Living by Grace

 

“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.  For we are what God has made us, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand to be our way of life.”  Ephesians 2:8-10

 

 

I am always humbled when my own sermons convict me.  A few weeks ago I preached on the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd.  I talked about how difficult it is to hear and respond to the voice of Jesus in our hearts when we hear so many competing voices from our culture.

 

We also have voices within ourselves that we have internalized from our families or our religious tradition, or our own insecurities which drown out the voice of the Good Shepherd.

 

In that sermon I confessed that the voice I struggled with was my own.  It is a voice that tells me “in order to be good, in order to follow Jesus the Good Shepherd, I have to follow certain rules.”  Somehow, I have internalized the notion that willpower is the mark of a true disciple.

 

My challenge these days is to learn to live more by grace than by rules.  And that is hard.

 

No one in the New Testament understood that better than the apostle Paul.  He told the Galatians, “You are called to freedom in Christ Jesus, but don’t use your freedom as an excuse for self indulgence.”  (5:13) We don’t do what we please with no thought of its wrongness or rightness.  We don’t become lazy about cultivating our moral compass.  It is important to live a life that befits the gospel.

 

But living by grace is not the same as living by a set of rules—however good and instructive they might be--because it is not the rules or our willpower that makes us good.  It is God’s grace, a gift, not of ourselves.

 

For me, living by grace is more about trusting that God’s goodness is good enough for me.  Living by grace means I am gracious with myself.  Not guilt ridden.  It is the challenge of living in a creative, trusting, tension between ultimate freedom in Christ, and obedience to the gospel.

 

Paul called it living by the Spirit.  And the result of that kind of living is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness.

 

And, yes, self-control.