GRACE MAKES THE DIFFERENCE- GRACE AND LAW- 6/5/11 Romans 6:14,15; Ephesians
2:6,8-10 Dr. Ben Sloan
We are going to be looking at the ten commandments this summer, and before we
look at them, we will be looking at the very important concept of grace and law.
Someone said the law is when you get stopped for a speeding.
Grace is when you only get a warning. Grace has often been described as
“God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.”
14
For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but
under grace. 15 What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the
law but under grace? By no means!(Ro 68 For it is by grace you have
been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of
God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we
are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God
prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
This coming Saturday we will have
our church golf tournament. There are
many golf stories, but one of my favorites is about when a Scotsman tried to
introduce golf to the president of the United States- at that time Ulysses S.
Grant. On the first tee the Scotsman
swung and a divot flew up into Grant’s beard.
He completely missed the ball!
Then he swung again and again and kept missing the ball.
Grant said to a friend, “I see there is a lot of exercise in this game,
but what is the point in the ball?”
Today I want us to take a look at the point of the Law and the purpose of Grace,
and a little bit of how they interact- for that affects how we live.
For many people, they look at
Christianity and see a bunch of rules- a plethora of “Thou Shalt Nots.”
But the Bible is more than that, and certainly God is much more
than that. In fact, the “Thou Shalt Nots” are not the essence of the
Christian faith. We do not get to heaven
by avoiding sin, and absolutely no one can totally avoid sin.
But the Law of God, found in scripture keeps us out of trouble and
shows us God’s intention for how we should live our lives.
He doesn’t want us to go astray- to lie, to steal, to commit adultery,
to murder, to covet, or to dishonor our parents, or to dishonor Him.
If you have had or have children,
then you know clearly that you have to set some boundaries for them:
“Do not go out in the road.”
“Do not touch the hot stove.” “Do not stay up so late.” “Do not eat only ice
cream.” “Quit hitting your sister.”
Rules have a purpose, but they are certainly not the essence of our
relationship with our child. There is a sense that when we obey the house
rules we get along better with everyone.
You might say there is more peace between parents and child when the child obeys
the rules; between child and sibling when they obey the rules; and between the
child and themselves when they stay out of trouble.
So when we keep God’s Law we have more peace with God and each other.
The Bible even says when we sin it affects our prayers- “If I had
sinned in my heart, the Lord would not have heard me.”
God hears all- but we cut off our relationship to Him when we
purposefully sin.
Calvin said that there are
three purposes of the Law- 1) It constrains sin and promotes righteousness; 2)
It convicts us of our need for grace- for we cannot keep it perfectly; 3) The
Law teaches us how we should live- it is a guide for us.
If we take the command to a child, “Do not touch that hot stove.”
We see here the Law puts a fence around the stove. When the child ends up
touching the hot stove anyway- it immediately convicts the child so that they
think “I have done something wrong, and Mom needs to immediately come and help
me get rid of the pain.” But the third thing is this law teaches us that there
are limits to what we can or should do- and we need to listen for our own good.
But the Law definitely has its limits.
One minister rightly pointed out,
“When I preach about what should and shouldn’t be done, I need to be
particularly aware that everyone out there is hurting in some way or
another. He went on to say, “On the
front row are two sisters recently divorced.
One is living with another person and is feeling a tad guilty about that;
the other has been drinking too much and feels guilty about that.”
Sometimes, ironically, just being in church can make you feel guilty when
we read the Bible. We don’t have to look
to deep within to know we are not what we are meant to be.
If the church said we want all the sinners to get up and leave, the
church would be empty- and you wouldn’t have a preacher either.
One of the things I appreciate about the PCUSA is our universal
recognition that we all mess up, and we all need grace.
The good news is that faith is
not all about the Law. The good news
is that Christ (God in the flesh) has come, and kept the Law perfectly
for us. More than that- He has
sacrificed Himself so that when we mess up- we don’t have to just come and
feel guilty. Grace comes in and makes
the difference. When we were dead to
God, grace comes and makes us alive to Him (Eph. 2:6).
Our passage says, “Sin shall no
longer be your master for you are not under law but under grace.”
Ephesians says, “For it is by grace we have been saved through faith- not
by works so that no one can boast.” It
is not how much you know about the Bible or God that is important- no one knows
enough. It is that you know God and His
grace. It is not how much you do for God
that is important, it is how much God has done for you.
As someone said, “The Law is the light that shows how dirty the floor
is, not the broom that sweeps it clean.”
Moody said, “The Law tells me how crooked I am. Grace comes and
straightens me out.” The broom is grace. We are not saved by being good- we
cannot be good enough. Many religions
have this false idea that you climb your way to heaven.
The 8fold path to enlightenment, the five pillars that must be
done. The twelve steps to recovery.
But what we really need is more than steps up a never-ending ladder to
heaven. We need God to come down and
bring us up- and that is what He has done in the person of Jesus Christ.
The Ten Commandments are not 10 steps to heaven-but they’re still
important.
Paul says we are not under the
rigor of the law, but he also asks the rhetorical question, [LEX CTY]“Shall
we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? He answers: “By no
means!” In other words, just because we
are not under the law doesn’t mean we should ignore the Law.
If we touch the hot stove, that doesn’t mean our parents will hate us.
But that doesn’t mean we should touch the hot stove.
In the other passage we read, Paul points out we are saved by grace not
Law, but then immediately after saying that he says, “we are created for good
works which God has prepared in advance for us to do.”
I believe what Paul was saying, and what God is saying to us is- that we
are made to glorify God with our lives.
God has created us not to do evil, but to do good.
Though we are saved by grace, we still should make every effort out of
gratitude to God, to "Do all the good you can, By all the means you can,
In all the ways you can, In all the places you can, At all the times you can, To
all the people you can, As long as ever you can."(John Wesley).
There is a balance in life
between grace and Law. It is not that
they are equals for we are saved by grace.
But all law without grace is harsh perfectionism.
All grace without law is meaningless mush.
It is by God’s grace that we have grace.
It is by God’s grace that we have His commands as well.
We really, truly need both.
Someone described the difference
between grace and law like a man going on a trip.
In the railroad station he saw a sign that said, “Do not spit here.”
It was obvious that many people did spit there.
But when the man arrived in the home- he saw it was immaculately kept,
white carpet, all clean. He said he
looked around for a sign that said, “Do not spit here.”
But there wasn’t one. At first he
thought, “What a shame that people are spitting everywhere.”
Then he realized when you want to keep things clean you don’t need a
sign. The sign “no spitting” is Law.
But grace is inside of us.
Today we are having communion.
Communion illustrates how grace and law work together.
Communion is what we call “a means of
grace.” God graciously gives us
communion so we might have a chance to commune with Him and with each
other. No one who takes this
today will take it because they deserve it and are perfect.
We each take communion with people who are imperfect and with whom we may
disagree. But we still take it because
of God’s grace that draws us to Christ.
Communion is a command- it is an ordinance- “Do this in
remembrance of me.” But it is also a gift for us who sin.
The command is a gift. So the
Law is a gift, that is to be obeyed by and under God’s grace.