God's Amazing Grace #2 (Blood, Sweat & Tears)

Text: Romans 7:21-25

Amazing grace how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found was blind but now I see. Those are the words that one John Newton penned over 200 years ago and have become perhaps the most recognizable words from a Christian song worldwide. The reason being is because there is no greater thing out there than the grace of God.
As we saw last week our world needs something or someone who will not play the game of constantly identifying who we are by what we have done and will simply stand up and say no matter who you are, no matter what you have done I am here and I am willing to accept you.
We find that God who is above us all is that very One. He who is beyond us in so many ways, not the least of which is in holiness has agreed to accept us and look at us as people worth being around. How does He do this?
Through grace!
God thought so highly of us despite us that there is a word the Bible uses to describe how God bought us: Chosen!
We are chosen by God to be with God!

‘Put on then, as God’s chosen ones…’ (Colossians 3:12)
‘For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you…’ (1 Thessalonians 1:4)
‘But you are a chosen race…’ (1 Peter 2:9).

What does the word chosen mean?
It simply means that God picked you to show kindness & love to! We want someone to love us despite us and God did- all by His grace! (Eph.1:6)

God’s grace is simply amazing isn’t it?
Here is another problem though: How is that grace found?
I realize that God can accept me no matter what I have done or who I might be-
what does it take though to be accepted?

Let me give you an illustration:
In the movie, The Mission, Robert Deniro plays Captain Mendoza who lived out his calling in life as an evil & cruel man. He enslaved people, murdered others & basically would brutally attack people who were defenceless. Especially some tribes who lived in the high mountains. Something occurs in his life that makes him see how terrible of a person he has been and he wants to make it up somehow. So, he joins a mission that is going to serve the people he had earlier brutalized- a people who in our minds had ever reason to reject him and even punish him.
As they are making their way to the tribes in the high mountain- Mendoza had the greatest difficulty in the climb because as a kind of penance he insisted on carrying his armour & weapons- why?
He had to make it up somehow- he had to be punished or ‘prove’ his change of heart. He had done the deeds- now he would pay the piper.1

I would venture to say that it is very tempting for us to make being accepted by God into something like this!
Of the few things that I have been able to achieve in this life there is one that I am most proud of that only a few people have even knowledge of. Over 10 years ago now I had made a vow to God and I have kept it and without being able to see the future I am probably going to keep it the rest of my life. Because I have kept this vow-
this has caused me to feel good about my life- it has allowed me to avoid shame and so many other negative things. Here is the point:
A lot of times we might want to make God’s glorious grace into something like this:
Phil.3:4-6.

If somehow I could make a bunch of vows and keep them perfectly then God will accept me. With our minds like this when we go to a story like the Prodigal Son-
instead of focusing entirely on the Father’s actions:
seeing his son from a great distance, giving him full sonship, throwing a party.
We have to find something virtuous about the son!

You see in this kind of mindset- we almost need a code, we need a list or we need a law or we need conditions to meet and then we can say God will accept us. You see trusting God for grace is a lot harder than it sounds. It’s more comfortable if I can reach a point that I have performed well enough and God says ‘okay based on your performance- you’re in’.
If I can qualify for something I feel more at ease with what I have. To this mindset- God’s grace by which He simply says ‘I’ve chosen you to be mine’ ‘I fully accept you as my child’ comes to us more like a loan than an inheritance you had no idea you were getting!
You see, you qualify for a loan- if you meet certain conditions, if you bring enough to the table we can loan you salvation (after all you’ll earn it all back).
But, an inheritance- there are some conditional ones but the inheritance I'm speaking of is-
you just get it- no strings attached.

Let us ask God- what is the condition on your acceptance if we earn it?

Matt.5:48- be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. What does perfection mean?

Isaiah 59:1,2- having no sins! It means never doing anything wrong in your life! Let us notice something- it is not enough to not be involved in the real perverted sins of mankind- (we like to do that at times to boast of our acceptability to God) James 2:10-13

Romans 3:10,23- there is none righteous no not one- all have sinned & fallen short of the glory of God!
As someone else once said- say God said we have to be able to jump without any kind of mechanical aid from the earth to the moon-
some could jump 3 feet while others could jump maybe 8 feet. The 8-foot jumpers could laugh at the 3 foot ones but in the end no one is close to making the moon!

So we can’t earn our acceptance to God by being perfect and we all really understand this- but we come up with another way to earn it:
after I have messed up, after I realize my sin- I can earn it, like Captain Mendoza, by making up for it! Maybe, I goofed in my younger days but now when I come to see the light and the wrongs I have done I will ‘win’ back the favour of God by my wonderful work.
What’s the problem with this?
I am attempting to embark on the impossible human journey:
making up for the wrongs I have done.
Romans 7:21-24- listen, we still do wrong! I can’t totally make up for what I have done in the past. If I get drunk out of my mind- how do I make up for it?
If I murder someone- how do I make up for it?
If I lie- how do I make up for it?
If I ‘fill in the blank’? how do I really make up for it?

Here is the problem- if gaining God’s favour was based on me doing enough- when would I reach that point?
Not everything worthwhile in this life comes through our blood, sweat & tears- instead the best of it comes through someone else’s!

You see we are accepted by God’s amazing grace. The Father does not accept us because we have earned it- instead we are accepted by the Father because He loves us. There is only one wage any of us have ever earned: Rom.6:23
2 Cor.8:9- you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.
Phil.3:7-10- Paul had done many things- but had not achieved God’s approval by his own efforts. He did receive it though- through Jesus Christ.
Hebrews 10:12-18- where there is forgiveness of these- no more trying to earn your way, no more making up for things done wrong, no more worrying that God has got your deeds in a balance book and is waiting for the debt to be paid-
God has given us a free pass into His love, His family & His home!

People might say to you when they still attach you to some trait, mistakes, terrible act ‘aren’t you ashamed of yourself?’ and we answer back ‘yes, yes we are’ but Jesus Christ offered his blood to wash it all away and to let me know that God is truly in love with me no matter what I have said, thought or done that was wrong.

How do I know that God will really forgive me?
How do I know that God could ever truly just accept me and not hold me to my wrongs?
Think about it, would He have sent Jesus to save us if He wouldn’t?

In Mozart’s requiem there is this line ‘remember, merciful Jesu, that I am the cause of your journey’2

You have two options:
you can try to work it out with God- ‘make me like one of your hired servants’ or you can trust in God’s work- ‘let us celebrate, my son was dead & is alive- he was lost & is found.’

Interestingly enough when Captain Mendoza reached the top of the cliff there were those tribesmen whose people had been devastated by him earlier and the chief took out his knife and walked over to him and simply cut the rope and threw the burden down from around his neck over the cliff.3

It is too heavy a weight for us to make up or pay the price for our imperfections- God did this himself in Jesus and cut the ropes from around our neck and allows us to walk free, forgiven & chosen!

Next week we are going to look at what it fully means to be saved by grace.

1. Adapted from Jim McGuiggan, Where the Spirit of the Lord is…(West Monroe, LA: Howard Publishing Co., Inc., 1999) p.83 2. Philip Yancey, What’s so Amazing about Grace? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1995) p.56 3. McGuiggan, p.84

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