Week 30: Grow In Grace

Grow In Grace

By: Misty Grimes

Day 1: What Is Grace?

Focal Scripture: “But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:4-5).

Introduction:

What is grace? The most common answer is: “God’s unmerited favor.” But do you know what that means?  When someone asks you the definition of grace and you give them this definition are you just repeating what others have told you, what you have heard, or do you truly know what it means? What if I presented you with two different sides to grace: cheap grace and costly grace? Would you say I’m crazy and quit reading? Tell Pastor Tim he needs to bring me to his office and have a talk with me? I assure you I am not crazy and that there is no need for a “come to Jesus meeting” between me and Pastor Tim. Today we are going to talk about what grace is and the idea behind the concepts of cheap grace and costly grace so please stick with me, I promise you won’t be disappointed.

Lesson:

Again I ask you, what is grace? Grace alone means that God loves, forgives, and saves us not because of who we are or what we do, but because of the work of Christ. Our best efforts can never be good enough to earn salvation, but God declares us righteous for Christ’s sake. We receive that grace through faith alone. Romans 5:8 says, “But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.” Reread that verse and pay attention to: “while we were still sinners”. This means that God met us where we were, in our mess, and thus not based on anything we did or didn’t do but rather on God’s incredible goodness and unconditional love for us. 

Our response to God’s grace, our salvation, is a cornerstone of our life as our salvation is God’s righteousness at work in us when we say yes to his plan. Saying yes is how we demonstrate faith: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God – not the result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). 

This leads to the two concepts I mentioned earlier of cheap grace and costly grace. The concept of cheap grace was introduced by Dietrich Bonhoeffer in his book, “The Cost of Discipleship.” Bonhoeffer was a German pastor and theologian whose courageous and outspoken opposition to the Nazis led to his arrest by the Gestapo during WW2 whereupon he spent two years in prisons and concentration camps until his execution by the S.S. in 1945. While imprisoned he ministered to his fellow prisoners and others through his many writings. Bonhoeffer described cheap grace as “the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline. Communion without confession…Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.”  Cheap grace is an approach to Christianity that only emphasizes the good or easy parts without telling the truth regarding the difficult aspects of it. To leave out the more difficult aspects of repentance, confession, discipleship, the cross, or the full story of Christ’s life offers and incomplete, “cheap” view of God’s grace. 

People who consider themselves Christians yet show little or no difference in their lives than non-Christians can be said to be living with cheap grace. These people view salvation as nothing more than a ticket to heaven or a get out of hell free card, a thought process that ignores life here on earth. Paul addressed these types of people in Romans 6:1-18 (for space reasons I will only include verses 1-2 here but encourage you to read the entire text): “What then are we to say? Should we continue in sin in order that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin go on living in it?” People who live with the cheap grace mindset are people that believe their “account” has been paid in advance and because it has been paid, everything can be had for nothing, meaning since Christ has forgiven me I can just keep on doing what I was doing because I know he will go on forgiving me regardless. To put it simply, cheap grace:

1. Is disastrous to our own spiritual lives.
2. Instead of opening up the way to Christ it has closed it. 
3. Instead of calling us to follow Christ it has hardened us in our disobedience.
4. It bars our way to progress and it seduces us to the mediocre level of the world.
5. It quenches the joy of discipleship by telling us that we were following a way of our own choosing, that we were spending our strength and discipling ourselves in vain – all of which was nor merely useless, but extremely dangerous. 
6. It leaves us only bewildered and tempts us from the way to which we have been called to Christ
7. It bars us from knowing the knowledge of the grace that truly matters – costly grace.
8. It deceives and weakens us as we feel that we are strong not that we are in possession of it when in fact we have lost the power to live the life of discipleship and obedience. 

In contrast grace is not cheap but it a priceless gift that, as we already said, is free to us but cost God everything because he sent His one and only Son to die as a sacrifice for our sins. Jesus endured the pain and the shame of the cross to offer us salvation by grace through faith in Him (see Philippians 2:5-8; Hebrews 12:1-2). 

Bonhoeffer describes costly grace as:

1. A treasure hidden in the field
2. A grace that for the sake of it, a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.
3. It is the kingly rule of Christ for whose sake a man will pluck out the eye which causes him to stumble.
4. It is the call of Jesus Christ at which the disciple leaves his nets and follows Christ without question.
5. It is costly because it causes us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.
6. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.
7. It is costly because it condemns sin and grace because it justified the sinner.
8. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of His Son and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.

While the grace of God is a free gift available to all who receive it, a true disciple of Christ will also be willing to grow and endure hardship for the sake of the Gospel. Salvation is about transformation: “So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation, everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17) and new life in Christ. Salvation is not to be viewed as just a ticket to get to heaven or a get out of hell free card that thought process ignores life here on earth. The salvation Jesus secured with His death and resurrection is one that restores a believers oneness with God: “For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life” (Romans 5:10). This provision of unity usher’s in wholeness, one piece of truth at a time through the power of Christ’s love. Jesus came to give us abundant life. In salvation, Jesus transforms us from the inside out: “His divine power has given us everything needed for life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Thus he has given us, through these things, his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of lust, and may become participants of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:3-4). 

Conclusion:

Though salvation is a free gift of grace, the Christian life includes times and aspects of costly sacrifice as Jesus tells us in Luke 9:23: “Then he said to them all, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.” Our freedom came at great cost to Jesus thus while grace is free, it is not cheap. When we settle for a cheap grace we devalue our calling to discipleship. Cheap grace denies the living Word of God. Cheap grace is not the kind of forgiveness of sin which frees us from the toils of sin. Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves! Costly grace confronts us as a gracious call to follow Jesus; it comes as a word of forgiveness to the broken spirit and the contrite heart. Grace is costly because it compels a man to submit to Christ and follow him.

Application:

Which form of grace have you embraced? Read Romans 8:5-11 below and examine your life as a follower of Christ closely and see what areas you need to bring to God in prayer and ask him to help you change so that your life reflects the great cost of the grace God has bestowed upon your life.

“For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace For this reason the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God; it does not submit to God’s law – indeed it cannot, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit, since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you.”

Day 2: Growing In Grace

Focal Scripture: “You therefore, beloved, since you are forewarned, beware that you are not carried away with the error of the lawless and lose your own stability. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:17-18).

Introduction: In day one we defined what grace is and looked at the difference between costly grace and cheap grace. Today we look at Peter’s command that we are to grow in our grace and knowledge both what he means and how we do this. In the above verse what Peter is telling us is that we are to grow and mature in our understanding and experience of the grace we have received and also in our knowledge about and experience of Christ. This is the way we enter more fully into the abundant life Jesus gives said he came to give us in John 10:10. Active engagement in our growth process is required of us. This does not mean that through our own efforts we are the source of our own transformation but rather that we have an important part to play in the process. Ultimately God is the source of our transformation, but He does it through a process that requires us to play a vital and indispensable role. 

Lesson:

Acts 2:42 gives us four practical ways that we can grow in grace: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and prayers.” 

1. 1. We are to devote ourselves to being taught. It takes time to examine our whole life in light of His whole truth. Devoting ourselves to listening to Scriptural teaching allows us to apply our knowledge of God and our experience of his grace to each and every aspect of our lives. Two ways to ensure this is regular church attendance and not just Sunday morning services or special services but also includes Sunday school and small group studies. We also need to have regular (daily) times we set aside to read and study God’s Word meditating and memorizing on key Bible verses which help us to integrate what we learn into our lives. It is through this that we not simply gain information but also we learn about God’s character, His great deeds, His love for us, His will for us, His ways, and His promises. This is a major part of our transformation process. 
   2. We are to devote ourselves to the life of our church.  Being together with other believers gives us the chance to live out the many “one another” verses in the Bible that we simply can’t live out individually. We are meant to be in community. This means active participation in the community of believers through sharing of one’s life and resources. Here we develop Christ-centered friendships that lead to sharing one another’s joys and sorrows, bearing one another’s burdens, and generally supporting one another spiritually, emotionally and materially in the ups and downs of life. It is far more than casual conversation. It begins with developing authentic relationships with other believers that requires a willingness to open our lives to them and to become involved in their lives as well. Intentionality and time are necessary for such relationships to grow deep and strong, and this requires a commitment. We must make a definite commitment of time to develop such relationships. The rewards of these friendships far exceed the time and effort required, for we learn how to love and serve others and allows them to love and serve us, and in the process we discover that God meets us and ministers to us through one another. 

• We are to devote ourselves to breaking bread with others. The basic meaning of the phrase is to eat a meal. For those who made up the earlies church a meal began with breaking a loaf of bread and giving thanks. In this context, the phrase means more; it is a reference to Communion, or the Lord’s Supper. In the early church the breaking of bread was a highlight in the worship life of the believing community, a time of unity in celebrating the atoning death and resurrection of Jesus and His impending return. God takes Communion seriously and so should we. It is a time where we are called upon to look back in sober remembrance and sustained reflection on the sacrificial love of Jesus for us, demonstrated through his death. It also involves looking back over our lives in light of this and asking God to search our hearts and show us any unconfessed or unrepented sins or broken relationships that we need to reconcile. Through receiving the Lord’s Supper we are experience a deepening of our love and gratitude to Jesus for His amazing love and grace.  

1. We are to devote ourselves to prayer. When we devote ourselves to prayer, we connect with God in a moment-by-moment way. Through prayer we become more aware of his presence and power and our lives and we notice his gifts and are moved to gratitude. Through prayer we look to him instinctively for his help in our time of need. Through prayer we grow in our awareness of God and allow grace to be activated in our life. Praying with others is an important element of prayer as it helps us to not only grow in prayer but also to develop deeper relationships with fellow believers. 

Growth is not easy, it’s difficult and painful. A baby crawls first before he can walk. And once he gets the hang of walking, he still falls down a lot. He even falls flat on his face sometimes. It’s the same way with spiritual growth. There are a lot of tough lessons that we only learn by trial and error. Sometimes we thing we “got it”, only to realize later on that we haven’t really learned the lesson so we have to go through it again. To grow in grace means coming to a greater  understanding of God’s holiness, justice and sovereignty and involves developing the fruits of the spirit that Peter wrote about in 2 Peter 1:5-7: “For this very reason, you must make every effort to support your faith with goodness, and goodness with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with godliness, and godliness with mutual affection, and mutual affection with love.” These traits are produced by the Spirit of God as seen in Galatians 5:22-23: “By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, and self-control.” This growth takes place through the power of God and the precious promises of God. 

The moment you place your trust in Christ as Savior, you are yielding all of yourself and you are to progressively grow in submission to Christ. As a result, you will see more of who He is and more of who you are through the Word of God. Growth in grace involves establishing a personal relationship and intimate fellowship with Jesus. This can all be summed up with four truths:

1. We grow in grace, and in our faith, by continually seeking Him and allowing Him to reveal Himself to us through His Word and through prayer.
2. We must be completely dependent upon the Holy Spirit to illuminate our minds to the truth as he uses the Word to reach and transform us. We cannot ignore his Word and expect to gain knowledge of Him. Studying his Word enables us to hear His voice and to learn about how God views Himself, us and others and it also enables us to know how God wants us to serve Him in order to accomplish his purposes. We must have a teachable spirit. 
3. We must be faithful and obedient to Him. This means that the way we conduct ourselves and live our life must correspond to the character of Christ. 
4. We must develop a patient endurance, to be able to wait on Him and his timing so that his perfect will can be done.

Conclusion:

Where there is life, there must be growth. Growth is never an option, it’s a necessity. We must keep growing in order to maintain steadfast. God wants us to grow in every way like Christ and not to remain as children (see Ephesians 4:14-15). Growth is gradual, not instant or automatic it requires cooperation with God and the application of spiritual diligence and discipline. By growing in our knowledge of Christ and in his abundant grace, we are enabled to live the abundant life he came to give us. 

Application:

Which of the first four areas of growth mentioned in the lesson do you need to devote more of yourself to in order to continue to grow in grace? Which of the four truths mentioned at the end of this lesson to you need to devote more of yourself to in order to continue to grow in grace?