| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The Miracle of Transforming Grace
Presenter: Bob Burke
Location: Internet
Delivery: 2007-11-15 06:16Z
Publication: LastGenerationTheology.org 2008-02-20 16:41Z
Type: Sermon
URL: http://www.lastgenerationtheology.org/lgt/doc/3coo/burb-motg.php
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1, 2 NKJV).
Of all the miracles that God performs perhaps none is more miraculous than the transforming power of His grace. That He can take someone who cares nothing for anyone other than themselves, one who finds the most vile sins a joy, one who sees the Christian faith and message as nothing more than a straightjacket, and then transform him into someone willing to dedicate his life to helping those less fortunate, one whose heart breaks when they see others suffering, one whose heart has been softened to the point of having a deep and abiding love for everyone who they come in contact with even when those very people may have formerly been despised enemies, one who would be willing to give his life for his Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, that is a miracle.
And yet, that is what God is calling each of us to. It isn’t something that will happen overnight. It can only come as we fully and completely surrender our wills to the will of Christ. When we do that God can transform us into truly victorious Christians.
Unfortunately many in the Christian world today who would say that true and complete victory is impossible. They will tell you that, yes, Jesus can give you victory over individual sins but that full victory isn’t possible this side of heaven; that, because of the Augustinian teaching of original sin, we can never be truly victorious Christians.
But that is not what our Bible teaches. Sadly though, this very error is even heard from some Seventh-day Adventist pulpits. That is really sad. We talk about victorious Christian living, we talk about God taking sin from our lives and then turn around and say, “well, not all of our sin.”
My question is, “why not?” Is God limited in His power? Part of the problem lies in a gross misunderstanding of sanctification, what God does in me, as opposed to justification, which is what God has done for me in Jesus. If I don’t understand this foundational teaching of Christianity then everything else will have to be twisted in order to match up.
If we are to end right, we must begin right.
This story illustrates the process we will be discussing from God’s Word:
We grieve the spirit by failing to keep our hearts clean. The late John MacNeil, of Australia, said that a new heart is not necessarily a clean heart, but many of us have been thinking that it was. David committed a great transgression, and was pardoned, and prayed, ‘Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.’ John says, ‘He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
MacNeil uses the illustration of a mother who puts a clean dress on her child in the morning, and tells her to keep it unspotted all day long. When night comes, the child’s dress is so soiled that it is hard to tell whether it is white or black but the mother cleanses it. The child had the will to keep it clean, but something is missing that gives her the power to prevent it from being soiled. The same thing takes place every day, but if that mother could only impart some of her own spirit to that child, so that the child would not only have the will but the ability to keep clean. That is exactly what God wishes to do in us and will do. This is the secret of victory over sin.
Now that is a biblical understanding of sanctification. God does it for us! We don’t do it. All our righteousness is as filthy rags, but what God does in us isn’t of us. That is the key to the whole thing. I am not sanctified by my works; my works demonstrate God’s sanctifying power at work within me. They aren’t my works, they’re God’s!
Does that make sense?
When we come to Christ, when we surrender our hearts to Him and accept Jesus as our Lord and Saviour, it is at that very moment that God both justifies us, that is forgives us for our sins, as well as sanctifies us, that is, pronounces us holy.
Ellen White stated it beautifully in Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing when she wrote:
God’s forgiveness is not merely a judicial act by which He sets us free from condemnation. It is not only forgiveness for sin, but reclaiming from sin. It is the outflow of redeeming love that transforms the heart (Thoughts From the Mount of Blessing, p. 114).
That is the miracle of transforming grace!
We often call John or Peter Saint but in the Bible all true believers are considered saints!
When God begins a work in us He doesn’t stop there. The act of justification as well as the act of sanctification both begin at conversion and both continue on throughout our Christian walk. This notion of justification alone saving us and sanctification simply being a fruit of salvation is not biblical.
Let us ask a very simple question: will any unsanctified man or woman enter into heaven?
Absolutely not. We are agreed on that point.
So how is it that some people can teach that sanctification isn’t a part of the salvation process? If not being sanctified means that I am exempt from salvation then it obvious that it is a part of the salvation equation. Sanctification + justification = glorification! That is the biblical formula. And it comes to us through faith alone.
John Wesley the great Methodist preacher said it well when he stated: “Exactly as we are justified by faith, we are sanctified by faith.” Sanctification and justification simply cannot be separated. They are both works of Christ not of us. If it was of us then that would be rightly called salvation by works which is legalism, plain and simple.
God wants to give us full and complete victory over sin through the sanctifying power of His Spirit.
C. S. Lewis commented on this when he wrote this illustration:
When I was a child, I often had a toothache, and I knew that if I went to my mother, she would give me something which would deaden the pain for that night and let me get to sleep. But I did not go to my mother—at least not till the pain became very bad. And the reason I did not go was this: I did not doubt she would give me the aspirin; but I knew she would also do something else. I knew she would take me to the dentist the next morning. I could not get what I wanted out of her without getting something more, which I did not want. I wanted immediate relief from my pain; but I could not get it without having my teeth set permanently right. And I knew those dentists; I knew they would start fiddling about with all sorts of other teeth which had not yet begun to ache. Our Lord is like the dentists. Dozens of people go to him to be cured of some particular sin. Well, he will cure it all right, but he will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if you once call Him in, He will give you the full treatment.
But we should all want the whole treatment!
Donald Gee said, “All Spirit and no Word, you blow up. All Word and no Spirit and you dry up. Word and Spirit—you grow up.”
In order to be a fully matured Christian we must have both justification and sanctification, we must have Jesus’ work for us as well as His work in us. Without both of these acts of God through faith we cannot be saved.
Paul described it this way in Colossians 1:
To them God willed to make known what are the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles: which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily (Colossians 1:27-29);.
His working which works in me! Isn’t that exactly what we’ve been studying here?
We are called to be perfect but can I ever be perfect on my own? Of course not! I need Jesus to perfect me, there is no other way. The wonderful news is that He will perfect me if I will only surrender myself wholly and completely to Him and submit to the promptings of the Holy Spirit in my life!
James said,
Do not be deceived, my beloved brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:16, 17).
Jesus is my perfecter. “Every perfect gift is from above.” We should drill this point home because it is the foundation stone of this truth. We are called to be perfect but we are called to be perfect in Christ, Christ in us. There is no such thing as perfection aside from Christ. That’s why we call it “Christian” perfection. It is all of Christ my part is to accept it by faith and respond with loving, trusting, thankful, obedience.
It isn’t enough to have Jesus as my Saviour; I must also allow Him to be my Lord. Jesus is the Saviour of the world, but is everyone in the world will going to be saved? Only those who also allow Him to be their Lord will gain the victory.
Peter uses the phrase Lord and Saviour to refer to Jesus four times in the three short chapters of 2 Peter alone. Do you think he was trying to tell us something?
The NKJV of the New Testament, not including the Gospels, uses the term Lord Jesus or Lord Jesus Christ 121 times! The term “Saviour” to refer to Jesus is only used 21 times and most of those come when it is coupled with Lord. Every single writer in the New Testament from Acts to Revelation, Luke, Paul, James, Peter, Jude, and John, all use the term Lord Jesus Christ. And yet we have pulpits all across the world where Jesus is preached as the Saviour only and presenting only half a gospel as sufficient.
One of the most vivid examples of this from contemporary evangelicalism is Philip Yancey’s runaway bestseller “What’s So Amazing about Grace.” In the book he writes about the woman caught in adultery in the Gospel of John and points out that when Jesus said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?“ She said, “No one, Lord.”
And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you” (John 8: 10, 11).
What does the rest of the verse say? “Go and sin no more”! Yancey only presents half of the Gospel. In the thinking of some, what Jesus does for us is all that matters; what He does in us is irrelevant.
What a horrible tragedy.
We wonder about the worldliness in the Christian church? It is largely because of this justification only pseudo-gospel. If what God does in me isn’t important then should we be surprised that standards and morality don’t matter anymore?
If it was legalism to have Jesus as my Lord, not just my Saviour, then you better throw out the entire cast of New Testament writers because they all recognized Jesus as not only their Saviour but also as their Lord.
Jesus wants to totally transform us into His glorious likeness. We are to be in the world but not of the world. We are to become new creatures, new creations, in Christ.
Paul said
I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1, 2).
It is truly nothing short of a miracle that God can not only promise, but actually deliver us from the bondage of sin!
Andrew Murray the author of the Christian classic With Christ in the School of Prayer wrote, “God is ready to assume full responsibility for the life wholly yielded to Him.” God takes us where we are and He changes us and He can take responsibility for it because He is the one doing the changing.
God takes men as they are . . . and trains them for His service, if they will be disciplined and learn of Him. They are not chosen because they are perfect, but notwithstanding their imperfections, that through the knowledge and practice of the truth, through the grace of Christ, they may become transformed into His image (Conflict and Courage, p. 285).
Nothing we can do in and of ourselves can earn us anything towards our salvation. We must be cooperating with Christ by allowing Him to do a work in us.
Consider these paragraphs under the heading “Abiding in Christ” from the book God’s Amazing Grace:
I am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without Me ye can do nothing. John 15:5.
Many have an idea that they must do some part of the work alone. They have trusted in Christ for the forgiveness of sin, but now they seek by their own efforts to live aright. But every such effort must fail. Jesus says, ‘Without me ye can do nothing.’ Our growth in grace, our joy, our usefulness—all depend upon our union with Christ. It is by communion with Him, daily, hourly—by abiding in Him—that we grow in grace. He is not only the author, but the finisher of our faith. It is Christ first and last and always. He is to be with us, not only at the beginning and the end of our course, but at every step of the way. David says, ‘I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved’ (Psalm 16:8).
Do you ask, ‘How am I to abide in Christ?’—In the same way as you received Him at first. ‘As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him’ (Colossians 2:6). . . . You gave yourself to God, to be His wholly, to serve and obey Him, and you took Christ as your Saviour. You could not yourself atone for your sins or change your heart, but having given yourself to God, you believed that He for Christ's sake did all this for you. By faith you became Christ’s, and by faith you are to grow up in Him—by giving and taking. You are to give all—your heart, your will, your service—give yourself to Him to obey all His requirements; and you must take all—Christ, the fullness of all blessing, to abide in your heart, to be your strength, your righteousness, your everlasting helper—to give you power to obey. . .
Your weakness is united to His strength, your ignorance to His wisdom, your frailty to His enduring might. So you are not to look to yourself, not to let the mind dwell upon self, but look to Christ. Let the mind dwell upon His love, upon the beauty, the perfection, of His character. Christ in His self-denial, Christ in His humiliation, Christ in His purity and holiness, Christ in His matchless love—this is the subject for the soul’s contemplation. It is by loving Him, copying Him, depending wholly upon Him, that you are to be transformed into His likeness (God’s Amazing Grace, p. 293).
That is an absolutely beautiful description of what we have been studying from God’s Word. Jesus will perform a transforming work in us if we will, by faith, surrender all and trust in His atoning sacrifice as well as His Divine Lordship. If we will do this, then, and only then, can we truly experience the miracle of God’s transforming grace.
We can do no better than to conclude with the familiar quote from the Book of Jude:
And the people of the Lord said, “Amen”! LGT
© 2008 by LastGenerationTheology.org. GCO grants permission to individuals, wholeheartedly encouraging them to copy and reproduce documents and files appearing on this site, in an unaltered state, and for non-commercial use, unless otherwise noted. All other rights reserved. Other groups or entities wishing to reproduce these materials are encouraged to contact us with reproduction requests.
 |