A Proper Understanding of God’s Grace — By PC

ESV John 20:21 Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” 22 And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit.

Three powerful truths that I would like to share with you:

  1. A proper understanding of God’s plan and purpose for our lives must include a proper understanding of grace, which is not only sufficient for all our shortcomings, but is the mighty power of God working through us when He commands us to live righteously…as He sends us into the world.
  2. God’s plan and purpose for us is to be transformed into the image of Jesus
  3. The way God transforms are two-fold:
  • miraculously by His doing (Breathing upon us so we can receive the Holy Spirit)
  • And also by us doing what He sent us to do.

Both are by the grace of God, for it’s in this way that the Holy Spirit works in and through us.

Sticky Statement: As the Father sent Jesus into the world, so He has sent us into the world of others.

  1. God’s plan and purpose for us always has been for us to be conformed into the image of Jesus (since before we were born).
  • Romans 8:29: God has “predestined [His people] to be conformed to the image of his Son.”
  1. God’s plan and purpose for us is for us to transform into the image of Christ, in the present.
  • 2 Corinthians 3:18: “We all, who with unveiled faces contemplate [or reflect] the Lord’s glory, are being transformed [or changed] into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
  1. God’s plan and purpose for our future is for us to be transformed into His image.
  • 1 John 3:2: “Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

How many of you have this hope this morning? That God’s plan for us is for us to be transformed into people who are just like Jesus?  Into His image?

John continues in the next verse:

ESV 1 John 3:3 And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.

  • The Scripture goes on to say that those who hold this hope of transformation practice righteousness.

Let’s review:

  1. Just as God sent Jesus into the world, Jesus is sending us into the world of others.
  2. God’s purpose and plan for those being redeemed is for them to be transformed into the likeness, or the image of God. (past, present, future desire of God for us)
  3. Those who hold onto that hope practice righteousness.

But, what does “practicing righteousness look like?”

  • There may be an infinite number of ways
  • But, the Bible shares one way Jesus taught us to practice righteousness.

ESV John 13:1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.” 12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 16 Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

  • This obviously means we need to serve one another in the most humiliating ways, the most basic ways.
  • We have been bathed and cleansed, so we only need to clean our feet (our daily walk with the Lord in this world)
  • ESV Psalm 1:1 Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
  • ESV 1 John 2:6 whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

(In other words, we need to wash the way we live and help others in the Body of Christ by washing their feet (or their walk…the way they live)

  • We need to help others on their journey, on their walk, to help clean their feet along the way.

Jesus says that we are clean, but only need to have our feet washed. It is in this way that we remain completely clean.  Just as Jesus was sent into the world by God, Jesus has sent us into the world of others…to serve them…to help them become clean in Christ and to help keep them completely clean.

I believe it is in this kind of devotion and service that where John is able to say, “And everyone who thus hopes in him purifies himself as he is pure.”  It is in doing the most thankless work to help others come to know Christ and remain in Him…evangelize, outreach, teach, clean, maintenance, manual labor, etc…

  • “During World War II, England needed to increase its production of coal. Winston Churchill called together labor leaders to enlist their support. At the end of his presentation he asked them to picture in their minds a parade which he knew would be held in Picadilly Circus after the war. (Piccadilly Circusis a road junctionand public space of London‘s West End in the City of Westminster. It was built in 1819 to connect Regent Street with Piccadilly).
  • First, he said, would come the sailors who had kept the vital sea lanes open. Then would come the soldiers who had come home from Dunkirk (the movie) and then gone on to defeat Rommel in Africa. Then would come the pilots who had driven the Luftwaffe (The Luftwaffewas the aerial warfare branch of the combined German Wehrmacht military forces during World War II.) from the sky.
  • Last of all, he said, would come a long line of sweat-stained, soot-streaked men in miner’s caps. Someone would cry from the crowd, ‘And where were you during the critical days of our struggle?’ And from ten thousand throats would come the answer, ‘We were deep in the earth with our faces to the coal.'”

Not all the jobs in a church or the Body of Christ are prominent and glamorous. But it is often the people with their “faces to the coal” who help the church accomplish its mission.

It’s often those with their faces to the coal who are being transformed into the image of Jesus.

When we all get to heaven, it will not be the prominent and glamorous ones from the world who will be first in line.  It will every one of those who did the thankless work of kingdom building that will be first.  It will those who saw with the eyes of Christ those who were hurting and broken, it will be those with the heart of Christ who had compassion on ignorant and the lost, it will be those who had the hands of Christ who continuously did the washing of feet, it will be those who sacrificed by fasting and diligent prayer, it will be those who took a back seat to proud and self-righteous, it will be those had the humility, the discipline, the genuine desire to purify themselves by dispensing the grace, the forgiveness, the mercy, the love, the generosity, the encouragement that they received from God in heaven through Jesus and His Holy Spirit…they will be first.

It is by God’s grace that He lavishes upon us each day that makes that transformation happen, indeed, even causes the transformation.  God enables and empowers us by His grace to have His abilities:

  • To have the mind of Christ
  • To have the eyes and ears of Christ
  • To have the heart of Christ
  • The hands of Christ—service
  • The feet of Christ—to walk as He walked (to live as He lived)

There is no other way we could ever live with “our faces to the coal,” to do the dirty, thankless work of washing another’s feet (diving into their problems) were it not for the enabling power and grace and God working through us.  We could never give generously give of our time or resources in a meaningful way without God’s Holy Spirit working in us.

And it is through doing this, that we are purifying ourselves and others in Christ.

God’s plan and purpose for us was, is, and will be for us to transform into the image of Christ. A proper understanding of this plan and purpose is a proper understanding of grace, which is not only sufficient for all of our shortcomings, but which is the mighty power of God working through us when He commands us to live righteously…as He sends us into the world.