God’s Grace Parts 1 & 2

Introduction

Last week I was going to preach about sin.

But I was sick instead, so it looks like you guys dodged a bullet!

Today is week 11 of our 12-week catechism sermon series.

You guys have been troopers through all of the information that I have thrown at you.

This sermon series has been incredibly helpful to me, and I hope it has to you as well.

Today we are going to talk about God’s grace.

Grace is a very churchy term that we use a lot, but do we really understand what it means?

I can tell you that I had a very limited view of grace before I came into the Methodist church!

Grace is defined as God’s unmerited favor.

We cannot earn it. It is a free gift that God gives to all people.

We do not get to decide when God gives his grace, nor what it will look like.

We will never deserve it, but God is so generous with his grace, we will never be in need of more.

Grace can be things like God opening our minds to understand something we could not before,

It can be peace in times of stress,

It can be a feeling of love towards our neighbor,

It can be experiencing the comfort of God in grief.

Grace is anything good that draws closer to God.

*Pause*

John Wesley talked a lot about God’s grace.

Many of you are probably familiar with Wesley’s definitions and descriptions and divisions of grace.

According to Wesley, there are three major types of grace that God gives.

They are prevenient grace, justifying grace, and sanctifying grace.

Today, we are going to take a look at two of those categories: prevenient and justifying.

Prevenient Grace

I would like you to humor me as we go through a short exercise that may help us to understand these different types of grace, as John Wesley saw them.

Imagine that you are on an excursion, and this excursion is in a jungle.

It is lush, it is green, there are leaves and plants everywhere.

You are armed with a machete to cut through all the undergrowth.

So you are creating a path for yourself, cutting and hacking as you go, and you are sweating.

All of a sudden, you enter a small clearing.

You can hear a low rumbling.

When you go to investigate, just past the clearing is a huge, sheer, cliff.

The jungle ends suddenly, and is split by a large chasm.

At the bottom of this chasm, you can see the source of the rumbling, a large river is rushing below.

It is hundreds of feet down, and there is no way to get across.

You can clearly see that you will not be able to climb down and certainly not jump, to get across.

Luckily, you see a suspension bridge!

Unfortunately, this suspension bridge has seen better days.

It is well-built, but it is narrow, and you can see straight down to the river between each slat.

You know that it will take some courage to step off of the cliff and onto this bridge.

Will it hold you? Maybe it will for the first few steps, but what happens when you get out into the middle?

Will it hold? Will you get to the other side?

*Pause*

In our scenario, the journey that we take in the jungle, the cutting of the vegetation and the sweaty trek to the chasm is where we experience prevenient grace.

The moment that we decide to step off of land and onto the suspension bridge, that is justifying grace.

And the journey we take across the suspension bridge, that is where we encounter God’s sanctifying grace.

For now, let’s focus on prevenient grace.

Prevenient, or preventing grace, is the grace God gives us before we even know who he is or are aware of him at all.

John 6:44–45 NIV

44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws them, and I will raise them up at the last day. 45 It is written in the Prophets: ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from him comes to me.

In this passage, Jesus tells us that we cannot come to God without God first drawing us.

We are incapable of putting our faith in Christ apart from God’s prevenient grace!

Our human nature has been so corrupted by sin that we are unable to even to take a single step in the direction of God without his intervention.

Now, unlike some other denominations, we as Methodists believe that God offers this prevenient grace to all people - not just the “elect” or a select few that he has predestined.

We understand that not all people will accept this gift of grace, but God works in all to draw them to himself.

When people understand right from wrong, when people know in their heart that this world is not as it should be - that is God’s prevenient grace working in them.

Another example of prevenient grace is baptism, especially the baptism of children.

We believe that God’s grace works within the one being baptized to draw them to faith in Jesus.

Infants are not aware of God, but that does not keep his grace from working within them.

Other means of prevenient grace are scripture, either read or spoken from the pulpit,

Prayer, by either the individual themselves or on their behalf by others,

Worship. Oftentimes God uses music & song to move the human heart.

The Lord’s Supper. Those who partake without faith are still receiving the grace that God gives through the sacrament.

Anything positive, good, or pure that exists in someone’s life before they come to actual faith in Jesus is there because God gave them his grace.

The individual then comes to a place of understanding and even love for God so that they may put their trust in him.

*Pause*

On a personal note, this idea of prevenient grace gives me great comfort as a parent.

My brother and I both came to faith at a young age in the Baptist church.

Faith and trust in Jesus has always been a part of my life.

When I became a parent, this did not turn out to be the case for my kids.

They are much more skeptical than I was, have many more questions than I did, and God’s prevenient grace is still at work within them.

I spent a lot of time feeling guilty that they had not come to faith in Christ at a young age.

I tried to think of things I should have done, or should have done better to bring them to faith.

But scripture tells us, it is only the Holy Spirit who can draw hearts to faith in Christ.

There are things we can do to influence them, of course, but ultimately each individual must make their own choice.

God has used this to build my faith in him as well.

I cannot force any faith on my children, but I can only keep them in prayer and trust in God’s prevenient grace.

Justifying Grace

Let’s move now to justifying grace.

In our illustration, we have come through the deep jungle. We are sweaty and tired, and we just want to continue on our journey.

We have seen the clearing, we walk through it to the edge of the cliff.

We don’t want to go back, because we have spent so much time trying to carve our way through the dense jungle.

But we are afraid to move forward, because the bridge is narrow, old, and scary.

We are at the point where we must decide: do we go back the way we came, or do we try the bridge?

Stepping off of the cliff onto the bridge is justification, and salvation.

It is a singular moment in time, not a process.

Justification is just another word for pardon.

This means that when we step onto the bridge, our sins are immediately forgiven.

When we put our faith in Jesus, and believe that he died for our sins, we experience justifying grace.

John Wesley said, “The immediate effects of justification are, the peace of God, a peace that passes all understanding, and a rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

Justifying grace works within us to put us in right relationship with God.

We are reconciled to God through Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, and when we say yes to a life of faith in Jesus, we experience that reconciliation immediately.

Romans 5:1 “1 Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,”

Romans 3:23–24 NIV

23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.

To put it simply, we experience justifying grace the moment we put our faith in Jesus.

God forgives us of our sin, reconciles us to him, and counts us as righteous.

Just like all of God’s grace, we can do nothing to earn this forgiveness.

We must trust in Jesus, that his work on the cross saved us from sin and the wrath of God.

It is not enough just to know about Jesus, or believe he existed, or even believe that he died on the cross.

Going back to our jungle scenario, we see the bridge. We know it exists. We see that it will lead us to the other side of the cliff.

But only when we step off of the cliff and move completely onto the suspension bridge, have we made the choice.

Justification and the grace that is offered to us, comes only after we make the choice to trust in Jesus.

We can only be reconciled to God by faith in his Son, Jesus Christ, by acknowledging him as our Lord and savior.

Justification changes our relationship with God, but our nature and our hearts are not changed - yet.

We will talk next week about sanctification, which is the process that we go through in our Christian life to become more like Christ.

Conclusion

John Wesley believed that grace tells the story of our whole spiritual journey, from our birth until our death.

And he was careful to say that he did not divide God’s grace because God’s grace comes in separate pieces—he divided it to help ordinary people understand how God works in their lives.

God goes before us, drawing us in ways we may not even recognize (prevenient grace).

God meets us in the moment we finally let go and trust Jesus, forgiving our sins and restoring our relationship with Him (justifying grace).

And God keeps working long after that moment, helping us grow in love, holiness, patience, compassion, and courage (sanctifying grace).

When we talk about prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying grace, we are simply naming the beautiful truth that God never stops working in us.

God’s nature is too good to leave us where we are.

He is always working to draw us closer to himself, and grace is one of the many ways that he deepens our relationship with him.

And, my friends, relationship with the creator is the entire goal.

Amen.