A Wonderful Devotional from Max Lucado:
Believe and Receive
by Max Lucado
“. . . whoever believes in him shall not perish . . .”
Can I really trust that “whoever believes in him shall not perish”?
Jesus’s invitation seems too simple. We gravitate to other verbs. Work has a better ring to it. “Whoever works for him will be saved.” Satisfy fits nicely. “Whoever satisfies him will be saved.”
But believe? Shouldn’t I do more?
The simplicity troubles many people.
We expect a more proactive assignment, to have to conjure up a remedy for our sin.
Some mercy seekers have donned hair shirts, climbed cathedral steps on their knees, or traversed hot rocks on bare feet.
Others of us have written our own Bible verse: “God helps those who help themselves” (Popular Opinion 1:1).
We’ll fix ourselves, thank you.
We’ll make up for our mistakes with contributions, our guilt with busyness.
We’ll overcome failures with hard work. We’ll find salvation the old-fashioned way: we’ll earn it.
Christ, in contrast, says to us: “Your part is to trust. Trust me to do what you can’t.”
By the way, you take similar steps of trust daily, even hourly.
You believe the chair will support you, so you set your weight on it.
You believe water will hydrate you, so you swallow it.
You trust the work of the light switch, so you flip it. You have faith the doorknob will work, so you turn it.
You regularly trust power you cannot see to do a work you cannot accomplish. Jesus invites you to do the same with him.
Just HIM. Not Moses or any other leader. Not even you.
You can’t fix you. Look to Jesus . . .and believe.
Also, check out these interesting links:
God's Grace Is A Gift
What is Grace?
Continuing Grace
God's Gift: The gift of eternal life
Music Videos:
Not long ago a table “GRACE” was quoted here, the one that contains the words,
"Wilt Thou grant us "GRACE" again. . ."
This reminded me of the hymn, "He Giveth More "GRACE."
Words go like this:
He giveth more "GRACE" when the burdens grow greater;
He sendeth more strength when the labors increase.
To added afflictions He addeth His mercy;
To multiplied trials, His multiplied peace.
and verse 2--
When we have exhausted our store of endurance,
When our strength has failed ere the day is half done,
When we reach the end of our hoarded resources,
Our Father's full giving is only begun.
Refrain:
His love has no limit; His "GRACE" has no measure;
His power has no boundary known unto men.
Four out of His infinite riches in Jesus,
He giveth, and giveth, and giveth again!
As I see it, the blood of the New Covenant was shed once, for all. Those who come into covenant with God, from then until now, are entitled to do so on “GRACE” terms, and their past estrangement from God can be canceled, they can be reconciled with their Creator, and be restored to the footing the first humans were on with God, before that first covenant was broken.
Living in a corrupt environment, surrounded by many potential barriers between humans and God in our culture, we of the New Covenant transgress. We are transformed in part, or by degrees, and still subject to those elements of the human condition that are not in harmony with the original design, which was "the image of God."
Paul described that ‘conflictedness’ eloquently! And so, we need a steady supply of “GRACE.” And every time we break a covenant term, we need to presume yet again on the mercy of God by invoking our claim of righteousness: the rectitude of Christ; and by utilizing the stain-removal, sanitizing, disinfecting properties of the blood of the covenant.
We need the “GRACE” of God, not one helping but many helpings. We have only to ask and accept, so long as we are in the New Covenant. It is appropriate for us to ask; we have been given the right to ask boldly.
Me, I have to ask often, often, and at that, sometimes don't ask when I should. By then I need some extra cleaning up, like as not, in addition to “GRACE.”
Think I'll go play that hymn AND the table “GRACE.”
Sing along, if you will!
Posted on the 2x2 List on July 21st, 2004
By Marti Knight
Posted on Ex-2x2 List
November 12, 2001
Matthew 20: The Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.
That someone would get something free of charge that we had worked so hard for offended us. I think we all like to think of GRACE as a comfortable and comforting concept. It's a nice word. It's about the niceness of God, the compassion of God. And that is true.
But there is another side of GRACE that is a little more disturbing.
GRACE has a bit of an edge to it.
GRACE is challenging.
GRACE might disturb us. This parable scandalizes us.
GRACE is not the way we like to do things. We have created an entire society that is not based on GRACE, but on un-grace.
The Army has ranks and corporations have organizational charts so that everyone knows where everyone stands in relation to everyone else. Airlines make us earn frequent flyer miles; they don't just give them to us. Truth be told, as much as GRACE comforts us, it disturbs us a little bit, too.
Because it challenges us.
The first way GRACE challenges us is that Grace makes us equal to everybody else, and the problem is, we do not want to be equal.
We want to be better.
The workers in the field complains here: “You have made us equal to these other workers.” They don't complain about the wage. The wage was perfectly generous. They complain that they were made equal to everybody else and they didn't want to be equal, they wanted to be superior. A lot of human happiness seems to depend on having something that somebody else doesn't have.
GRACE challenges us because it is so radical. It is so different than anything we are used to.
GRACE means that for those of us who know Jesus (and that is an important qualifier) there is nothing we can do to make God love us more. It means I can't earn more of God's love than somebody else.
But GRACE also means that there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.
GRACE is not about finishing first. It is not about finishing last.
It's about NOT KEEPING SCORE ANYMORE.
“Deserve's” got nothing to do with it.” And that's Good News because if “deserve” had anything to do with it, we would all be in trouble because none of us are GOOD. None of us can meet the standards of a Holy God, and once we've fallen short of that, everything else is just a matter of degrees.
GRACE is scandalous. It levels the playing field. (The ground is level at the foot of the cross) It is too radical.
It seems unfair.
But that's its power, isn't it?
Isn't that its power?
Because it proves that we didn't make this whole thing up.
GRACE comes from outside of us. It comes from God. This is not the sort of things human beings make up on their own. Frequent flyer miles ---that's what human beings make up on their own, but not GRACE.
GRACE comes from God.
Am I saying that anybody can do anything and get away with it? I'm not saying that. Galatians 6:7 says: “Do not be deceived, God shall not be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.” If we sin, we will reap the consequences of that sin in this lifetime.
And if we spend our whole life not knowing Jesus Christ, only to accept HIM at the very end, we will still have missed out on a lifetime of knowing HIM and that is a loss. There are consequences in this life to what we do.
But what this parable does say is that no matter how bad we have been, no matter how late we come, whatever is in our past, whatever is in our present, we still have a future. We can still be full inheritors of HIS GRACE and of HIS Good Gift if we know Jesus Christ. As unfair as that seems, that “IS” the promise.
The price has already been paid. Two thousand years ago, conventional piety, which was very fair, and Roman law, which was always just, conspired together to put an innocent man to death on a cross. That wasn't fair either, but it was GRACE.
GRACE is never fair to anybody involved. It means that an innocent man is killed so that serial killers who accept HIM can be loved just as much as Mother Theresa. It means that Christ had to die so that adulterers and liars and cheats and hypocrites and people like you and people like me can receive God's love and can receive HIS blessing. It' not fair. Jesus didn't deserve that. We don't deserve that. But thank God that in HIS economy of GRACE, “deserve's” got nothing to do with it. Because if it did, we would all be in trouble.
Amazing GRACE, how sweet the sound that saves wretches like you, and a wretch like me, and all of those “them's” out there who may seem to be beyond the reach of God but who aren't: if only we become channels of God's Grace and let them know that in Jesus Christ, anybody can be forgiven of anything, and anybody can have abundant life.
It's not fair, but it sure is Good News in a scandalous kind of a way.
By Scott Dudley
From Dr. Tony Evans on The Gift of Grace
Imagine it's your birthday. Your friend comes by and gives you a beautifully wrapped gift. When you open it, it´s something you´ve always wanted! After the party, you walk your friend to the door and just before he leaves, he says, "Oh, by the way, here´s the receipt. Your gift costs $500. I´ll take cash or a check." Could you really call what you received a gift?
The same principle applies to salvation. You don´t have to buy it. Salvation is a gift. It depends wholly on God´s GRACE.
Everyone Who Has Been Born of God Overcomes the World
February 24, 2008
By John Piper
1 John 5:1-5
Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. 2 By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments. 3 For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. 4 For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith. 5 Who is it that overcomes the world except the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?
We are coming toward the end of our series on the new birth. What remains is to focus for several weeks on the effects or the evidences of the new birth: What are the signs in your life that God has caused you to be born again? Then, we will wrap it up by looking at its implications for evangelism. If God is the one who decisively causes the new birth in the hearts of spiritually dead sinners, then what is the role of those who love those sinners and want to see them saved? That is where we are going, Lord willing, in the next few weeks.
Now to focus on the effects of the new birth, we turn to the book of the Bible that is almost totally devoted to answering this question, namely, the first epistle of John. I have a 100-year-old commentary on 1 John at home titled The Tests of Life by Robert Law.1 It’s a good title. What it means is that John wrote this letter to provide the church with tests or criteria for knowing if we have spiritual life, that is, if we have been born again.
Tests of New-Birth Life in 1 John
One of the most fruitful things you could do with me in the next couple weeks is to read through 1 John as I preach several messages from this book. First John only four pages long in my Bible. If you immerse yourself in this amazing book with me, I think the Lord will use it, along these messages, to do a deeper work of faith and love in your life.
To encourage you in that direction, let me give you an overview of what I mean in saying that 1 John is written to help you know you have been born again. Today’s message is almost all overview and then a brief look at 1 John 5:3-4 near the end. The impact of the book as a whole has been for me very significant. I hope it may be for you.
Why Did John Write This Letter?
First, why did John say he wrote this letter? He gives his reason for writing in different ways. Let’s take them in the order that they come. Follow with me.
1 John 1:4: “We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.” John is an unashamed Christian Hedonist. The joy of their assurance will be his joy. And he wants it. It is good to want that kind of joy.
1 John 2:1: “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” He hopes his book will give them fresh power to overcome sin. And part of his method in helping them overcome sin is to assure them that failures do not have to prove fatal to your eternal life.
1 John 2:12-13: “I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.” In other words, he is filled with hope that the ones he is writing to are truly believers. They are forgiven. They do know God. They have triumphed over the evil one.
1 John 2:21: “I write to you, not because you do not know the truth, but because you know it, and because no lie is of the truth.” Same thing: My letter is not to get you started in the Christian life, but to confirm you in it.
1 John 2:26: “I write these things to you about those who are trying to deceive you.” He is concerned with false teaching. This letter is meant to protect them from those who would lead them astray. In other words, the fact that we are born again does not mean we no longer need warnings.
1 John 5:13: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God that you may know that you have eternal life.” This is the one that dominates in this letter. Most of what is here is designed to provide tests of life: “I write these things . . . that you may know that you have eternal life.” That is, that you may know you are born again from death into life.
Summing up all these reasons for writing 1 John goes like this: I am writing because you are true believers, but there are deceivers in your midst, and I want you to be rock-solid confident in your present possession of eternal life as regenerate children of God, so that you are not drawn away after sin. And if this letter has that effect my joy will be complete. So at the heart of his reason for writing is the desire to help them know they are born again—that they now have new spiritual life. Eternal life.
Eleven Evidences of the New Birth
Consider one more overview before we focus on 1 John 5:3-4. I think God wants the totality of this book to have its impact on us. It is dominated by the concern to give “tests of life” or effects and evidences of the new birth. He gives at least eleven evidences that we are born again. We could probably boil them all down to faith and love. But for now let’s let them stand the way he says them. Here they are:
1. Those who are born of God keep his commandments.
1 John 2:3-4: “By this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says ‘I know him’ but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him.”
1 John 3:24: “Whoever keeps his commandments abides in God, and God in him.”
2. Those who are born of God walk as Christ walked.
1 John 2:56: “By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”
3. Those who are born of God don’t hate others but love them.
1 John 2:9: “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.”
1 John 3:14: “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in death.”
1 John 4:7-8: “Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
1 John 4:20: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar.”
4. Those who are born of God don’t love the world.
1 John 2:15: “If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.”
5. Those who are born of God confess the Son and receive (have) him.
1 John 2:23: “No one who denies the Son has the Father. Whoever confesses the Son has the Father also.”
1 John 4:15: “Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.”
1 John 5:12: “Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life.”
6. Those who are born of God practice righteousness.
1 John 2:29: “If you know that he is righteous, you may be sure that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.”
7. Those who are born of God don’t make a practice of sinning.
1 John 3:6: “No one who abides in him keeps on sinning; no one who keeps on sinning has either seen him or known him.”
1 John 3:9-10: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning, for God’s seed abides in him, and he cannot keep on sinning because he has been born of God. By this it is evident who are the children of God, and who are the children of the devil: whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.”
1 John 5:18: “We know that everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning, but he who was born of God protects him, and the evil one does not touch him.”
8. Those who are born of God possess the Spirit of God.
1 John 3:24: “By this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit whom he has given us.”
1 John 4:13: “By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit.”
9. Those who are born of God listen submissively to the apostolic Word.
1 John 4:6: “We are from God. Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error.”
10. Those who are born of God believe that Jesus is the Christ.
1 John 5:1: “Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God.”
11. Those who are born of God overcome the world.
1 John 5:4: “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
Two Wrong Conclusions
One of the effects of all those “tests of life” is to overwhelm us with the sense that John may be saying: “If you’re born again, you’re perfect. If you’re born again you don’t sin at all. There is no defeat in the Christian life. There is only victory.”
Another effect that these tests might have in our minds is to make us think we can loose our salvation. That is, we can be born again for a while and then begin to fail in these tests and die and lose the spiritual life that we were given in the new birth.
Two Key Clarifications
John is very aware of that his words could be taken in these two wrong ways. So he is explicit as any writer in the New Testament that this is not the case: Christians are not sinless, and born-again people cannot lose their spiritual life and be lost.
He says in 1 John 1:8-10, “If we say we have no sin [present tense], we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins [present tense], he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” So John is at pains to say that “walking in the light” (1:7) does not mean walking flawlessly. It means that, when you stumble, the light of Christ causes you to see it and hate it and confess it and move forward with Christ.
And John is just as jealous to make sure we don’t infer from these “tests of life” that we can be born again and then later lose our life and be lost. First John 2:19 is one of the clearest statements in the Bible that there is another way to understand what happens when a person abandons the church. It says, “They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.”
Notice three things John says to protect us from misunderstanding. 1) Those who seemed to be born again and forsook the faith never were born again—they never were of us. “They went out from us, but they were not of us.” In other words, the explanation is not that they lost their new birth. They never had it. 2) Those who are truly born again (“of us”) will persevere to the end in faith. Verse 19b: “For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us.” Endurance is not the cause of the new birth. The new birth is the cause of endurance, and endurance is the evidence of new birth. 3) God often makes plain who the false Christians are in the church by their eventual rejection of the truth and the people of God. Verse 19c: “But they went out, that it might become plain that they all are not of us.” It became plain. And it often becomes plain today.
You recall that one of the tests of life in 1 John 4:6 was that those who truly know God listen to the apostolic teaching. They love it and they cling to it. “Whoever knows God listens to us; whoever is not from God does not listen to us.” These people listened for a while. The seed of the word sprang up with joy (Luke 8:13), and it looked as though they were truly born again. But then hard times and the cares and riches and pleasures of life swept them away and they showed that they had never been born again.
A Three-Link Chain in 1 John 5:3-4
Now with that long introduction to 1 John we will simply look for a few minutes at 1 John 5:3-4 and set the stage for a fuller treatment next week. Look at the train of thought in verses 3 and 4. This is all we will have time to see today. Then we must unpack later how it actually works in practice. Here’s the three-link chain of thought: “[Link One] For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome. [Link Two] For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. [Link Three] And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
Link One: Love for God is expressed in obedience to his commandments with a spirit that does not act burdensomely. Verse 3: “For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.” The mark of love for God is joyful obedience, not begrudging obedience.
Link Two: The basis of this unbegrudging obedience is the power of the new birth to overcome the world. Verse 4a: “For [signifying the basis of what went before!] everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world.” Our love for God obeys him freely and joyfully because in the new birth the spell of the world is broken and it loses its power. When the world loses its powerful attraction because of the new birth, God and his holy will become attractive. Not burdensome. How does this work?
Link Three: This world-defeating power that breaks the spell of sin and makes the will of God beautiful, not burdensome, is our faith. Verse 4b: “And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
Gospel, New Birth, Faith, and Obedience with Joy
So the train of thought goes like this: The new birth happens as we are brought into contact with the living and abiding word, the gospel. The first effect of this new birth is that we see and receive God and his Son and work and his will as supremely beautiful and valuable. That’s faith. This faith overcomes the world, that is, it overcomes the enslaving power of the world to be our supreme treasure. Faith breaks the enslaving spell of the world’s allurement. By doing that, faith leads us into obedience with freedom and joy. God and his holy will look beautiful and not burdensome. The new birth has taken the blinders off. We see things for what they are. We are free to obey with joy.
May God confirm the spiritual reality of thousands of born-again people at Bethlehem by overcoming the power of the world in our lives. “Everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world—our faith.”
Ephesians 2:8-9 reads, For by GRACE you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast.
Jesus paid the costs in full for our salvation. Acts 4:12 says, ". . . there is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven . . . by which we must be saved."
