Living Under Grace

How do you actually live under the grace of God?
What we're doing in these months, as the weather starts to get a bit cooler, autumn and winter, we are looking at this very warming part of the Bible, and we're being selective. We're leaving out lots of really interesting things. As I look at each passage, I think, "Ah, we should have maybe dealt with that, we should have dealt with that." But we're being selective, and we're making this a little shorter than it could be. During the week, I looked online and I realised that there is a selection, well, in fact, the whole series of sermons that Dr. Martin Lloyd Jones, a famous Welsh preacher, preached in London on the book of Romans. He preached in London on the book of Romans, and it took him 366 sermons to get through all of Romans. In fact, the passage we're looking at tonight took him 11 times 45 minutes. We're going to try and knock it over in about 20. So, between 1955 and 1968, every October to May, so the winter months, he would preach on Romans, and he made his way all the way through it, but it took him 13 years to get there.

Let's think for a moment about risk-taking. I want you to think for a moment about risk and taking risk. Apparently, young men are not very good at assessing risk and take risks more than others, and therefore you have a high proportion of young men involved in traffic accidents, for example. They are risk-takers. However, we don't have to just think about young men. If you're an investor, you go to an investment advisor, they will try and ascertain your risk appetite. How risky do you want to put your investments? What's the risk level you're comfortable with? In the corporate world, we have risk management. It's important to mitigate risk in the corporate world. I'm a member of a risk oversight committee. What risk does is it tries to ascertain the level of uncertainty and the chance that something might go wrong and try and mitigate that in some way. You can't get rid of the possibility that things will go wrong. But what you can do is decide how risky, or how much risk, you are going to take on board and how you can lessen it in different ways.

Now I got a silly question for you. Do you think God is a risk-taker? I told you it's silly because God is God. He knows the future. There's no uncertainty when it comes to God. He knows everything that's going to happen. But in a funny way, God's risk is grace. To treat humans with grace is a risky thing. What is grace? It's God's undeserved generosity. Someone reminded me of the acronym: G.R.A.C.E. - God's Riches at Christ's Expense. God's undeserved generosity. It seems almost irresponsible. It is almost wrong. I've treated my maker like my servant, like a clever puppet. I've cut my strings and now I'm not controlled by God anymore. But am I really alive anymore? Or I've treated God like a thing I can simply ignore. It would be fair for God to say, "All right, you've done that. Well, you get what you deserve. You ignore me, I'll ignore you back." The impudence of me! But God treats me with grace, undeserved favour. He delights to forgive. There is no sin too big that he can't forgive. His son has died for me. In fact, God has lavished his grace on the world. If sin is like a little drop from an eye-dropper, grace is like an ocean. And the bigger the sin, the more wonderful God's grace is. The bigger the damage that's done, the more significant it is to be forgiven.

So, for example, when I was a uni student, I drove an old HK Holden. It cost me £50. One side of it was painted in house paint. I would rarely put more than £5 of fuel in it because I didn't want to overcapitalize. And if you'd asked me to borrow it, I would have gladly lent it to you. And just say I did lend it to you and you wrecked it. Well, I could forgive you because it only cost me 50 bucks. Easy come, easy go. Small deal, small amount of forgiveness is necessary. But say I own a Lamborghini Diablo. I think I worked out they're worth about £800,000. And I loaned it to you, and you wrecked that. Well, if I forgive you, then that is a much bigger deal because the higher the stakes, the bigger the deal it is for the forgiveness. And that is kind of what Paul is saying in chapter 6 verse 1 of Romans. Can you see it there? It's on page 1116. This is kind of what he's saying. He's saying, "What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" He's been making a case, and remember last week we were talking about the fact that we're justified and we're loved and we're redeemed and we have peace with God and we rejoice in that – all the great blessings that happened in that early part of chapter 5. We skipped over a really important part, which is 12-21. And you can see there in 5:20, which is just above that one in six, he says, "The law was added so that the trespass might increase, but where sin increased, grace increased all the more." In fact, in one of the earlier translations, it says where sin abounded, grace super abounded. That's his argument. He's saying where if sin is getting bigger, then grace is going to increase all the more, and God's grace is going to be better.

Now, do you see the risk here? Because a person can say, "Well, if God's grace is so great and we want it to abound, well, why not sin? The more we sin, it'll just multiply the grace of God, which has got to be a good thing, hasn't it?" That's the question. My question is not as honourable. My question is, "Why don't I just do what I want? I'll get forgiven anyway." I get the best of both worlds. I get to do what I want, and I get forgiven. So this is the question he comes to in chapter 6 verse 1: "What should we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" It's the logical question that would get asked if you've been following the argument all the way through. It's the logical thing to say. If you are studying the grace of God as we're doing, and you're following the logic of his argument, you know that you've been faithful to the message of Paul if people say, "Well, why don't we just go and do what we want?" Because when they say that, you know they've understood you properly, because that's just what you should say at this point: "I'll just do what I want." I had this mantra going over and over in my head during the week, and various songs based on that. And I did a little Google search, and the song "I Do What I Want" was a song by the American rapper Lil Uzi Vert, released in 2016, and it peaked at number one on the bubbling under hot 100 chart. I just thought you probably wanted to know that. But it was a similar song by the Rolling Stones, and I think the Soup Dragons did a version of it in the '60s.

Part of my misspent youth was to spend far too long listening to the songs of Frank Sinatra. And one of his not so good songs, for a whole lot of reasons, but certainly the lyric, was his song "I Did It My Way." And it became like an anthem for a generation of people, so proud and so forthright, "I don't care what anybody thinks, I did it my way," which is just another way of saying, "I did what I want." And that's the question Paul is trying to address. Is he just speaking about what we might call cheap grace? It's just so easy. I can remember talking to a student some years ago, and this young man was very devout. He came from a Christian denomination. He had an orthodox background. And I was talking to him about God's grace, and his comment was, "This is just Christianity light 2.0 zero. It's too easy." According to him, real Christianity is much more demanding than just God's grace. God forgives you.

So Paul says, chapter 6 verse 1, "What shall we say then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?" Answer: verse 2, me genoito. That's Greek for 'by no means'. When you don't know a lot of Greek, you hang on to whatever little bits you do remember. By no means. "We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?" Or he says down in verse 6, "We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin." In other words, what he's saying here is if you trust in Christ, God has forgiven you. The former part of your life is over. When Jesus died, he buried your sin.

Another way of saying it could be like this: Let's say your life is a biography in two volumes. You've got volume one, and you've got volume two. You've got volume one, and everybody's a volume one person. The moment you're born, the moment the air goes into your lungs at birth, you are a volume one person. When you're born, you open up volume one. But when a person puts their trust in Jesus as Lord and Savior, they are born again, and they close volume one and they open up volume two. Now, not everybody in the world opens up volume two. Everybody's a volume one person, but not everybody opens up volume two. Clearly, we would want people to open up volume two. I would deeply desire people to open up volume two. And if you're not that sort of person, then you really should do it. And that's part of the reason we exist here as a church at Christ Church, because we really want to see people go from volume one to volume two. But once you are in volume two, you would not go back to living volume one, because volume one is finished. It's inconceivable that someone would go back to volume one.

Now you can be a volume two person and fail. You can be a volume two person and slip up. You can be a volume two person and disappoint yourself and disappoint God and not feel like you're really meeting the standard you should live up to. That's completely possible. So we're not talking here about perfection. We're not talking here about sinless perfection. There have been these movements throughout the history of the church which have said, "No, you can get to perfection level here on earth." There have been movements in church history around personal holiness, movements of legalism. There was a movement here in the late 20th century, or the mid 20th century, which was called sinless perfection. It was a sect that cropped up within the Anglican church and the Presbyterian churches in Sydney. It crept into the Sydney University Evangelical Union, and basically they were saying you can be perfect, you can be sinless here on earth. It was a terrible, terrible error and a terrible burden to lay on people. And as is often the case with these things, it ended up in an absolute mess and disintegrated. We're not talking about that. We're not talking about sinless perfection.

But if you look at verse six, he says, "We should no longer be slaves to sin." What does he mean here? Well, Christ died, so you're free. You're no longer a slave. The penalty of sin has been removed from you. The rule of sin has been removed from you, but you're still going to face the presence of sin. But you're free to fight it. You're no longer a slave to it.

So here's a silly little illustration that might help.

• Imagine you're at home asleep at night, and while you're sleeping, a burglar breaks in and ties you up. You hear noises downstairs and you wake up and you realise you're tied up, and you realise you're being robbed. And you think, "What am I going to do?" And then some friendly mice come by and they gnaw through the rope, and they chew through it, and suddenly you're free. And as you're free, with one hand you grab the telephone to call Triple O, and with the other hand you grab the baseball bat because you're free to fight. You're free to defend yourself. And that's kind of what Paul is saying here. You're no longer a slave to sin. You're no longer a captive. You're free to fight against it. And one day you'll be lifted out of it. It will happen. There will come a day when you're lifted out of the fight, but not yet.

• Or, silly illustration number two, you can perhaps picture a couple of soldiers in the trenches. And if you're a soldier in the trench, it's not the nicest place to be. It's putrid, it's muddy, it's unpleasant, it's dangerous. And they're fiddling around with a two-way radio and they pick up the sound, a conversation of two enemy generals talking tactics. And then they realise that the enemy generals are just two 9-year-olds with water pistols. So nothing's changed in the trenches. It's still as it is. But they know things are different. And if you're a volume two person, then live that way. Paul is saying, the penalty for sin has been smashed. The rule of sin has been smashed. The presence of sin is still there, but it's just annoying really. But resist it because one day you're going to be plucked from the trench. You'll be taken out of it. If you're a volume two person, live that way. That's what it means to live under grace.

Just as Jesus rose, you'll rise with Him. I love the line in that first song which talks about that: "Just as Jesus rose, you'll rise with Him." Do you notice that if you're a believer, you're kind of joined to Jesus, you're kind of joined to Christ? Look at verse six. It says, "Your old self died with Him." And because of that, verse eight, "If we died with Him, we'll also live with Him." See there, and verse 11, he says, "Count yourself alive to God in Christ." Because you're in Christ, you're alive to God. The old you has died. What has happened to Jesus has happened to you. He's your... it's like He's your address. You are in Him. Where He goes, it's where you go. He died, your sins died with Him. He will rise, you will rise with Him.

I was saying this morning that down at Luna Park, they managed to get one of the old rides working again, the famous Wild Mouse. I kind of like it because it's not as scary as roller coasters. I don't like roller coasters. But I could picture myself in the Wild Mouse. You're just in a little cart, and the little cart goes wherever the tracks go. Wherever the tracks go, the cart goes. And hopefully, that's where you go if you stay inside it. So it goes left, you go left; it goes right, you go right; goes down a bit, you go down; goes up a bit, you go up. You go where it goes. And that's kind of what Paul's saying here. If you're in Christ, you go where he goes.

Now, some people think that freedom is to do what you want, whenever you want. But it's not. That's not freedom. It's slavery. Slavery to sin and slavery to selfishness. Just a moment's contemplation will tell you that. So does God's grace mean you're free to do what you want? God has shown His grace. Are you just free to do what you like? Are you free just to live to please yourself? But it's the wrong question. See, are you free to hurt someone who loves you? It's not a question. Are you free to hurt someone who's devoted to you? Are you free to hurt someone who's demonstrated their love for you? It's a non-quest.

Imagine there are two young men, their mates. One comes from a family that is kind and loving. There is care and trust in the family between the parents and the child, between the parents and the son, the young man. There's respect. They're fair, but they're firm. The other comes from a family that's angry. The family is based on "do the right thing, or else there'll be consequences." It's punitive. There's punishment. They yell, they scream, they scold. The two boys go out together on a Saturday night, and both of them are individually told, "We want you home by midnight." The boy from the gracious and kind family says, "I need to be home by midnight." The other one says, "Why? Your parents won't do anything. What do you got to be worried about? There'll be no consequences." He says, "Yeah, but they trust me, and I don't want to hurt them."

It's the same with the one who lives under the grace of God. This is what it is to live under the grace of God. God has been incredibly generous to me. He has not spared his only son. And I'm not alone either. He's done the same for you. If you're a volume two person, you're not a law keeper. You're not a rule keeper. It's just that you know you've got a Lord and a Savior who's powerful and He'll take good care of you. He'll do His best for you. I was reminded during the week of a French saying which goes like this: "C'est son metier." That's the best I can do with my French accent. It means, roughly translated, "It's His business." "God will forgive me, it's his business." The quote was attributed to a poet called Heinrich Heine, and it was variously attributed to Catherine the Great. I'm not quite sure how it made its way into French. But you get it, don't you? It's kind of a cynical grab: "God will forgive. It's his business." What Paul's saying is a million miles away from that. If you close volume one, you open volume two, you're no longer under law but under grace. There is a new motivation within you to please this God who's given so much to you.

Well, why don't we pray? Heavenly Father, please help us to grasp this incredible truth that Paul has been speaking of here. Help us not to fall into the trap of just saying we can do what we want. Help us not to fall into the trap of thinking we can be perfect. Help us to stay faithful to you and to appreciate all you've done so that our lives can be just a big thank you. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

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