It’s funny how our perspective on things changes with age, maturity, and wisdom.  If you’re anything like me, you probably could come up with several examples of things you don’t see the same way now as you did when you were a child.

For example, when I was a young boy playing Little League baseball, I thought sports was just something that adults got to do for fun.  I had no concept of the business side of professional sports and how money, not fun, was the main motivator for many in the game.  I also used to think highly of all the honorable people in elected office who were doing it out of a great sense of duty and patriotism.  Little did I know as a kid how much the allure of power drove some into office and corrupted them to the core.  

Let’s take it closer to home.  How about the perspective we used to have about our parents?  How many of us used to secretly think that our parents were just mean people when they enforced the rules and instilled discipline when we broke them?  Honestly, how many of us thought that our parents were nothing more than fun killers?  And on top of that, how often did we consider them to be completely unreasonable and uncaring people who only pretended to love us?  Let’s face it, they just weren’t fair!

Then the years went by and we grew up.  We became parents ourselves and we began to see our parents in an entirely different light.  It’s then that we began to understand that everything they did was motivated by something other than the ugly things we attributed to them when we were young, immature, and foolish.

If that’s how our perspective can change regarding our parents, who else could we have possibly misunderstood?  Who else have we seen in a certain light and could be completely wrong about?  And what effect has that misunderstanding had?  That’s what we’re going to explore over the next several articles.  

And that brings us to the trillion dollar question that needs to be answered: Who is God?  It’s an extremely critical question.  Our answer to it reveals everything we think about Him.  Who we think He is has huge ramifications on how we think He sees us and responds to us.  And what we believe He thinks of us affects the relationship we have with Him in every way.

I maintain that many American Christians have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to who God is.  From pulpits across this nation, we’ve been been taught an image of a God that just doesn’t square with whom the Bible reveals Him to be.  We need to divorce ourselves of our preconceived ideas, no matter what their origin, so that we can begin to see the true nature of our Father.

So who do you think God is?  Is He a jealous God whose rage burns whenever your heart turns to someone or something other than Him?  Is He a harsh  judge who is gleefully waiting to convict you of all your wrongdoing?  Is He a disappointed God who is ready to pour out His wrath upon all humanity for every sin we’ve ever committed?  Is He the good silver-haired grandfather in the sky who is full of wisdom?  Is He the loving dad you’ve always wished you had?  Is He the stern taskmaster, ready to whip you for every offense?  Is He the perfectionist you could never possibly hope to please?  Is He the abusive father who took out all His anger on HIs innocent son so that you could have a chance to be saved?  Or is He a mysterious, invisible, distant Spirit that you could never really get to know and have a personal relationship with?

There are so many different views out there about who God is.  They can’t all be right.  And yet these different images of God have been painted by many people over the centuries.  Who’s right?  What can we rely on?  How can we determine the truth?  And who can we trust to reveal the true nature of God?

There actually is a book and a person we can turn to for the answer to our trillion dollar question.  The book is, of course, the Bible.  The person – well, let’s allow him to speak for himself.  

Philip said, “Lord, show us the Father and that will be enough for us.”

Jesus answered: “Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’?  Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? (John 14:8-10)

Jesus makes it perfectly clear.  If you know him, you know the Father.  The Son and the Father are one.  That is also why Jesus declared later in John’s gospel, “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)  There can be no mistake.  Knowing Jesus is the same as knowing God, and that is the key to eternal life.

Paul knew this to be true as well, and he put it this way.  “The Son is the image of the invisible God.” (Colossians 1:15)  Perhaps you’ve thought to yourself, “How can I ever get to know God?  How can I ever know someone I can’t even see?”  Paul’s answer: Get to know Jesus.  He is the image of God.  Who he is is who the Father is.

The writer of Hebrews gives us even more insight.  He writes, “The Son is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact representation of his being.” (Hebrews 1:3)  Think of that – “the exact representation of his being.”  So again we see that if we get to know Jesus, we can have confidence that we know God.  They are one and same.  What we see in Jesus is exactly who his Father is.

So that’s the direction we’re heading.  We are going to discover who God really is through examining Jesus Christ.  Once we see Jesus’ true nature, we will know the nature of God.  Then we will be able to answer the question that started us on this journey – Who is God?

It can be a frustrating thing to live under the weight of perfectionism.  In fact, it can be quite debilitating.  Think of living every single day trying your best to always get everything right, to never mess up once no matter what you are doing.  And all the while, you know you can never get there.  To make matters worse, it’s not good enough that you’re trying real hard.   It’s not even good enough if you get close.  Remember, close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

It’s one thing if you’re trying to live up to your own perfect standards; it can be quite another when it’s someone else’s.  Perhaps you’ll learn to cope with your own unreasonableness.  Maybe you’ll eventually learn to give yourself an “A” for effort.  But if it’s someone else’s perfectionist traits you’re trying to appease, you may be in for a miserable time of it, especially if that person is someone very close or important to you.  What if that perfectionist is your parent, your spouse, your boss, your teacher, your coach, or your friend?  What if they are on you regularly, constantly criticizing and belittling you because you keep coming up short in their eyes?  What if your entire relationship is built on trying to please them?  Wouldn’t we consider this to be abusive?

And yet that’s how many of us think of God.  We see Him as this demanding perfectionist in heaven looking down at us with glaring, angry, disapproving eyes because we keep messing up.  I know I once held that view of Him, at least to some degree.  I remember as a child thinking of God as being somewhat like some of the nuns I had as teachers in school – one wrong move and WHACK goes the ruler across the knuckles.

We American Christians are obsessed with our behavior.  We’ve come to think that that’s what God cares about most.  We’re so obsessed by it that that is the central message heard in many churches on Sunday mornings.  “Clean up your act or else.”  Straighten up or God’s going to get you.”  Nonsense!  If you’re in Christ, you’re HIs – period!  This behavior obsession has become so prevalent that is has even colored the way we view sanctification.  As I mentioned last week, we’ve come to think of being sanctified as the process of cleaning up our outward behavior when it simply means that God has set us apart for Him.

I’m not saying that God doesn’t care about our behavior.  Of course He does.  He doesn’t want to see His children indulging the flesh.  Sin always brings about harmful consequences.  But rather than focusing on our outward actions, He’s more concerned with what’s happening on the inside.  Just look at Jesus’ words as recorded by Matthew.  “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence.  Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.” (Matthew 23:25-26)  And just in case we missed his point, Jesus further declared, “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean.  In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Matthew 23:27-28)

I think Jesus’ point is abundantly clear, and it wasn’t that we should use Dawn Dishwashing Soap on both the outside and inside of our dirty dinner dishes.  His point is, what good would it do anyone to have the best, most pristine-looking behavior on the outside if they are dead on the inside?  Would God be pleased with someone who could live by all the rules, as if any of us could, but yet their heart was far from Him?

Think of Jesus’ encounter with the rich young ruler in Luke 18:18-27.  The rich ruler wanted to know what he had to do to inherit eternal life. Notice what his concern was based on – what he had to do.  He was focused on outward actions.  Jesus reminded him of the commandments, to which the ruler claimed that he had followed all of them since he was a boy.  Now putting aside his “humility” for a moment, Jesus was trying to help the ruler realize how futile it would be to try to earn eternal life by trying to be perfectly obedient to God’s commandments.  He clearly didn’t get it.  So Jesus shifted it to the next gear.  He challenged the ruler to sell everything he had and give it to the poor.  The young man went away sad because he didn’t want to part with his great wealth.

Now before we miss it, Jesus was not suggesting that the way to eternal life is to sell everything we have.  What he was attempting to do was to get the rich ruler to realize that the way to eternal life is not through what we do.  In fact, it is impossible for us to ever be good enough to earn eternal life.  As Jesus said in response to his disciples, “What is impossible with man is possible with God.” (Luke 18:27)

Here’s the deal.  I believe we have confused sanctification with transformation.  Sanctification results in the inside change that Jesus referred to.  Remember that once we’re saved, we are born again as a new creation.  We are made new on the inside where the Spirit of God is united with our new spirit and new heart.  At that moment we’ve been set apart from our old dead spirit and made alive again.  But obviously our flesh is still our flesh.  That hasn’t changed and that’s where transformation comes into the picture.

Transformation has to do with the changes that occur in our outward behavior, thinking, and attitudes after we’ve been justified and sanctified.  It’s something that typically happens over an extended period of time.  It is what Paul refers to when he implores the Christians in Rome to “be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” (Romans 12:2) or when he reminds the Ephesians “ to be made new in the attitude of your minds.” (Ephesians 4:23)  Our mind is the battleground upon which the fight for a clean outside takes place.  That’s because our actions and emotions typically follow what we think or believe.  If you believe you’re still nothing but a rotten sinner saved by grace, you will most likely act like a rotten sinner.

But that’s not what you are.  God has made you new.  He wants you to know that and believe that.  That’s why we are urged to fix “our eyes on Jesus” (Hebrews 12:2) and to “set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.” (Colossians 3:2)  As we focus on Jesus, our minds begin to change.  As our minds change, what we believe about ourselves begins to change.  As we begin to see ourselves for who we truly are in Christ, our behavior and attitudes begin to change too.  And that’s how the outside of the dish is cleaned.

So don’t put the cart before the horse.  Don’t make the transformation of your outward behavior, thinking, and attitudes more important than your sanctified heart.  If you are in Christ, you have been sanctified.  Your are new, your are His, and you already have eternal life.  Believe it and accept it.  And then allow God’s essential grace to start transforming in your life today.  

Did you ever have one of those moments in your childhood where a bunch of kids were going to do something together, such as play baseball, and two people were chosen to be captains of the teams? If so, and if you were ever picked to be a captain, then you got to experience something similar to what has happened to every believer there has ever been. You were set apart.

In Christianese, there is a special word for being set apart. That word is sanctification. It’s a word that I understand differently today than how I used to understand it. It’s important to have a proper understanding of what sanctification is because having the correct understanding can impact how we relate to God and to one another.

The word sanctification comes from the same Greek word that means holy. So to be sanctified is to be made holy, or to be set apart. What I misunderstood for many years is how and when I was sanctified.

I always understood sanctification as an ongoing process. I would become increasingly sanctified, so I thought, as I cleaned up my life and stopped sinning. In other words, as my behavior changed and I started to look more like Christ, I was becoming more and more holy. So I saw  justification as a one time event that occurred at the moment I was saved, which is biblically accurate.  However, sanctification, or what I thought of as a cleaning up of my life, was something that would happen progressively as I lived in obedience to God.

Do you see the problem with that way of thinking? It puts the emphasis on me and what I was or wasn’t doing. It was performance based; I was only as holy as I was living. And it’s not only putting the responsibility for sanctification on the wrong person (me) but it’s also not altogether an accurate way of perceiving what sanctification is. And to add more to it, thinking of sanctification as a progressive process is not really biblical.  Let’s dig into Scriptures and learn more about it.

Read the following verses and pay attention to how the word “sanctified” is being used.

“Now I commit you to God and to the word of his grace, which can build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified. (Acts 20:32)

“I will rescue you from your own people and from the Gentiles. I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” (Acts 26:17-18)

To the church of God in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours. (1 Corinthians 1:2)

And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11)

And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. (Hebrews 10:10)

Jude, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, and brother of James, To those who are called, sanctified by God the Father, and preserved in Jesus Christ. (Jude 1:1)

Notice how each of these verses refers to sanctification, or being made holy, in the past tense. It’s already been done. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, you have already been set apart. It is not a progressive thing. It is not a process you experience throughout the rest of your life. It occurred at the moment you were saved. So just as justification is a one-time event, so is sanctification.

Moreover, it also has nothing to do with trying to clean up your life or improve your outward behavior. If it did, then apparently Jesus needed to improve his behavior too. Look at what he said to a group of Jews who were ready to stone him during the Feast of the Dedication in Jerusalem. “If he called them gods, to whom the word of God came (and the Scripture cannot be broken), do you say of Him, whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You are blaspheming,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God’”? (John 10:35-26) Jesus is talking about himself being sanctified. Is he needing to clean up his act? Obviously not. Another translation of the Bible puts John 10:36 this way: “what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own.” Now that makes what Jesus was saying very clear and it provides us with great insight as to what is happening when we were sanctified.

When a person puts their faith in Jesus and what he did, they are declared right with God. As I mentioned in last week’s article, that is what the Bible refers to as justification. What I failed to realize for many years was that sanctification occurred at that very moment too. When God declares the new believer to be right, He also sets him apart as His very own. In other words, He has sanctified him or made him holy.  

As long as we think of sanctification in terms of cleaning up our outward behavior, we will struggle to understand what sanctification truly is. It is simply God making us his. We belong to him. Jesus Christ purchased us by his blood. He has set us apart from sin and from an unbelieving world and has adopted us into His family.

And it certainly isn’t anything we could have accomplished on our own. As Paul explained to the Romans, “He gave me the priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified by the Holy Spirit.” (Romans 15:16) Notice who Paul gives credit to when it comes to our sanctification. It’s the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us (Also see 2 Thessalonians 2:13 and 1 Peter 1:2). It is not something we can accomplish by working hard to quit sinning, live better, and be obedient to God.

So once again we see the essential nature of God’s grace. We are his, not because of anything we did to deserve it, but because of His unquenchable love and His essential grace. Rejoice in this truth. You’ve been set apart to be a captain on God’s team. And there is certainly no team that is as victorious as His.

“Guilty!”

Now that’s a word that no one would ever want to hear, particularly in a court of law. To be pronounced guilty means that there will be a sentence to be carried out, and that’s never good.   

Since I have never been put on trial or accused of a crime, I can only imagine what it would be like to have that experience. I don’t know about you but I think I would be scared to death (figuratively, of course). Just the thought of being accused of some awful crime would be bad enough. Think of the harm it could do to one’s reputation and standing in the community.  

But to make it even worse, what about having to put your future in the hands of some attorney? You’d better hope he knows what he’s doing. And then there are the twelve jurors from all walks of life. Can you depend on them paying close attention during the proceedings? Can you trust that they don’t hold some sort of biases against you? What if they just want to hurry up and convict you so that they can get back to their normal lives? And what if you were truly innocent all along? Imagine spending the rest of your days in prison separated from family and friends never to be with them again. Imagine instead spending the remainder of your life with hardened criminals and trying to survive. Talk about a frightening proposition.

Thankfully, the vast majority of people will never have to worry about that. And most of us don’t go about our lives thinking about it too much either, because most of us have never been remotely close to committing an act that could result in such a legal charge. So we live out our lives day after day in the confidence of knowing that we will likely never face such a scenario.

Sadly, though, that’s not the case for a lot of Christians. Many Christians live everyday with the fear that they may one day be charged and found guilty before God’s court of law. If you are one of those, I want to assure you that those fears are completely unfounded.  

“But how can you say that?  You don’t know the awful things I’ve done throughout my life.  You don’t know how many of God’s laws and commandments I’ve broken.”  True, but it doesn’t matter if you are in Christ. Allow me to explain.

We turn to Romans to see how God used Paul to explain this wonderful truth to us. Starting at Romans 3:23, we see that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” Now you may think, “Aha! See, that’s what I’ve been saying. I have sinned and fallen short of God’s glory. He’s going to hold me accountable for that.” Not so fast. If you stop reading there, you will totally miss the good news.

Let’s read on. In Romans 3:24, we find, “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” There’s one key word in that statement that I want to draw your attention to.  It’s the word justified. A small but powerfully significant word, it’s essentially a legal term. It means to be declared just or right. In this case, it’s to be declared right before God.

So you see, you’ve been declared right before God if you are in Christ. That’s astonishing news! “But how can that be?” you may ask. “What about all the bad stuff I’ve done? Don’t I have to answer for that?” The simple answer is no. Jesus answered for it. He satisfied the requirements of the law. He paid the price the law demanded for your sins and imperfections. He paid for it on the cross. That’s what it means when it says the you’ve been redeemed by Christ Jesus. You have been bought and paid for; there is no more price to be paid.

Notice too in v. 24 how this justification is offered to us. It is offered “freely by his grace.” It’s as if the judge – God – has listened to all the accusations brought against you by the prosecutor – Satan – but has announced your acquittal, despite the fact that you had committed all the wrongful acts you were accused of. How could God do this and still be a just God? Because your guilt was removed from you and placed on Jesus. He who knew no sin became sin for us so that we would become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21) So God did justly punish sin, but it was poured out on Jesus, the one who could take the punishment, rather than on us.

So there it is once again. God’s essential grace revealed to us through our justification. And yet still many Christians struggle with accepting this. It can be such a huge struggle for us to get over the fact that there is nothing we need to do or can do to make up for all the sinful acts we’ve committed or will yet commit. We could never right all our wrongs even if we lived for a million years. It’s simply impossible for us to justify ourselves. That’s why Paul maintained “that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law.” (Romans 3:28)

If Jesus had not done what he did, we could never have been justified. And make no mistake, it is a done deal. Listen to what Paul says in the following verses:

“Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” (Romans 5:1)

“Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!” (Romans 5:9)

“But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” (1 Corinthians 6:11)

Notice in each case, Paul has written about our justification in the past tense. It’s already been accomplished. If you are in Christ, then you are justified. It’s done. It’s over with. You’ve been set free from the penalty and power of sin. Never will you hear the word “guilty” come from the mouth of God.

So that leaves us with a choice. Are we going to continue to live in the fear of future punishment and wrath because of our sins or are we going to live as justified sons and daughters of God? I choose the latter because it’s true. God’s essential grace through Jesus Christ has made it so.  Believe it and live victoriously.

You may have noticed that I did not post a new article on my blog site last week.  It’s the first week since I started my blog back in November that I missed a week.  It certainly wasn’t planned but it was unavoidable.  

In case you didn’t see my Facebook post, my father passed away last Wednesday.  Needless to say, I spent quite a bit of time with my mother, brother, and sisters all week long.  Every day was filled with a lot of preparations and arrangements that needed to be made, to say nothing about all the consoling and eating going on all the way up to the showing and funeral on Monday.  As any of you who have gone through this know, my mind and time was occupied with a lot of things other than writing.  

We are all going to miss our father, and it’s certainly not been an easy transition for our mother.  Fortunately, my four siblings and I all live within a half hour drive of our mom and we all have spouses who also provide a lot of love and caring support too.  And I haven’t even mentioned all the grandchildren and great grandchildren who have been a source of great joy for my parents over their golden years.  It’s a fantastic blessing to belong to such a family.  Perfect family?  Of course not (whose family is?), but a great blessing nonetheless.

It’s not like I was looking for an irony in all this, but there was one that did not escape my notice.  Just the Thursday evening before my father’s health took it’s turn for the worst, I had posted an article in which I revealed that one of the things that makes God’s grace so essential is life.  And I don’t mean the being born into this world kind of life, though that’s obviously extremely important.  What I mean is the spiritual, everlasting kind of life.  As we learned from Ephesians 2, we were all dead in our sins and transgressions.  But because of His grace, flowing from His love, God made us alive in Jesus Christ when we believed in him.  That’s the hope we have for our dad, and that’s the promise of God that fills us with the anticipation of seeing him again someday.

That new life we have in Christ is what Jesus referred to as being born again when speaking to Nicodemus in John 3.  “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again. (v. 3)”  This statement certainly confused Nicodemus, who thought Jesus was somehow referring to your mother giving birth to you again.  “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born! (v. 4)”

I’ve got to tell you, it would be easy to laugh at poor old Nicodemus and wonder how he could be so slow if it weren’t for the fact that none of us would probably have understood either.  How can a person be born again?  That’s the million dollar question.

Thankfully, Jesus was gracious toward Nicodemus, just as he is with you and me.  And that grace was essential for Nicodemus’ understanding and his lack of faith.  Jesus patiently explained to him, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.  Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit (v. 5,6).”

And there we have it.  Being born again – the new life – is explained.  Flesh gives birth to flesh.  That is an obvious reference to our natural birth that started our life here on earth. However, the second birth to which Jesus was referring when he said we must be born again is not a matter of the flesh.  It has nothing to do with our earthly mother and father. That responsibility belongs to the Holy Spirit.  The Spirit gives birth to spirit.

So the new life we have in Christ is made possible by the Holy Spirit.  That is the fulfillment of God’s promise that he would give us a new heart and a new spirit.  (Ezekiel 36:26)  When we are born again, we receive the Spirit of Christ.  He dwells in us and is our seal until the day of our redemption.  (Ephesians 1:14)

But how does this new birth happen?  Do we somehow merit it by good works or proving ourselves worthy of it to God?  Not at all.  There is nothing we can do to earn this new life. If we could, then grace wouldn’t be grace.  

So does the Holy Spirit just choose at random to whom he will grant this second birth?  Is there some kind of heavenly lottery system that determines who the lucky ones are? Again, not at all.  Random chance or indiscriminate choice has nothing to do with it.

Just as human life is impossible without conception, so spiritual life is impossible without some form of conception as well.  Only this conception is not a matter of the flesh; it is completely spiritual indeed.  

It starts with the very thing that has the life-giving force in it – the gospel.  As Paul explained it, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes: first to the Jew, then to the Gentile.”  (Romans 1:16)  Notice that he refers to the gospel as the power that brings salvation to everyone who believes.  But for that life-giving force to germinate into something that will live, it has to find a receptacle – our minds.  As Paul elaborated later in Romans, “How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them?” (Romans 10:14)

Here is how it works.  Someone shares the good news of Jesus Christ with others.  You hear that good news.  As you consider in your mind what you’ve heard, the possibility of germination is there.  If you believe in your mind what you have heard about Jesus, new life has now been conceived in you.  At that moment you’ve been born again.

That takes us back to Jesus and Nicodemus.  After explaining that we need to be born again by the Spirit, he further explained how this would happen.  “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”  (John 3:14-15)  In other words, Jesus was sharing the gospel with Nicodemus.  His being lifted up was a reference to his death on the cross so that he would take away the sin of the world.  Anyone who believes in this truth and believes in Jesus Christ would indeed be born again.

This is the hope that we all have.  That hope can develop into faith.  And faith is the door through which the Holy Spirit enters to bring about a new birth.  To repeat, we can do nothing to bring about our new birth, just as we do nothing to be born into this world.  All we do is believe the good news of life in Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit gives birth to our spirit.  This new birth is all the work of God and made possible by His essential grace.  And that is what fills my family with the eternal hope to someday join our father in the presence of God.

Since the start of the new year, we have explored different ways in which God has demonstrated His great love for us.  In the seven articles I’ve posted since then, we have seen how…

1. He showed us how much He loves us on the cross.
2. He has forgiven all our debt.
3. He has chosen not to remember our sins anymore.
4. He has replaced our old, dead spirit with a new heart and a new spirit.
5. He has filled our new spirit with Christ through the indwelling of his Holy Spirit.
6. He helps us grow and mature through the Holy Spirit’s leading.
7. He guarantees that we will be His children forever.

What amazing love!  And this is only scratching the surface.  God’s love for us is inexhaustible and is closely linked to His grace.  In fact, I would say that God’s love and grace are inseparable; you can’t have one without the other.  When you see how important it is to be loved by Him, you can also see how essential His grace is.  And that is what this blog is dedicated to – revealing God’s essential grace.

So what makes God’s grace so essential for life?  That’s sort of like asking what makes breathing so vital.  Love is to grace what air is to breathing.  Without the first, there is no point to the second.  Without the first, there would be no life at all.

As I described a couple months ago, grace is God’s willingness to give us something indescribably valuable that we did not earn or deserve.  We did nothing to earn or deserve His love, but He loves us anyway.  And as we will see, we would have no life at all apart from His love.

That was exactly Paul’s point as he wrote to the Ephesians about God’s grace.  Notice how essential God’s grace is.  “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient.  All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.  But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”  (Ephesians 2:1-5)

There is a lot to absorb in that passage, so let’s start where Paul started.  The first thing to notice was our spiritual condition without Christ.  We “were dead in our transgressions and sins.”  That’s right – dead!  Obviously, our bodies were alive and so were our souls (that part of us that is described as our mind, will, and emotions).  What was dead was our spirit.  Without a living spirit, we were people with no eternal hope.  

Because of the way we lived, which was in a state of unbelief, Paul further stated that “we were by nature deserving of wrath.”  If you’ve ever wondered what we had earned or deserved, this was it.  We deserved wrath.  

But that’s where God’s grace came in.  We didn’t get what we deserved.  Instead, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ.” As Paul points out just a few verses later (v. 8-9), this occurred at the moment in which when we believed in Jesus.   

If we were such rotten sinners deserving of wrath, why would God make us alive with Christ?  Why wouldn’t He just let us lie in the bed we ourselves had made?  The answer shines brilliantly in Paul’s words.  It is the first light in a passage that is otherwise filled with darkness up to this point.  The reason God made us alive is “because of His great love for us.”  That’s it.  Plain and simple.  No other reason beyond that.

Now this is where God’s love and grace acted in concert.  Because He loved us, because He longed for us to know His love, He offered us an eternal hope through His grace.  In fact, it is a hope that He has offered to all mankind.  That hope is the gift of life through Jesus Christ.  All that there was for us was to accept that gift in faith.  So in the final analysis, when it came to our salvation, it was God’s grace and only His grace that made it possible.  As Paul so succinctly stated, “it is by grace you have been saved.”

That’s how essential His grace is.  If God were not full of love and grace, we would still be spiritually dead.  There was not a single thing we could have done to change our circumstances.  God knew that, so He made it all possible through Christ.  Not only did He make it possible, He even offered it to us freely and easily.  It’s not something we can work for.  It’s not something we can earn.  It’s something that God, because He is love and because His grace flows from that love, offers to all willingly.  So like the father declared of his prodigal son in Jesus’ famous parable, our Father also declares of those who believe – “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.”  (Luke 15:24)

“Send in $500 and we’ll give you this prayer towel that will cure you of all your illnesses.”  Okay, so maybe I’m exaggerating a bit, but I bet you’ve all heard similar outrageous claims.  It’s amazing how many “too good to be true” offers there are out there.  Take the following actual claims as evidence.

1. Listerine can prevent and cure colds and sore throats.
2. The Q-Ray Bracelet provides immediate and significant pain relief from arthritis and other chronic conditions.
3. Kellogg’s Rice Krispies Cereal helps support your child’s immunity.
4. Dr. Koch’s Cure-All could cure practically “all human ills, including tuberculosis” and even cancer.
5. Regular use of Nivea My Silhouette! Skin Cream significantly reduces consumers’ body size.
6. Reebok Easy Tone Shoes strengthen and tone the muscles in your legs and thighs.

As I’m sure you’ve already figured out, all these claims were either proven to be false or removed by the producer as a result of legal or regulatory action.  But why do so many businesses make such outrageous claims when they know they are not true or cannot be proven?  It’s simple – making wild, unsubstantiated claims works.  It sells their products.

The reason their claims work is that they play on people’s fears, aspirations, and greed.  Nothing like good old-fashioned human vanity to turn us into suckers.  And if you think about, that type of marketing ploy is almost as old as humanity itself.  Playing on our vanity was essentially the game the serpent played in the Garden of Eden with Adam and Eve.  So as Solomon wrote, “There’s nothing new under the sun.”  (Ecclesiastes 1:9)

The important thing to remember is that consumers are not the only ones to give in to greed.  Businesses are often acting on greed as well.  Afterall, their goal when making their unbelievable claims is to rake in some quick, easy bucks.  So as a consumer, be very careful about trusting those “too good to be true” claims.  They usually are just that – too good to be true.

So with all the deception out there in the world, is there anyone you can trust?  Are there any claims that can be believed even if they do sound too good to be true?  The answer to both is a resounding yes!  And the reason why is simple. The one who is making the claim is not a con artist and not driven by greed.  Instead he is driven by passion – a passion to love the entire world.

So who is this person that we can trust?  And what claim does he make that we can bet is an absolutely sure thing?  Well, it is God, of course.  And the claim He makes is that once you are born again as His child, you will be His for eternity.

Now that is a startling claim.  Think about it for a moment.  Anyone who is a Christian will be His child forever!  There is nothing that you, me, or anyone else can do to change that.  And unlike those businesses that falsely guarantee their product for a lifetime, God’s promise really is a guarantee that will last for a lifetime, and it’s a lifetime that will never end.  Who wouldn’t want that?

So how can we know that God’s promise is believable?  There are several ways.  First, being a child of God means that you have the life of Christ in you.  And guess how long his life lasts?  That’s right, forever!  Listen to what John says about this.  “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.”  (1 John 5:11)  And as John states repeatedly in his gospel, those who believe in Jesus receive eternal life.  (John 3:16, 4:14, 6:47)

If the life we receive is eternal, then how long will it last?  Until we commit too many sins?  Until we commit some really bad sin?  Until some time has gone by and we still haven’t produced much fruit in our lives?  There are some Christians who believe all this to be true, but if it were, it would be making a mockery of three things – God’s promise, what Jesus accomplished on the cross, and the word “eternal.”  If God has promised the gift of eternal life to all who believe in Jesus (Romans 6:23) and eternal means, well, eternal, then how can it possibly be temporary?  To be a temporary thing would mean that Jesus’ death on the cross did not achieve total forgiveness of our sins and complete victory over the power of sin.  

A second reason we can know that God’s promise of eternal life is true is that He guarantees it.  Once we believe and are born again, we receive the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit is the guarantee of eternal life.  As Paul explains, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the message of truth, the gospel of your salvation. When you believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”  (Ephesians 1:13-14)

How’s that for a guarantee?  If you believe in Jesus, you have received the Holy Spirit and he will never leave you.  (John 14:16)  And as we saw last week, one of the gifts he gives to God’s children is life.  So if you have Christ’s life and you have the Holy Spirit, you are guaranteed to be God’s child forever.

 A third reason we can know that God’s promise is true is that God said it is and He never lies.  (Hebrews 6:18, Numbers 23:19)  It is just simply not in His nature.  He is holy and lying is impossible for Him.  

So if God can’t lie and He says that we will be His children for eternity, then that is a promise that you can take to the bank.  Unlike Listerine or Reebok, God’s claim is not too good to be true.  It is true!  It’s as true as anything can ever be.  You have the life of Christ and you have the Holy Spirit.  You can never lose either one.  There is no guarantee in this world that can compare to that.  So don’t go through life like a doubting Thomas, worrying that your next sin might cause God to finally reject you.  He won’t.  Jesus has already taken your sins away.  You are God’s and you will be for eternity.  That’s how passionately He loves you.  So take heart, brothers and sisters, and walk confidently with the Lord.

Have you ever thought about how much you learned from your parents?  I’d be willing to bet that it’s much more than we can imagine.  How many sons learned how to work on a car, throw or hit a ball,  mow the lawn, or build a treehouse from their fathers?  How many daughters learned how to sew or knit, put on makeup, play with baby dolls, or dress up from their mothers?  And of course, most sons learn what it means to be a man from their fathers and daughters learn what it means to be a woman from their mothers.

Naturally, all the above are broad generalizations.  Daughters learn things from their fathers and sons learn things from their mothers as well.  For example, my dad taught me how to drive with a stick shift, how to ride a bike, how to shovel the driveway, and how to take care of the trash.  On the other hand, my mom taught me how to wash and dry dishes, how to fold the laundry, and how to keep my room cleaned up.  

But what we learn from our parents goes far beyond just the normal daily household routines.  We also pick up many of our tastes and traits from them too.  My interest in sports and history certainly came from my dad, but my interest in the things of God were rooted in my mom’s dedication to church.  And I’m sure I got my competitive nature from my dad and teaching spirit from my mom.  I think I got my work ethic from both, but I have no idea where I got my lame sense of humor from.

The beauty of what I just described is that it forms a picture of what life is like in the family of God.  As we discovered in last week’s article, God does not leave us as orphans.  Instead, He gives us His Holy Spirit to lead us through this life.  How does he do this?  Let’s take a look.

One thing the Holy Spirit does for believers is teach them.  Jesus told his disciples as much shortly before his death on the cross. He wanted to assure them that what they had learned from him was not all that they would learn.  There were more truths that would be revealed, and it was the Holy Spirit who would reveal them.  As he told them in John 16:13, “But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”

Paul further elaborates on this in his first letter to the Corinthians.  As he pointed out to them, “What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us.”  (1 Corinthians 2:12)  In other words, everything we know about God – His love and all that He has done for us and given us – is made known to us by the Holy Spirit.  As Paul said in the next verse, it is the Spirit that teaches us “spiritual realities.”

This includes helping us understand the Scriptures.  As Paul explained, “The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.”  (1 Corinthians 2:14)  Because we have the mind of Christ (v. 16), which is the Holy Spirit living inside us, the meaning of the Scriptures are brought to light more and more over time.  The more we seek, the more light we receive.  That’s not only true of seeking to understand the Scriptures but is also true of understanding more about Christ.  The Holy Spirit sees to it.

A second thing the Holy Spirit does for believers is give them spiritual gifts.  The gifts are many and various, but he distributes them as he sees fit.  (1 Corinthians 12:4; Hebrews 2:4)  To some he gives the gift of teaching.  To others the gift of prophecy.  And to still others the gifts of healing, administration, service, encouragement, giving and more.  All the gifts of the Spirit are given for the common good (1 Corinthians 12:7) so that the body of Christ would be built up and all believers would reach maturity and unity in our knowledge of Jesus.  (Ephesians 4:12-13)

But spiritual gifts are not the only thing the Holy Spirit gives to believers.  He also gives life (2 Corinthians 3:6), wisdom and understanding, (Colossians 1:9), joy (1 Thessalonians 1:6) and power, love, and self-discipline (2 Timothy 1:7).  All these gifts are given not only for the benefit of the individual believer but also for the benefit of others in the family of God.  It is like brothers and sisters who are given wonderful gifts from their parents.  Instead of using them for their own purpose, they use them to help each other.  As a result, the entire family is strengthened and the love they have for one another is evident to all who know them.  That kind of family love would be attractive to anyone thirsting for it in an otherwise empty and vain world.

A third thing the Holy Spirit does is sanctify believers (2 Thessalonians 2:13, 1 Peter 1:2).  Combined with the teaching and gift-giving, this is what brings about change in our lives.  As we learn to listen to the Spirit and follow where he leads, we will respond less and less to the desires of the flesh (Galatians 5:16).  Instead, we will find ourselves beginning to bear the fruit Jesus referred to when he encouraged his disciples to remain in him (John 15:5).  And if you’ve been a believer for a while, you probably already know the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control (Galatians 5:22-23).  In other words, we will begin to exhibit an increasing amount of the characteristics of Christ.

Those are just a few examples of what the Holy Spirit does to help Christians live their new life in Christ.  As you can clearly see, God is a Father who cares about His children and loves them intensely.  Like good earthly parents, He doesn’t just bring us to new birth and stop there.  Through His Spirit, he teaches us, gives us indescribable gifts, and helps us grow and thrive.  And like how children tend to take on some of the traits and characteristics of their earthly parents, so believers over time also take on the traits and characteristics of their Savior.  So to echo the words of Paul, “Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit” (Galatians 5:25).

Everyone has those special days they will never forget.  They form memories that last a lifetime.  For example, how about the day you graduated from school, got your first job, or got married to the love of your life.  Or better yet, how about when the Colts won the Super Bowl.  (Okay ladies, I guess the wedding day was a little more important.)    

I have several of those special days tucked away in my memory.  Certainly the birth of my children rank right up there at the top.  I can remember each one of them like they were yesterday.  Talk about special moments in time.

My wife and I loved and cherished all three of our little ones.  I’m sure it was the same for all of you who have been blessed to have children.  Now take those memories of the day they were born and try to imagine coming home from the hospital and doing nothing with your newborn son or daughter.  You don’t feed them, dress them, clean them, or hold them  You just abandon them and let them figure out how to live life on their own.  Can you imagine that?  Ridiculous, isn’t it?  What loving parent would ever do such a thing?  What parent could claim to love their child if they did?

So if a loving earthly mother and father wouldn’t abandon their children after they’re born, would our heavenly Father to do that to His children?  Would He let His sons and daughters try to figure out this new life on their own?  Let’s allow Jesus to answer this one.

Shortly before his death, Jesus spoke some final words of comfort and peace to his disciples.  He told them, “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.  Before long, the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me.  Because I live, you also will live.  On that day you will realize that I am in my Father, and you are in me, and I am in you.”  (John 14:18-20)

With that said, let’s return to our question.  Would God abandon us after we’re born into His family?  As Jesus said, He will not leave us as orphans.  He didn’t just give us life; he leads us through it.  He will never abandon us.  We are His now and we will always be His.  That’s how much He loves us.

With that now settled, we have another question to answer.  How does He lead us through this new life we’ve been born into?  It begins with one simple but extremely important fact – Christ lives in us!  Paul referred to this truth as a “mystery that has been kept hidden for ages and generations, but is now disclosed to the Lord’s people.”  He also called it our “hope of glory.”  (Colossians 1:26, 27)

This promise of Christ living in us is given to everyone who believes.  On the day of Pentecost, Peter and the other disciples were preaching to the crowd of Jews who had gathered in Jerusalem from all over the world.  As Peter told them about how they had killed their Messiah, the crowd cried out, “Brothers, what shall we do?”  Peter replied, “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.  The promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off—for all whom the Lord our God will call.”  (Acts 2:37-39)

Now you may be thinking, “Wait a minute.  You said that Christ lives in us.  Peter said we would receive the Holy Spirit.”  That’s right.  That’s how Christ lives in us—through the Holy Spirit, the third person in the Godhead.  And as Peter also said, each of us receives the Holy Spirit at the moment we believe.  And from that point on, he indwells every believer, and through him, Christ lives in us.

Peter revealed a profound truth that day.  And he was in good company because he was in complete agreement with his Lord.  As Jesus told his disciples, “I will ask the Father, and he will give you another advocate to help you and be with you forever—the Spirit of truth. The world cannot accept him, because it neither sees him nor knows him. But you know him, for he lives with you and will be in you.”  (John 14:16-17)

And we also have Paul and John testifying to this same truth.  As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God?”  (1 Corinthians 6:19)  And John also exclaimed, “This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit.”  (1 John 4:13)

What a marvelous gift we have been given.  To reiterate, God gave us new life when we believed in Jesus Christ.  But He didn’t stop there.  There is no way in this universe that God was going to leave us as orphans.  He wasn’t just interested in a growing family of children.  Like any loving parent, He wants to see His children grow and prosper.  To accomplish that, He gave us the Holy Spirit so that Christ would live in us.    

So what does the Holy Spirit do?  How does he lead us through this new life in Christ?  That will be the topic for next week’s post.  For now, take the time to thank your Father for not abandoning you as a newborn but instead caring for you so much that He gave you His Spirit—Christ in you.  Now that’s love.  And that’s essential grace.

Boy, how time flies!  I can’t believe this is already the fourth article in this series on the different ways in which God demonstrates His love for us.  Previously we saw how He revealed His love to us on the cross, how He has forgiven our debt, and how He has chosen not to remember our sins anymore.  Can you imagine life without these wonderful gifts?  Now that’s essential grace.

But that’s just the beginning of God’s love.  It goes even deeper still.  Let’s now shift our attention to how God’s love is revealed in the life of a person after they have become a believer.

So you heard the gospel one day and you believed.  Awesome!  Congratulations.  If you’re like many people, you may have thought, “What now? Now that I’m a Christian, what happens?”  Excellent question.  There is no one single answer, but let’s start with what changes immediately after you believe (or at the same time perhaps).

The first thing we must understand is what our true nature was apart from Christ.  We get a hint about that nature in 1 Corinthians 15:22, when we are bluntly told, “For as in Adam all die.”  Why is that?  Why, like Adam, does every human being taste death?  

The answer lies in what Adam is responsible for and what everyone since is responsible for.  As you know from the familiar story in Genesis, Adam was given the breath of life by God and placed in a beautiful garden.  He lived in a perfect environment where he knew no death, no fear, and no sin.  But all that changed when he and Eve ate the forbidden fruit.  From that time on, something was radically different.

Instead of being the perfect man that God had created him to be, Adam’s nature was now altered.  He now had a sin nature and the consequences were dire and profound.  As Paul tells us, “Sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin…”  (Romans 5:12)  

Because of Adam, sin was now in a world that had never previously known sin.  As a result, what God had warned Adam about when He told him to never eat the forbidden fruit became a fact of life on earth.  Death from now on became part of our reality.  Adam and Eve experienced it themselves.  They died spiritually on the very day they sinned and they would eventually die physically as well.  Sin and death – that is what Adam is responsible for.

But what about you and me?  We weren’t there in the garden making the choice that Adam made.  What we are responsible for?  Paul makes it clear immediately after he told us about Adam’s responsibility.  “…in this way death came to all people, because all sinned.”  (Romans 5:12)  Essentially, what Paul is saying is that we inherited the same nature that Adam had.  In other words, we are born with a sin nature.  We are all bound to sin if we live long enough to know the difference between right and wrong.  So we too are responsible for sin, and death visits us all as a result.  

Is there any hope for us?  All of us have probably cried out in anguish at one time or another as Paul did in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?”  

Without doubt, there is hope, and there is an answer for Paul’s tormented question.  In fact, he gives the answer in the very next verse.  “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”  (Romans 7:25)  Jesus is our hope and our answer.  But if you’ve already put your faith in him, then you already knew that answer.  What you may not know is what comes as a result of faith.

So now we come to God’s essential grace.  His love, demonstrated at the cross through the forgiveness of all our sins, now turns what was dead into life.  We are told in Ephesians, “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins…But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.”  (Ephesians 2:1, 4-5)  Now is that good news or what?  Better yet, that is great news, astounding news, breathtaking news!  

How great is the love of God that He not only redeems us and forgives us of our sins but breaths life back into our dead spirits too.  Don’t get me wrong.  I’m very thankful that my sins are forgiven, but what good would that do if I were still spiritually dead?  But He didn’t leave us in that desperate state.  He made us alive in Christ!  Praise God for His eternal goodness.

With the new life we have in Christ comes a change in us that is even more profound than the change that occurred in Adam.   As we are told, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”  (2 Corinthians 5:17)  We have been made new.  Our nature is new.  The old, sinful nature is gone for good.  God has fulfilled what he promised over 2,000 years ago.  “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”  (Ezekiel 36:26)

The contrast between what we were in Adam and what we are in Christ is simply startling.  In Adam, we were dead; in Christ, we are reborn.  In Adam, sin corrupted our nature; in Christ, our nature is made new.  In Adam, our hearts were stone cold; in Christ, our heart is beating again.  All this is a gift from the Father who loves you more than you can possibly imagine.  That love, manifested by His grace, has awakened in His children a craving for a living, loving relationship with the one who gave everything to claim us as His own.

Let these truths penetrate your mind.  Your new heart and new spirit will confirm it to be so.  Once all three are in agreement, you will be able to live in the freedom of God’s transforming grace.  So keep all this in your thoughts and never forget, you are a new creation in Jesus Christ.