Sustaining Grace, How Sweet The Sound!

I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that was given you in Christ Jesus, that in every way you were enriched in him in all speech and all knowledge— even as the testimony about Christ was confirmed among you— so that you are not lacking in any gift, as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. (1 Corinthians 1:4-8, emphasis mine)

I read this passage last night and I just love the message here. I know I sometimes breeze through Paul's introductions to his epistles and I do so wrongly because his introductions have as much theology as a year of sermons from a lot of pulpits. If only I were a fraction as thankful as Paul for my fellow believers. When was the last time you gave thanks to God for your brothers and sisters in Christ? If you are like me it has been far too long. But what I wanted to look at was verse 8 where Paul speaks of what I call sustaining grace. From verse 7 into 8 we see the critical portion:

....our Lord Jesus Christ, who will sustain you to the end, guiltless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The NIV renders what the ESV translates as "sustains" like this "keep you firm to the end". Both the NASB and the KJV translates it as "confirm". The imagery Paul uses is of preserving something, keeping it safe, affirming finally. That is not Greek scholarship, just what I glean from what Paul says here and elsewhere and how it is rendered by actual scholars. What is just as important is not merely the word "sustain" itself but what we are being sustained for. The ESV speaks of being sustained to the end as "guiltless", or as "blameless" in a lot of other translations (NKJV, KJV, NIV, NASB, etc.). That is chock full of New Covenant imagery which has as the ultimate promise: For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more.” (Hebrews 8:12). That is what grace is all about, mercy for our iniquities and a forgiveness of sins. So putting that together, Jesus sustains us to the end and in the end we are guiltless of our sins. That promise is inextricably linked to any understanding of grace.

We typically have a schizophrenic view of grace. When it comes to saving us, it is all powerful to save us but when it comes to keeping us, it is extremely limited. On the other hand, in some groups like most Baptists grace is subservient to our "free will" when it comes to saving us but "once saved, always saved" when it comes to sustaining us. Neither view makes much sense but they both come from creating a division between "grace that saves" and "grace that sustains". Why would God make it impossibly hard to be saved when we are dead in our tresspasses and sins on the one hand but then promise to keep us saved once we save ourselves via our "free will"? Or why would God make it as easy as walkin' an aisle or raisin' a hand or putting your name on a card to get saved but then leave it up to our own strength to stay saved? It is very important to keep in mind here that Paul makes this claim and this promise to the church in Corinth which was perhaps the most messed up of the churches he wrote to. If it is true for Corinth, it is true for your church too!

If grace is not powerful enough to sustain the believer, the same believer who was incapable of saving himself in the first place, it isn't grace at all and is anything but amazing. Believer know this if you know anything. The same grace that can pardon and cleanse will sustain you until the end when you will stand guiltless before God. That is the sort of grace you can sing about!

The cross of Christ and John 10

There is a lot of chatter this week leading up to Easter Sunday. When conversation turns to the cross of Christ, confusion often ensues. I want to work out some of the surrounding issues of the cross, what it did (or did not) accomplish, what it means for the believer. So over the course of this week, I plan on posting a number of thoughts about the cross and what that cross means to the believer.

The first place I want to look is at the Good Shepherd discourse of John 10. In John 10 Jesus speaks in some depth of Himself as the Good Shepherd, about those who are His sheep and those who are not (and why some are His sheep and some are not), and what He would be doing for His sheep at the cross.

What is the key theme from John 10? Jesus knows His sheep and His sheep know Him and He lays down His life for the sheep. What makes someone one of His sheep? Is it that we chose to be one of His sheep? Or is it that we were His sheep because He chose us? That really gets to the question of why some believe and some do not when they hear the Gospel. That question is one that is confounding to those who reject sovereign grace. Read what Jesus says in John 10: 24-27:

24 So the Jews gathered around him and said to him, “How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly.” 25 Jesus answered them, “I told you, and you do not believe. The works that I do in my Father's name bear witness about me, 26 but you do not believe because you are not part of my flock. 27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me.

In other words, because we are His sheep we hear His voice, not the converse that we are His sheep because we hear His voice. Those who hear the Gospel and reject it, who do not believe, do not believe not because of how clever the presentation is or because someone didn’t lead them in a prayer. Those who reject the Word reject it because they are not part of Christ’s flock. I would say that you could (and should) preach the Gospel to someone who is not one of His sheep until you are blue in the face and they will never believe because they are not of His flock. Conversely, His sheep hear His voice and follow Him. Christian, the only difference between you and that guy over there bound for hell is that the Father gave you to the Son as part of His flock and because of the working of the Holy Spirit in your rebellious, God-hating heart you heard His voice and followed Him. You and I are nothing but sheep, prone to wander, kind of dumb, and we have no basis for bragging about being saved because we had nothing to do with being saved. If I had chosen to follow Christ without the intervention of God, then I have something to brag about: I was smarter or more righteous or whatever than that guy and I chose Jesus. But that is not what it is about, you were chosen as one of His flock not because of who you were but in spite of who you are.

So what does that have to do with the cross? Well, elsewhere in John 10: 14-17 we see who Christ laid down His life for:

14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep. 16 And I have other sheep that are not of this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. 17 For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again.

Notice the urgency. I must bring them, they will listen to my voice. Why is Christ the Good Shepherd? Because unlike the hireling He lays down His life for His sheep. He dies for His sheep, the sheep given Him by the Father:

27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. 29 My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. 30 I and the Father are one.”

Not only does He lay down His life for His sheep, He secures them. They were given to Him by the Father, He died for them and none of them will ever be snatched from Him. You give the Enemy far too much credit to think that He is able to snatch a ransomed sheep from the hand of the Good Shepherd.

When you examine it in this way, the power of the cross becomes clearer. It is not a sacrifice made in the hopes that some would make a “decision” to follow Christ. It was a conscious decision, a specific and purposeful act that accomplished redemption for a people, not because of anything inherently good in them or because of a future decision that was foreseen. With the nails in His hands and feet, Jesus paid for the sins of His sheep and they are paid in full. Nothing else is left to do and nothing can undo that redemption. We have bought into this fuzzy notion of the cross and fail to give His cross the proper power and efficacy. Someone asked me the other day when I was saved and I told them I was saved in the first century A.D., on Calvary at the cross of Christ. I was born again around the year 2000 but the saving work on my behalf was finished and complete at the cross.

Next, I want to look at some of the deeper theological terms and concepts that surround the cross.

How can you lose what you didn’t win?

Yesterday our message was on eternal security, although it was couched in the converse, i.e. can a believer lose their salvation? It was put together well and made the case quite convincingly that the Bible teaches that all of the sins of the believer are paid in full on the cross. I would add that when Christ made propitiation, He did so for all of the sins throughout the life of the believer, both before and after being born again.

What really struck me as I sat there, and I am sure this point has been made before, is that a proper view of the sovereign nature of salvation eliminates the idea of a Christian losing their salvation. Redemption of lost sinners is something that is all of Christ and none of us. Even the requisite faith needed to be saved is a gift granted us by God, a changed heart, a dead man brought to new life. The cross secured the salvation of God’s elect; it didn’t merely make it possible for people to save themselves. With so many false professors out there, it can seem like people are losing their salvation left and right, but the truth is that they never were saved to begin with. They may have had an emotional experience, they may have been conditioned to assert certain truths, but they were never truly born again and their falling away is evidence of an unregenerate heart rather than a genuine salvation lost.

We didn’t win our salvation so how in the world could we lose it? If our salvation is not based on anything we did, how can it be lost by anything we do?