The Power of Grace

Welcome! Today we will have a shorter message followed by a time of remembering the Lord with the bread and cup, and then a sharing time. Last week we began to explore the book of II Peter and went in detail into Chapter 1. The chapter exhorts us to take radical steps in growing our character. Today I want to talk about God’s grace and how grace is related to the ideas of this chapter. I will start by rereading the first part of II Peter 1 and summarizing the ideas we talked about last time.

Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. Through these He has given us His very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. – II Peter 1:1-4

This is such a powerful promise to us! And it is a promise of God’s grace. Normally when we think of God’s grace, we focus on His saving us, His going to the cross to die for our sins. There is nothing wrong with this; we are to remember Jesus’ sacrifice, His payment for our sins on the cross. This is extreme grace, and in response we should be thankful. But it is also God’s grace that He promises to equip us to live godly lives, that He promises to make us able to live more and more with a character that is like His, not just with regards to less and less sin, but with regards to greater and greater godliness. This too is grace, and for this too we should be thankful.

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. – II Peter 1:5-7

“For this very reason” means that since God has promised us His grace, His equipping to us, we should go for it. We have a role, and that role is to “make every effort.” We talked about the various shades of meaning of this phrase in the Greek: be extreme in zeal; be extreme in intensity; give it your all. Picture one of those old Nike commercials.

Briefly, we talked about how the word “add” in Greek means to be like a chorus director, not just someone who waves a baton, but carefully assembles and equips his choir. We are to be like that! Our “choir” consists of character qualities. First is goodness, or virtue, or moral excellence; the Greek word has a connotation of being heroic. We are to be heroic in goodness. Second is knowledge, knowledge that is applied to your life; it’s not just the knowledge used to pass tests in class, but knowledge used to pass the tests of life. Third is self-control, literally sucking in your gut. Picture someone training for the Olympics, how disciplined they are about every aspect of their lives. Fourth is perseverance, never giving up, never giving in; think of Churchill’s speech in WWII. Fifth is godliness, or reverence, or worship; think of every action of your life a part of worship to God. Sixth is brotherly kindness, caring deeply in thought and action for one another, and seventh is agape love, love that chooses to sacrifice for others over satisfying self. This was our seven-part choir. The passage goes on to say that if we don’t zealously pursue these character qualities in our lives, we can become ineffective and unproductive, nearsighted and blind, and even forget the gospel, that Jesus’ sacrifice for us has cleansed us from our past sins.

Now the reason I bring this up is that this is one example of a passage, and there are many others, where we are called to eagerly, zealously work on “us,” and I want to talk about why we should want to do this. This passage in II Peter is pragmatic about it; it explains that if we do this, good things will result, and if we don’t, bad things will happen. But I think we often can think about it this way: Jesus did all these amazing things for us, dying on the cross and all, and so it is only right that I do what I can for Him.

My question for you is whether there is anything wrong with this kind of thinking.

Let me give an example. Suppose some friends of yours invite you over for dinner. You go, and have a wonderful time. But now you feel that you owe them, that it is your “turn” to do something nice for them. Is there anything wrong with this?

Well, let me turn it around. Suppose you invite your friends over for dinner, and as far as you can tell, they seemed to have a wonderful time. But suppose your friends confide in another friend that they feel uncomfortable until they have “paid them back” in some way. They tell your other friend that they tried to have you over, but things haven’t worked out, and they say they don’t know what to do. They are hunting for some idea, some plan, to “get even” gift-wise so that they feel better. How would you feel if you found out that this is what your friends really felt like? Would you feel a little disappointed? Maybe you would think your friends are a little neurotic, and they just need to get over it and accept gifts, to simply accept grace – for that is what this is – with thankfulness.

John Piper calls this kind of thinking the “debtor’s ethic.” Gifts must be repaid. Just as you would instinctively know something is wrong if your friends always felt like this, God also does not appreciate the “debtor’s ethic.”

Now we are very self-deceitful creatures; if someone were to directly accuse us of having a mindset that we were trying to pay back God for the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross for our sins, we would be quick to deny that, because we know that we can’t. But I really believe we can be deceiving ourselves. I think it is a good question to ask yourself why you want to do good works for God.

Even Christian leaders sometimes unwittingly couch things in these terms. They might say, “Think of all that God has done for you. Now what will you do for Him?” Or more subtly: “We should obey God out of gratitude for what He has done.” But the interesting thing is that you really don’t find this kind of thinking in the Bible.

In the Old Testament, God doesn’t really complain about people’s lack of gratitude; He complains over and over about their lack of faith and their lack of trust. For example, in Numbers 14, when the Israelites wailed about wanting to go back to Egypt and threatened to stone Moses, here was God’s response:

The Lord said to Moses, “How long will these people treat Me with contempt? How long will they refuse to believe in Me, in spite of all the miraculous signs I have performed among them? – Numbers 14:11

Other verses where you see the same kind of thing are in Psalm 78 and Deut. 1. My point is that God was not complaining about their lack of gratitude; He didn’t expect them to have a “debtor’s ethic” kind of mindset. He just wanted them to have faith and trust Him.

Now, there are verses that some say have a debtor’s ethic. One is in Psalm 116. But let’s look at this more closely. Because I love this Psalm so much, let’s start at the beginning of the Psalm.

I love the Lord, for He heard my voice; He heard my cry for mercy. Because He turned His ear to me, I will call on Him as long as I live. The cords of death entangled me, the anguish of the grave came upon me; I was overcome by trouble and sorrow. Then I called on the name of the Lord: “O Lord, save me!” – Psalm 116:1-4

The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The Lord protects the simplehearted; when I was in great need, He saved me. Be at rest once more, O my soul, for the Lord has been good to you. For you, O Lord, have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling, that I may walk before the Lord in the land of the living. – Psalm 116:5-9

Can we not agree with the Psalmist? How true this is for us! Now, jumping to verse 12:

How can I repay the Lord for all His goodness to me? – Psalm 116:12

Ooh – there it is! See, you’re wrong, you say to me. He’s going to pay God back! Well, let’s read on…

I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. – Psalm 116:13

Does that sound like paying God back? No, it is to respond in deeper faith, in deeper dependence on God. Lifting up the cup of salvation means to drink it in, to receive from the Lord. It certainly doesn’t describe steps you do as repayment. That doesn’t make even a bit of sense.

So how then do we understand verse 12? It is not that the psalmist is looking for ways to repay God; it is that he is acknowledging that such a thing is impossible and folly to even think about. The first part of the Psalm is a description of how incredibly wonderful God has been; it is an expression of great thankfulness. It is not some kind of tallying up of what is owed. It’s not like the friend who remembers that you have provided three dinners, two lunches, and four rides, and therefore you need to also do nine things in return. It is that God is awesome, and wonderful, and there is no way to even think about repaying Him. And so, instead, the psalmist lifts up the cup of salvation and drinks in, accepting all that God has done and all that God is doing and all that God will do. And in it all he continues to exercise faith and dependence on the Lord.

Now in verse 14 the psalmist says this:

I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. – Psalm 116:14

Aha, you say, see, he is trying to pay God back! No, he is not making vows; he is going to fulfill what he has already vowed to do. And he is going to do it not in his own strength, but dependent on God’s.

II Peter 1 should be viewed the same way! All of our Christian living should be viewed in this way. We don’t try to live good Christian lives in repayment for God’s gift of salvation; no, this is all wrong. We respond to God’s gift by walking by faith, doing in Him what He has told us we can do in Him. We don’t thank God for His grace and then try to live in our own strength; we thank God for His grace and then live in Him, ever dependent on His daily grace for doing things that we would not think we could do: adding to our faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love.

I know you that if you are a Christian, you have faith in Jesus’ sacrifice for your sins, that He has redeemed you from the punishment and separation from God that you not only deserve but must have if God is a holy God. I know that you have faith in what God has done in the past for you. But do you have faith in what God will do for you? Do you have faith that He will empower you as you aggressively seek to fulfill II Peter 1:5-7? The “power of grace” is not just for the past but for now and for every future day, every future hour, every future minute that we have on this earth. And so let us respond as the psalmist responds. Let us lift up the cup of salvation and call on the Lord. As Paul wrote in I Corinthians,

The Lord Jesus, on the night He was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of Me.” In the same way, after supper He took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in My blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of Me.” For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until He comes. – I Cor. 11:23-26

And let us understand the following verses, not in false terms of repayment, in terms of the “debtor’s ethic,” but in terms of gratitude and faith:

Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord. A man ought to examine himself before he eats of the bread and drinks of the cup. For anyone who eats and drinks without recognizing the body of the Lord eats and drinks judgment on himself. – I Cor. 11:27-29

Unworthy doesn’t mean we haven’t paid Him back; unworthy means we haven’t responded in faith. Let us respond in faith now, thanking and trusting Him not only for the past, but for the future.