The Promise of Grace!

2 Corinthians 12:7-10 (NAS95)

In this sermon series, we are learning how to live like a champion by learning how to live according to the victory of the promises of God. Our guiding image for this series is being a member of an NFL team who wins the Superbowl.

Never forget, the victory is ours in Christ Jesus and we are invited to play like a championship team, today. We live like champions so that others will come to know the One who gave us His Victory—Jesus Christ, crucified, risen, and coming again!

The play of the week is the “Promise of Grace!” and the memory verse for this promise is 2 Corinthians 12:9a,

“My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.”

STEP #1: Know God’s playbook—the Bible—by learning the promises of God. Let’s look at 2 Corinthians 12:7-10, the Bible passage from which our memory verse is found. It is important to keep it in context.

Because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, for this reason, to keep me from exalting myself, there was given me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me—to keep me from exalting myself! [Paul is referencing verses 1-6 after describing and defending his ministry in chapters 10-11] Concerning this I implored the Lord three times that it might leave me. And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am well content with weaknesses, with insults, with distresses, with persecutions, with difficulties, for Christ’s sake; for when I am weak, then I am strong. [Paul then continues to describe the authenticity of Christian ministry—the charis of God, not the charisma of man!]

Grace is the essential power source of the Christian life. Grace is the “divine power” referenced in the foundational scripture of this entire sermon series, listen again to 2 Peter 1:2-4,

Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord; seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and excellence. For by these He has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

Just as we learned that covenant is the framework of the promises, so grace is the power of all the promises.

STEP #2: It is not enough to know this truth about God’s grace, we must experience it for ourselves and train it into our deepest places. If we don’t learn grace, we will simply live out of our own natural strengths and not out of our weakness. Listen again to 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 and its counter-cultural reality.

From What’s So Amazing About Grace, Philip Yancey famously wrote, “There is nothing we can do to make God love us more and there is nothing we can do to make God love us less.”

This is God’s perfect love expressed to us through grace. Listen to Paul in Ephesians 2:8-10, “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.”

This teaches us that our status before a holy God is not dependent on our works, but because of God’s perfect love made visible to us in Jesus Christ on the Cross of Calvary and extended to us by grace through faith.

We see grace clearly in key elements of Paul’s gospel presentation in his letter to the Romans:

Romans 3:23-24,

“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.”

“For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Do you see how God expresses His grace to us in these passages?

We move this from our head into our hearts when we learn to receive this free gift of God’s love and stop working for God’s approval. Get off the performance treadmill because there is nothing you can do to make God love you more and there is nothing you can do to make God love you less. It’s all grace!

STEP #3: Grace is not just a reality that we must move from our head to our hearts, it’s the play we are to play in both the private and public arenas of our lives. How would the Coach [Coach = God!] have us run the play of grace in our everyday lives?

Grace is often pigeonholed by Philip Yancey’s above definition, because as helpful as it is, it is not complete. Grace is more than a statement of our status before God (our positional holiness), grace is the means by which we live out and make visible our salvation (our personal holiness). Grace is the presence of God in us (through the indwelling Holy Spirit!) to walk in the good works of our salvation. Reference back to Ephesians 2:8-10 and highlight how verse 10 manifests through the same grace that saves in verse 8.

“to be specific, that the Gentiles are fellow heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel, of which I was made a minister, according to the gift of God’s grace which was given to me according to the working of His power.”

“I can do all things through Him who strengthens me” (cf. Philippians 2:12-13).

Grace is the promise of God that determines both your position before Him and your power to live out your faith and make Him known. There are no Christians and there is no Christian life or witness without grace!

STEP #4: It is God’s grace that makes us members of His body, the family of God, the Church. Grace is how we experience God in union with Christ and how express God’s life to the world through our ministry!

I conclude with Paul’s teaching for the church about the promise of grace from Ephesians 3:14-19:

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God.

May you now receive and walk in the grace of God so freely lavished upon you for the glory of God. Amen.