not even view or treat other people with contempt, which violates the spirit of the commandment against murder. And he followed that up with another example, pointing out that God's command against committing adultery extends to lusting for another human being, since this is committing adultery in the heart and in the mind there.

And through the remainder of this chapter of Matthew 5 there, he gives other examples showing that he is certainly not abolishing God's law, but rather was expanding and extending its spiritual intent, requiring an even higher level of obedience than strictly the letter of the law.

He takes it from just the letter of the law and makes it higher.

Makes it higher. We've talked various times, you've no doubt heard in sermons before, about the Pharisees building fences around the law, so people wouldn't even get close enough to breaking the law.

Well, Jesus does the same thing. Jesus builds fences around his law. We see two examples right here.

It's not just a matter of not killing somebody, but if you just have contempt for them and hate them, you've violated the law.

If you lust after another person to have sex with them, you have violated his commandment against adultery.

So Jesus builds fences around the law to keep us from breaking them, because sin starts in the mind and in the human heart here.

And throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus shows that God's law is our continual guide toward truly righteous thinking and behavior.

And that law helps define what it truly is to be a follower of Jesus Christ, to be a true Christian.

So it is God's grace and mercy that allows us to be pardoned for our sins when we repent and accept the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and are baptized and receive his Spirit, and then we receive that promise of eternal life that comes with this.

And grace, as we saw in the earlier sermons there, encompasses much more than just forgiveness of sins.

It includes the gift of God's Holy Spirit to help us obey God's law, which defines the standards that he expects us to live by.

It refers to all of the free and undeserved gifts of God.

It includes his help in initially calling us and turning us from the way of sin and leading us to his truth and his way of life, which is repentance. And it includes forgiveness through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, and ultimately includes the greatest gift of all, which is eternal life in his kingdom.

Let's turn back now to Acts 2 and the founding of the church there on the Feast of Pentecost.

And many among the crowds then were convicted when they heard how their sins, how they were also guilty, for the death, for the crucifixion of the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

And they asked Peter and the other apostles what they needed to do.

And Peter's response was very clear there in Acts 2.38. Repent and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission or the forgiveness of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

And then Paul added something else here in verse 39.

For the promise is to you and to your children and to all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.

So God doesn't call everybody. God does call people by His grace.

And that is an important part of grace as well.

Paul tells us, or we're in 2 Timothy 1 in verse 9, He writes of God, who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace, which was given to us in Christ Jesus.

So the fact that you are all sitting here today tells us you've been called by God's grace.

And that is a wonderful gift of grace, but again, He isn't calling everyone now.

Paul also writes, Romans 11 in verse 5, The NIV, at this present time, there is a remnant, a small group, that is chosen by grace.

It's not time now for God's grace to be poured out on the entire world.

That will come later, as we'll see a little bit later here.

So he says, there is a remnant chosen by grace, and how are they chosen?

They're chosen by God's grace.

And what are those who are chosen chosen for?

Well, they're chosen for an incomparable, almost incomprehensible future.

And what is that future? Paul tells us about it again, Ephesians 1, verses 4-6. This is from the Good News Translation.

He writes, Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be His through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before Him.

Because of His love, God had already decided that through Jesus Christ, He would make us His children.

This was His pleasure and His purpose.

Let us praise God for His glorious grace, for the free gift He gave us in His dear Son.

So we receive that eternal inheritance of eternal life through grace.

Through grace.

And what is that inheritance? We can go through many scriptures. I'll just show one or two. In Revelation 21, verse 7, God tells us, He who overcomes shall inherit all things, and I will be His God, and He will be my Son.

So how do we become the sons or the daughters or the children of God?

Well, Paul tells us, Galatians 3, verse 26, again from the New Living Translation, You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus.

And this word, faith, here is pistis, the same word that we've talked about.

Through our faith or through our faithfulness in Christ Jesus.

That's how we become the children of God, is through showing that faithfulness and recognizing the grace that God has extended to us and showing our faithfulness.

An acknowledgement of that wonderful grace that has been extended to us.

And we do that through, again, our total devotion to God.

Another passage here, John 1, verse 12, tells us something very similar here.

And that is that, As many as received Him, Jesus Christ, to them He gave the right to become children of God to those who believe in His name.

And this word, believe, here is the verb form of this word, pistis.

It's the verb form, same meaning, same word, same meaning of faithfulness and being faithful.

So, to those who believe in His name, to those who are faithful to God in His name. In other words, pistis is a noun and the word pistuo, here, is the verb form of that. So, again, we become the children of God.

We are children of God when we show in our lives the loyalty and the devotion and the gratitude and the absolute dedication and acknowledgement of the grace that God has shown to us.

So, again, what should our reaction be to God's grace?

What should it motivate us to do?

As we understand from the meanings of these two words, Charis and pistis here, as Paul used them, grace must motivate us to gratitude and complete loyalty to the God who gave us grace.

And in return, we serve Him with all of our being.

We see this brought out in a number of Bible passages. I'll quote just a few of them here. 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 10. And here Paul talks about the role of grace in his life.

And he says, but whatever I am now, it is all because God poured out His special favor.

And it's the word Charis here, His grace, because God poured out His grace on me, and not without results.

For I have worked harder than any of the other apostles, yet it was not I but God who was working through me by His grace.

So the grace of God led Paul to change from a man who was a hateful, bitter, angry man who persecuted the church, who sent church members off, had them jailed, had husbands and wives and families torn apart, with sometimes those members being executed, persecuted the church, traveled around to other places, trying to stamp out Christianity.

But God's grace made him a very different person.

He describes himself—I don't have this passage in here—as the worst of all sinners, because he knew what kind of angry and bitter and hateful and murderous man he was before God's calling, having been responsible for the death of church members. When Stephen is stoned, Paul is standing by approving of that murder, that cold-blooded murder, of the deacon Stephen here.

But he knows that grace changed him from one who persecuted the church to one who proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ in the kingdom of God and led him to totally dedicate his life with this whole being. It led him completely and totally giving his life over to God as a slave. We've talked about that in a series of sermons on slavery. Paul starts nearly every one of his epistles. Paul, a servant of God—the word means slave. Paul, a slave of God and Jesus Christ. And that dedication and faithfulness didn't end until his dying breath, when he is beheaded in Rome.

It's a powerful example. He gave everything he had, including his own life, in response to God's grace.

And that is what God's grace should look like in our lives as well.

So God's word does clearly spell out what the life of a person transformed by God's grace should look like. And again, Paul, the writer who writes more about grace than any other biblical writer, plainly spells it out for us. Another passage, 2 Corinthians 9, verse 8, he says, So grace, Paul says here, gives us everything we need so that we can, quote, have an abundance for every good work.

So grace should clearly produce good works in our lives. We're not saved by those works, as we read earlier here, but Paul says clearly, we have an obligation to produce works in our lives as a result of grace. And this is stated even more clearly. Let's see.

Actually, I'm going to skip over that one here.

You might write it in your notes. I, for some reason, didn't have it here in a slide. Ephesians 2, verses 9 and 10 says, So for God's handiwork, we are expected to do God's works here. Good works, rather. And that is our purpose. That is our reason for being, after we are called and receive God's Spirit. We are shaped and molded by God's hands. That's what handiwork means there. Becoming a new creation in Jesus Christ is exhibited by a life of good works. And Paul also understood that God's grace in our lives has very specific goals and purposes that should show up in the life of Christians. Let's notice what he wrote in Titus, verses 2, 11 through 14. This is from the Christian Standard Bible. And we'll go through and break this down and see what grace does in the life of a Christian.

Paul writes to Titus 2, verse 11, The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people. So we see, first of all, the grace of God brings salvation. As we've talked about, every aspect, God's calling is by God's grace. God's repentance is by God's grace. His gift of His Holy Spirit, which we receive through baptism and the laying on of hands, is through God's grace. The transformed life we live, being led by that Spirit, is by God's grace. And ultimately, our gift of eternal life that we receive is by God's grace. So the grace of God brings salvation. Next verse, verse 12, instructing us to deny godliness and worldly lusts and to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way in the present age. So here, the grace of God instructs us, or teaches us, to deny godlessness and worldly lusts. As it says here. Picking up with verse 13, So the grace of God instructs us to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way while we await our great hope. of the appearing of Jesus Christ. So this is what we're to do while we await Jesus Christ's return, to live in a sensible, righteous, and godly way while we wait for that event. Continuing on to verse 14, So Jesus Christ came not to free us from the law, from any obligation to God, but to redeem us, to buy us back, to pay the ultimate price, which he did through his sacrificial death, for our lawlessness, sparing us from the penalty of eternal death. So Jesus Christ, it says here, Paul says, And having been redeemed and purified for Christ, we are to be zealous for good works.

And one final point here, verse 14, Jesus Christ came not to—excuse me, that's the wrong slide, so.

Yeah, so after Paul goes through and talks about all these wonderful things that happen through grace, he tells Titus—personal instruction here—he tells Titus, personally, proclaim these things. In other words, teach these things to your congregations. Teach these things, proclaim these things, encourage and rebuke with all authority. So this is so important that Paul specifically tells Titus, hey, you, pay attention, be sure, and teach these things to the churches which you oversee as a shepherd, as a shepherd over God's flock.

So many, many things here, wonderful things that come about by the grace of God, which is how Paul started this section here. And this is so incredibly different from the common conception of grace that frees us from doing anything that allows us to do whatever we want to after receiving God's grace. No, it is very specific. It has a very specific purpose and very specific expectations of grace, of being the recipients of God's grace, as Paul spells out here. And all of this, of course, ties back in with God's ultimate plan and purpose, which is to give us eternal life in His kingdom that we can be a part of His family forever.

And this great promise will be fulfilled at Jesus Christ's return. As Paul foretold in 1 Corinthians 15, Regis, verses 51 through 53, from the New Living Translation, We will not all die, but we will all be transformed. It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown, for when the trumpet sounds, those who have died, will be raised to live forever.

And we who are living will also be transformed, for our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die. Our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies. So this will be the ultimate fulfillment of God's grace.

The ultimate fulfillment of God's grace. And the Apostle Peter specifically tells us this in 1 Peter 1 and verse 13, again from the New International Version. He tells us to keep our minds focused on this wonderful future. And he says, Therefore, with minds that are alert and fully sober, sent your hope on the grace to be brought to you when Jesus Christ is revealed and is coming. So this, again, is the ultimate fulfillment of God's grace, the greatest manifestation of God's grace when Jesus Christ is revealed and is coming, when the saints are transformed into spirit beings, and when the whole earth is finally transformed and by the kingdom of God coming to earth and receiving the opportunity, then all of mankind will have the opportunity to receive God's grace and His gift of salvation.

But Peter then goes on to say something. Again, there are strings attached. Verse 14, it continues, As obedient children do not conform to the easel evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance, but just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do. For it is written, Be holy because I am holy. So what is the standard that God expects of us? Nothing less than holiness. Nothing less than holy. Be holy because I am holy.

This is what God says. And this is what Paul says explicitly in 2 Timothy 1 and verse 9, again, from the New Living Translation. Here Paul points out that for us to live a holy life leading to salvation is what God has planned for us from the very beginning. And he says, For God saved us and called us to live a holy life, a life dedicated to Him, to His use, to His purpose, to His will in our lives. He did this not because we deserved it, but because that was His plan from the beginning of time to show us His grace through Jesus Christ.

So again, God's grace is an integral part of all of this, of our calling, of our conversion, of our ultimate inheritance of eternal life in God's kingdom. Grace is intertwined with it every step along the way. It's all a part of God's grace. And as we have seen, our lives are all God showing His tremendous grace in our lives through one blessing after another, as God has worked with us from our calling up to where we are and where we will be.

But as we know, it's not all a bed of roses, is it? God never says His path will be easy. Jesus Christ said the path that we follow is a narrow and difficult path that few find, very few find in this life. But He does say it will be worth it. And Paul, who was imprisoned, who was beaten, who was stoned to within an inch of his life, many times for his faith and dedication to the job God had given him to do, was able to stay positive even in the midst of all of this. And how could he stay so positive? Because he kept his mind focused in the right place. Romans 8, verses 18 and 19 and 28.

He wrote, for I consider that the suffering of this present time are not worthy, that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us. For the earnest expectation of the creation eagerly waits for the revealing of the sons of God.

At Jesus Christ's return. And skipping down to verse 28, we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. And again, that calling is a part of God's grace.

And what Paul says here is life will be a struggle as we struggle against sins, against the pulls of the flesh, against the temptations, against swimming upstream in a world that is dead set on rejecting God and increasingly hostile to God and His way of life.

But this is nothing new. It's always been that way. You could go back and read Hebrews 11. It's been that way for all of God's servants throughout the centuries. And Hebrews 11 goes through many examples of courageous men and women who persevered against great odds and sometimes were killed, often were killed, paid that cost of their lives with that.

And they were able to do this with God's help.

And God does promise that help. Hebrews 4 and verse 16, again, the New Living Translation, tells us, So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive His mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most.

And I really like the way this translation puts it. There we will find mercy and find grace to help us when we need it most.

And we all know that in life there are times when we need God's grace most. Times are just like that.

So we come before the throne of a gracious God to receive His gracious help at those times when we need it the most.

And that is very comforting, very encouraging.

Similar passage, 1 Peter 5 and verse 10, the New International Version, says, And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you, and make you strong and firm and steadfast.

So here we have a promise from the one whom Peter calls the God of all grace, that he will make us strong and firm and steadfast. And he will do this, why? Because he is a gracious God. Because he is full of grace and mercy and love.

And another place where we see this promise of encouragement and strength is in 2 Thessalonians 2, verses 16 and 17.

May our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who loved us and by His grace gave us eternal encouragement and good hope, encourage your hearts and strengthen you in every good deed and word.

So again, we see here that God wants to give us His grace. And along with that grace, He wants to give us encouragement and hope and to strengthen us in every good deed.

And word, as Paul wrote here. And all of this why? Also we can become more like Him and more like His Son Jesus Christ and word and deed.

And that is a way we become His children and enter the kingdom of God.

So as we walk, and as we walk with God, relying on Him to help us, as we've seen in these passages, we ourselves then become the instruments of God's grace to bless others.

As we reflect God's nature, God's character in changing our lives and being led by God's Spirit.

We return grace to Him in grateful thanks and in service and in good works as we've covered today, becoming more and more like Him.

And as we receive and repay God's grace in our good works and helping others, we come to reflect His loving and merciful and graceful character in nature in every way.

And I'll close here in Hebrews 12 and verse 28.

Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken, let us have grace.

Let us have grace by which we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear.

So God's promise of His kingdom for us is sure.

And the only way to lose that promise is for us to give up on it, through neglect or through willful sin or rejection of Him.

But in the meantime, what do we do?

We become people of grace ourselves, showing in our lives the graceful nature and character of God as we become a holy people.

So in conclusion, let us deeply appreciate the depth of God's grace for us and what that means in every aspect of our lives, and put into practice the way of life that He expects of each of us in return.