The Vast Sea of Grace - Part 3

The sea of grace is very vast and expansive. Yes, finally I'm getting to 'grace' here. :) When we finally realize and understand our utter helplessness and insufficiency at "doing" the things of God, through the words of the Law and through the words of Jesus Himself, we're finally in a position to understand, open up to, receive and embrace the complete sufficiency of the grace of God!

As always, I'm fully open to discussion on all of this. I believe that once the Law has truly convicted us of how unrighteous we are, we can never look at the Law again with the thinking that its purpose is to help us to know what to do nor to give us the power or motivation to go and do what it says. In saying "truly convicted," I'm talking about a conviction that is so deep that we realize we just can't do it. I'm not talking about what I believe is a shallow, so-called conviction that says, "Ok, I realize I've fallen short so I'll try harder now." The Law's purpose wasn't to convict us so that we'd try harder and harder until we actually did it. Its purpose was to stop our mouths from justifying ourselves in front of a Holy God! In the process, we then turn to the grace of God.

In exactly the same way, I believe that many of the words of Jesus were spoken for the same purpose. You know, I would love to have such love for my neighbor that I wouldn't even think twice about selling all I had and giving to the poor! I would love to love God and to love people like that. After all, that is the love of God. Jesus demonstrated it to the max. "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich." (2 Cor 8:9). Man, I want to imitate that! I truly desire that!

But here's what I've really been trying to get to all along here. If I look at the words of Jesus, such as "You shall love your neighbor as yourself," and if I therefore say to myself, "well, Jesus commands it so I need to go do it," there is absolutely NO power found there to just go do it! When Jesus is asked, "Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him?" and Jesus replies, "Seventy times seven," it's not at all as simple as saying, "well, Jesus commands it so I need to go do it." Again, I want to love my neighbor as I love myself. I truly desire to forgive and forgive and forgive and forgive, just as the Lord has forgiven me in Christ!

But if I just look at the words of Jesus and take them at face value, and then go out and try to apply them, I'm sunk before I even get started! The good news is that I can sink... or dive... deep below the words on the surface and swim in this vast sea of grace in which all the sufficiency for life and godliness is found. Never again can it be as simple as saying, "just do what the Word says." Life in Christ - life in the vast sea of grace - is so much richer and deeper than that!

What if someone sins against me, but in my heart I don't want to forgive that person or for some reason I "find it hard" to forgive. Well, the only option found in the conventional way of thinking is to remember Jesus' command to forgive, and His words "seventy times seven." As I said in the last post, I'm not in any way attempting to ignore or spit upon Jesus' words! But if my heart is in a place that can't muster up forgiveness for even one times one, then "seventy times seven" isn't going to help me one iota!

And so what we're left with is the option to go beneath the surface of the commands and submerge ourselves deeper and deeper into the vast sea of grace.

Paul tells us that he is what he is by the grace of God and he says that all his labor in the Lord was not really him... it was grace (1 Cor 15:10). He says that the sufficiency in all things and the abundance for every good work is found in the fact that "God is able to make all grace abound toward you" (2 Cor 9:8). And here's what is so very important. This makes all the difference in the Christian life. The heart grows when it's submerged in grace, and more importantly for this discussion, the heart grows in grace in a way that it can never grow through simply trying to be obedient to the Word of God. In fact, as the heart grows in grace, obedience to God becomes more and more of a natural outflow of the heart rather than something the heart desperately tries to conjure up.

Hebrews tells us that it is good for the heart to be established in grace (Heb 13:9). Peter tells us to grow in grace (2 Peter 3:18). I love putting these words together with Psalm 92, which says:

The righteous shall flourish like a palm tree,
He shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.
Those who are planted in the house of the LORD
Shall flourish in the courts of our God.
They shall still bear fruit in old age;
They shall be fresh and flourishing.
Ps 92:12-14

Isn't that wonderful! Tell me, can all or any of this be accomplished by anything less than grace?

Growing in grace is a process. It takes time and it can't be forced. It goes deep into the heart, and believe me, it sometimes involves growing pains! But I'd rather go deep below the surface and have those growing pains that lead to true growth and maturity of the heart than to live in the bondage and fruitlessness of trying to live by the face value of commands.


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Entire "Vast Sea of Grace" Series:
Prelude: Just follow the Word, right?
The Vast Sea of Grace: Part 1 -- Part 2 -- >Part 3< -- Part 4
Summaries: So close but yet so far -- Far Cry -- Be a Man