Growing in Grace.
2 Peter 3:18 “But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and forever! Amen.”
If you’ve ever tried to grow spiritually – to change old sinful habits; to know and love and serve and worship God more fully and more deeply; to pray more; to understand & apply scripture more; to repent – turn away from sin and live unto righteousness; to be more committed and more devoted to Jesus;
If you’ve ever tried to grow spiritually and if you have any degree of spiritual self-awareness, you are acutely aware of two things:
Change is needed;
Change is hard.
Change is needed: You look in the mirror of your soul and you see some ugly.
You see what is in you that isn’t of Jesus; that doesn’t reflect his beauty and love and light and life; you see the ugly remnants of the old self of sin – the self-centeredness; the foolish pride; the futile rebellion; the things that bring destruction rather than life; misery rather than joy; hatred rather than love; slavery rather than freedom; turmoil rather than peace; division rather than unity and distance rather than intimacy;
and you see that, because, even though you are new creation in Jesus; even though fully forgiven in Jesus; even though beloved child of God in Jesus; the old self of sin remains, and will remain throughout this life. And it’s ugly.
And we are called to put it to death; for it to become less predominant; by God’s strength to weaken the power of it’s influence over us; but, even in the most mature Christian the old self of sin will remain throughout this life.
God has delivered us from the penalty of sin – guilt & condemnation; but not yet from its polluting and often powerful presence in our lives.
Justification: act of God’s grace by which he freed us from the penalty (guilt) of sin by forgiveness through Jesus & reconciliation to God;
Sanctification: the process of God’s grace by which he frees us form the pollution of sin, and the power that it exerts over us;
Glorification: in the next life, when frees us from the presence of sin fully and finally.
and so the good news is, that that’s what the gospel is all about: is God renovating the human soul of sin to make it beautiful again (Kids Camp).
And this sermon series is all about how we cooperate with God in that renovation process – what our role is in it.
Change is needed; But that change that is so desperately needed, is hard.
Spiritual ugliness is the ugliest kind of ugliness in the universe; and seeing it should make us desire nothing more than to get rid of it; but when you try to get rid of it you realize that is so hard. Trying to change sometimes feels like “trying to dig a whole in concrete with a plastic spoon.”
We need God’s supernatural power – we need the new life in us to be brought to life; and in order for that to happen, God makes His supernatural power available to us; and the way we get that supernatural power, is through the ordinary.
Many people think spiritual growth is primarily about extraordinary experiences. And so they’re always chasing after the extraordinary that seldom comes and when it does has less lasting effect than we think it will.
Think about it: After a dramatic miraculous experience, someone vows to devote their life to God forevermore. And that lasts a week.
Or after a national tragedy every prays; everyone becomes religious; for half a week.
Or you have some emotional-high spiritual experience from which you’ll never come back down to the daily battle for joy or the struggle with complacency; but you do.
Or you see God answer prayer or orchestrate circumstances in such a way that makes him more real to you than he had been before, and you think you’ll never go back to living with God on the shelf or second in line; but you do.
And I don’t mean to say these experiences can’t be good or meaningful or helpful; but at the end of the day, real lasting spiritual growth happens day by day in the mundane of the day by day.
The extraordinary, supernatural power that spiritual change requires comes through ordinary ways, habits, behaviors, and decisions.
Growth in Grace comes through the ordinary.
2 categories:
“ordinary means of grace”; “spiritual disciplines”.
Ordinary Means of Grace: the means by which – the channels/avenues through which – God’s grace comes to us for our spiritual growth.
Word; Prayer; Worship, Sacraments, & Fellowship
Spiritual disciplines are that by which we seek & work to get more of these means of grace into our lives so that we can grow in grace.
And so today, we’re going to orient ourselves to these things by doing an overview of spiritual growth.
Spiritual Growth is what God wants for all of his children.
One of the stated purposes for why God saved us: is that he saved us to be holy, as he is holy.
Ephesians 1:4 – “God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in his sight.”
Give the purpose – the reason why God saved you – to be holy.
Because God wants his children to reflect his beautiful, holy, pure character. He wants his children to reflect his perfect love and goodness and compassion and mercy and justice and truth and righteousness;
and even though his children will always do that imperfectly; God wants us to do that increasingly – so that even if you may not be more christ-like than the person next to you, you will be more christ-like than the person in the rearview mirror that you were yesterday or last week or last month or last year.
the theological term: sanctification; and the theological definition is that sanctification is the work of God’s free grace, whereby we are renewed in our whole person after the image of God, and are enabled more and more to die unto sin, and live unto righteousness.
2 wrong ways to view our spiritual growth:
the first is that it comes about by God alone; the second that it comes about by me alone.
The first wrong view is that our sanctification comes about by God alone without my willing participation, cooperation, or effort.
As though I just strike a lotus flower yoga pose and wait for holiness to descend upon my life.
(def) Sanctification is the work of God’s grace – but it’s a work of God’s grace that enables us to do something – to put sin to death and to bring to live the new life that is in us so that we can live in righteousness.
Philippians 1:6 – expressing confidence that God will bring to completion the good work that he begins in us.
God is committed to you; you are an unfinished product, a work-in-progress now, but God will not leave you that way. In the end of Gods’ good plan in your life you won’t be a half-finished abandoned building; You will be, in the end, a beautiful finished product – God himself will see the project through to the end.
And so we might be tempted to think, that if God’s going to do it anyway, then why do I need to be bothered with it?
God’s going to do it alone, on his own, anyway, right?
But, this passage doesn’t mean that God will do it anyway so why bother; (a phrase I read that stuck with me): “It doesn’t mean that God will do it anyway; it means that God will do it in a certain way.”
Philippians 2:12 – even though we’re confident of God’s working, we still work.
in fact, the reason we work out our salvation with fear and trembling – is because of our confidence that God works in us to will and to act according to his good purpose.
And whatever else “fear and trembling” means, it at least means we take our spiritual growth seriously because it’s so important and of such a high priority to God himself – and so it should be a high priority to us.
God’s working in us doesn’t mean we don’t work; it is the very reason we do work. He works in us so that we can work out our salvation.
God’s commitment doesn’t make our cooperation unnecessary; it makes it possible and fruitful; because apart from God’s commitment to work in us, all our effort would be in vain, but our effort is not in vain because God ensures that our effort will not be in vain – and that is what motivates us to engage ourselves in this process – because it won’t be a waste in any way, but it will be worth it in every way.
this gives us confidence to work out our salvation – confidence that if you are born again, if you are a new creation in Christ – then that’s the part of you that will prevail. The old self of sin will not win over your life; “though there will be continual warfare, the regenerate part will overcome.”
Hope. Confidence. Perseverance to keep fighting the good fight.
(first wrong view – God does it alone); The second wrong view is that we do it alone. That spiritual growth is all up to us.
But if spiritual growth is part of our salvation, then if we do it alone we are trying to save ourselves!
This view often looks like this: that God saves us initially, but then it’s up to us to save ourselves the rest of the way.
God gives us grace at the beginning. But then we put grace on the dusty shelf in the corner and all it does it gather cobwebs; we got grace then; God did his part at the beginning; now it’s my turn to do my part on my own.
And, that means: either we do it in our own strength – which anyone who’s tried to fight against sin knows that our own strength can’t cut it;
or, we do it in a way that forgets God’s grace and try to earn or re-earn God’s love and acceptance by how well we do in our walk.
And if you’ve ever tried to live like that, you know that on the good days you will be filled with pride because you’ve feel like you’ve earned God’s love and acceptance; and on the bad days you will be filled with despair because you feel that you’ve lost God’s love and acceptance.
But our progress in our sanctification is never the basis of our acceptance with God; it’s never the thing that earns God’s love; but it’s always the proper and necessary response of gratitude to having been freely given God’s love and acceptance by God’s grace.
And so we don’t do it in our own strength but God’s empowering is needed every step of the way.
And his spirit gives us what we need.
And we don’t do it to earn God’s love but we keep going back to God’s love to find the motivation to respond to that love with gratitude expressed in obedience. And gratitude for grace is what fuels our striving to grow in our walk with God.
Because the Christian life is opposed to earning; but it’s not opposed to effort.
Philippians 3:12-14
First of all, Paul – even the apostle Paul – recognizes that he is a work in progress. He hasn’t obtained the prize, he hasn’t arrived at the goal. And if that’s true for him then I know that’s all the more true for me and I’d bet that’s the case for you as well.
“I press on; I strain towards what is ahead.”
And Paul says this just after he has recounted his own story of his discovery of his undeservedness and God’s amazing grace to the undeserving;
because the deeper we realize and appreciate God’s grace to me, a sinner who didn’t deserve it and could never earn it; the more we realize what we once thought to our gain is loss compared to knowing Jesus which only happens by God’s gift; the more, then, we will strive to press on to know Jesus better; to reflect him more fully; and to love him more deeply; to serve him more selflessly; to press on toward the goal.
And what we need, to avoid these two wrong approaches to spiritual growth is “dependent discipline”.
discipline: strain and strive and press on towards the goal;
dependent: every step of the way looking outside of ourselves, to God for strength.
And we need to press on, and strive towards the goal that God has for us, because growth is not the automatic direction of Christian life.
imagine: for 1 year, you’re working out strenuously towards fitness goal; or you’re dieting with extraordinary discipline towards health goal; then you go on vacation for a week.
And you discover that you don’t just go back 1 weeks worth from when you stopped; you go back, it feels like to a week before you started a year ago.
growth is not the automatic direction of the Christian life. Drift is the automatic direction of the Christian life (author of hebrews warns us to pay careful attention so that we don’t drift away). Because the scary thing about drift is that its subtle enough to go on for too long undetected –
When a boat is drifting it’s happening without any near reference point to detect it’s effect on the boat’s position and before you even feel like you’re moving, you’re hopelessly lost at sea.
but unlike being lost at sea, the hope of the gospel is that it’s never too late to find your way back – you’re never too far gone and you’re never too lost to begin to make your way to God again.
And so if you’ve drifted – we all have; plant your feet by God’s strength; and begin again that life-long call to strive towards Christ.
Lloyd-Jones: “I know very few Christian people who give me the impression of pressing forward. Sitting back is more usual today. I do not see people straining, longing, desiring, seeking, working for more, praying for more. And this is wrong. We are meant to grow in grace, and in the knowledge of the Lord. We are meant to be pressing forward toward the mark, forgetting the past, desiring what he is holding out before us.”
(Bridges): Cruise-control Christianity vs race-car christianity
or, recliner Christianity vs marathon Christianity
and we need to pursue “race-car”, or “marathon” Christianity. Even if we pursued “binge-watching” Christianity we’d probably be making progress.
2 Kings 4:1-7 – A widow who is vulnerable and destitute reaches out to Elisha for help; and she’s got nothing except one small jar of oil; and Elisha tells her to gather as many jars as she can – ask all your neighbors for empty jars, don’t ask for just a few but get as many as you can.
And once you get as many jars as you can, pour oil from your one little jar and as as the first empty jar is filled, set it aside and keep pouring – one jar after the next –
And that’s what she does. And she’s pouring oil and as a jar gets filled her son brings another jar and she just keeps pouring, and as the last jar gets filled she asks for another jar but her son says, “there’s not a jar left.”
And the story makes it clear that then, only then, the oil stopped flowing – such that it gives the picture that if she had gathered more jars, she would have received more oil.
And that oil then gives the widow the resources she needs to protect herself in her vulnerability and provide for herself in her destitution.
And it’s an odd little story; it’s a strange way for God to provide his blessing.
And it can be misinterpreted along the lines of some kind of false prosperity gospel; but I think the point of this odd little story is:
God’s blessing flowed into her life by his grace, but in this story, he still wanted this woman to have a role in the reception of that grace. She had to believe that God was gracious to give an abundance of blessing, and that that blessing was truly valuable; and she had to obey his command to gather jars to receive that blessing.
The degree of God’s blessing she received was to some degree related to her capacity to receive it.
And the principle that I want us to consider is this: That the grace you receive for your spiritual growth is to some degree related to the grace that you make room for.
And, our role in our spiritual growth is where we make room for more of God’s grace to flow into our lives.
Making use of the Ordinary Means of Grace, and engaging our selves in the spiritual disciplines – is making room for more grace to flow into our lives for our spiritual growth.
We need to believe that God is gracious to give his grace to sanctify us in abundance; we have to believe that that blessing is valuable; and we have to make room for it to flow into our lives by our pursuit of God to receive that blessing.