This week we’re exploring how following Jesus impacts our lifestyle by one principle: grace. Grace is one of the most important, life-changing aspects of Christian story. Here’s how the Bible talks about grace:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
(Ephesians 2:4-10 ESV)
Here is an easy way to remember the meaning:
God’s
Riches
At
Christ’s
Expense
A friend had a young child at home, and a baby on the way and his mother loved to help out by cleaning up the house. One particularly stressful time she was coming down to decompress the situation by cleaning up the house. My friend came home that day to find his wife madly cleaning up the house, before the mother in law arrived. She didn’t want her mother-in-law to see a messy house, even though she was there to clean it as a gift.
We so often we think that we have to have cleaned up our lives before we can accept what God wants to give us. We don’t have to have sorted ourselves out before we can accept God’s free gift of forgiveness, his grace.
When you ask someone why they don’t like Christianity…you’ll often hear “it’s just a bunch of rules.” I don’t need a book to tell me how to be a good person. If that was true, I wouldn’t want to be part of this religion either.
But it’s not true…that’s the religion that Jesus came to get rid of, and not his hope for us. Here’s the version of Christianity that people are usually describing:
Obey God’s laws
God will accept you
He’ll provide you with loving care
He’ll give you a new status, as a servant of God.
This is a law religion, the kind of thing the Pharisees liked to promote. Jesus didn’t have very nice things to say about that!
The problem is – no one has ever obeyed God’s laws perfectly enough to earn God’s love. Actually, there was one person – Jesus. He knew our hopeless situation, and did something about it. Jesus was all about grace. This involves the same steps, but in a different order:
God loves and accepts you…unconditionally
God will provide you with loving care. He wants to be part of your life today, not some day in the future.
God will give you a new status: Child of God adopted into his family
You now return God’s favour with thanksgiving and living in his way.
In grace…we are given God’s love, care and fatherhood as free gifts, even before having proven ourselves worthy, and that gives us a lot to live up to!
Question: Where have you typically seen laws and rules in your faith? As the way to earn God’s love, or respond to it? Why?
Reminder: Earlier in this series, we saw the importance of reading the Bible together in sync, so our new daily bible readings start today in our mobile app and web site.
Read the Bible in Sync Today
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We read an important passage yesterday, and today we’ll focus on just the ending. Here it is again:
Now when they heard this they were cut to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, “Brothers, what shall we do?” And Peter said to them, “Repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and for your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.” And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, “Save yourselves from this crooked generation.” So those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls.
(Acts 2:32-41 ESV)
The audience were “cut to the heart”. Peter’s words transformed them, not into a state of sadness, but into action. They asked, “What shall we do? How do we make this right?”
Peter has three steps: Repent. Be Baptized. Receive the Holy Spirit.
Repent means to turn. This is the first step of change and transformation. If you’ve been heading the wrong way in life, away from God, then the moment of regret and decision to turn around and head back to God is the moment of repentence.
Being baptized is a sign that God is washing away someone’s sins. By washing that person on the outside, we show the invisible washing on the inside that only God can do. It’s a public act of having sin washed away from your heart, and having accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour.
Receiving the Holy Spirit speaks of continued transformation, well beyond the moment of repentence and baptism, and into the future. The Holy Spirit enables Christians to keep going that new direction, even when it’s hard. What did the Holy Spirit do for disciples? We saw last week that he enabled them to speak of Jesus in every language. These brand new disciples, too, will be sent by Holy Spirit to proclaim good news to everyone in the world. Their numbers are growing, and this good news is meant for everyone of all ages and around the world.
3000 people took on this challenge in one day. They became pioneer people – some of the first members of the church, the global phenomenon of people following Jesus and being transformed by him.
Next week, we’ll see what they did, their practices when they gathered, and how their actions changed.
But first,
Question: What do you think changed for those 3000 people? Internally, spiritually, but also relationally?
