Living as a People of Grace in a Graceless World

Personal opinions, values, and beliefs all across the world, and particularly here in the West, appear to be polarizing into various camps more and more every day. Liberal and progressive ideologies, conservative politics, religious thinking, national affiliations and the list goes on – all these different worldviews are aggressively competing every day across the news sites, social media, policy chambers, and office cubicles. All across the fabric of our daily lives. And we here in this room are not immune. We each have our own worldview – some of our worldview is shared with others in this room and some of it will not be. And my guess is that for most of us here, our worldview is also polarizing to some degree, just like in the rest of the world.

This is nothing new. Worldviews have always competed and polarized groups throughout history. But we are seeing something today that we haven’t seen for a long time in the Western world. As the worldviews on both the left and right, the liberal and conservative, polarize, they are also hardening and growing deaf to all other viewpoints. Today’s debates and discussions about issues and ideas have become shouting matches and sucker punches. As a culture, we are losing the ability to disagree respectfully and walk away in friendship. ‘My ideology and worldview must come out on top and yours is just plain evil.’

This causes great confusion for us as Christians when we state our beliefs and viewpoints on the various issues and ideas of the day only to than get branded as haters or bigots or killjoys. Why is this? Our world is losing an experience of grace – the ability to disagree and love at the same time.

We as Christians have experienced exceptional grace through the forgiveness of our sins by the death and resurrection of Jesus and we now live with a worldview that includes cosmic grace. This frees us as Christians to extend grace to other people because we know that we are free only by the extraordinary grace of Jesus. We can freely love any and all people, even if we disagree passionately with them. This is a culture of grace, and the world is forgetting it.

So how do we as Exchange Church live as a people of grace in an ungracious world? And why should we even bother?

These are the questions that we will be addressing this morning. And to aid our thinking, we will look to . Let’s turn to it now…

Read

Opening Thesis

Paul has a clear view of what a grace-filled church should look like in a graceless world. The Roman world of Paul’s day certainly had its share of polarized worldviews. I don’t know if it was more or less so than today, but Scripture reports plenty of intense friction between different worldviews. For example, in , Paul is on trial before the Sanhedrin, the ruling Jewish council which was made up of two primary factions that, of many things, differed on their views of the supernatural. Paul just dropped the word ‘resurrection’ in to his defence and the room erupted into an all-in pub brawl. Trial over. Call in the military. Literally.

Back here in Romans, Paul frames the question of how to be a people of grace in a graceless world around the theme of genuine love. This is the overarching attitude and definitive characteristic of God’s people and God’s community. From there, Paul lists several applications of genuine love within the Christian community, so that it can become a place of grace and then lists several applications of genuine love for those outside the Christian community, so that the Christian community can extend grace to a graceless world. Let’s look at these applications in turn.

Genuine Love

If you are following along with me from your Bible, and not just the screen here, you may have noticed that this section of Romans has been labelled, if your using the ESV, as ‘Marks of the True Christian’ or if you’ve got the NIV as ‘Love’ or ‘Love in Action’. And you probably know that these heading have been added by the publisher to aid in navigating the Bible – they don’t appear in the original manuscripts. Normally that is. But here in , we find a genuine heading. The first sentence in verse 9 – ‘let love be genuine’ is Paul’s heading for this section of his letter. It is the glue that sticks all the other, seemingly random at times, bits together.

This love is the Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love of God, as Sally Lloyd-Jones puts it in the Jesus Storybook Bible. It is a comprehensive and expansive love that should be billowing out of us, filling the whole room, just like a spilt bottle of Chanel No. 9.

This love is spectacular because it doesn’t matter who is being loved. It is not dependant on somebody’s character, attitude, personality, beliefs, or worldviews. It is dependent on the quality and character of the love giver. This is a very lofty love. It is too lofty for us to wield on our own – we are too corrupted by sin. By God’s grace and through the Holy Spirit living within us, we can, however, extend God’s infinite love to people. This love is one of the famous “Fruits of the Spirit”.

And it must be genuine. Christians often stumble at this point. We have the appearance of love, but it is often not genuine. Genuineless love is more like billowing mustard gas – it smells lovely like lilac, garlic, or horseradish and it too fills the room – but leaves people in agony or death.

So when we are engaging with a graceless world, are we a fragrant perfume or a lethal blister agent – genuine love or fake love? When we are discussing politics, moral issues, or even the colour to paint the lounge room, are we emitting toxic fumes or the aroma of Christ? Scripture calls us to be people of grace through genuine love.

Abhor Evil, Cling to What is Good

Paul adds two qualifiers to love here in verse 9 and at the end in verse 21. Genuine love abhors what is evil, and holds fast, or clings, to what is good. It is not overcome by evil, but overcomes evil with good.

Living as a people of grace in a graceless world is not a call to abandon God’s truth, call black white or white black, or fall into moral relativism. This is not love and it is not Biblical. The world may want us to go along with it in all of its rebellious directions, but as lovers of Christ, Paul calls us to hate exceedingly what is evil and to cling so tightly that it is like we are married to goodness.

But here is the catch – Scripture, here, is speaking about evil and goodness within our own hearts and wills. Paul is not speaking about us being the moral conscience of the world. That is the Holy Spirit’s job according to Jesus in . Rather, we are to cling to goodness like a spouse and be goodness to those around us in the world. We will look at this a little more a bit later.

So we’ve got genuine love ticked off, but we still need to apply this to our lives in some practical ways in order to live as people of grace in a graceless world, so now we’ll turn our attention to some of the practical things that Paul teaches here in .

Cultivating Grace within Our Community

Popular wisdom says we should put our own house in order before we try to put other’s houses in order. So let’s look at what Paul says about cultivating a community of grace.

Brotherly affection

The first thing that Paul says is that we should love each other with the warmth and affection of a family, verse 10. This is a different type of love than the one that we have just talking about. That love is cosmic in proportions and soars to the heights of God himself. This love is more like that warm and tender love of sitting next to a crackling fire on a cold winter’s evening, tucked up under a woolly blanket, chatting with a good friend over steaming sticky date pudding.

We are to love each other here in this room, and our brothers and sisters spread throughout the world, with this same kind of deep familial love. And key to our thinking here, this is true even of our brothers and sisters who hold different worldviews to us – maybe even especially them. This is counter-cultural. Remember, we are to be people of grace in a graceless world. If we cannot be people of grace with those who are within our community of the God-graced, how will we ever be gracious with those outside our God-graced community?

And this includes all those who are genuine Christ-lovers whether they be Anglican, Baptist, Presbyterian, liberal, conservative, Catholic, Orthodox, rich, poor, African, Aboriginal, American, Middle Eastern, refugee, Green, Labor, Liberal, homeless, or whatever. We are called to love them all like family.

We cannot be proud or haughty in our own opinions and worldviews (verse 16) but are called to live with all these various family members and their diverse worldviews in harmony (verse 16). We know that our own opinions and worldviews are just as flawed in some places as what we can see in others’ worldviews – and that causes us to pause, drives us to humility, and frees us to be gracious with our brothers and sisters.

Our bond as the bride of Christ is deeper and stronger than our ideologies, or at least it should be. This is a mark of a grace-filled community bound under God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.

We are also to weep with our brothers and sisters when they weep (verse 15). We are to rejoice when they rejoice (also verse 15. We are to share in the ups and downs of life with our family. This includes sharing our resources when someone in our family is in need (verse 13). And actively seeking to welcome brothers and sisters in Christ into our lives and to care for their needs – this is hospitality (verse 13).

All of this boils down to deeply and truly considering our local church family, the wider church community of Shepparton, and the church beyond as our truest family. Think – Hollywood Christmas movie kind of family living. We look out for each other, care for each other, house the visitors, share food and resources, and even chat with odd Uncle Bill all with an attitude of grace and love.

So now that we’ve got our own house in order, let’s look at living as a people of grace outside in the graceless world.

Life as People of Grace in a Graceless World

As the world around us forgets how to live with grace, our community of Jesus followers must not. While living graciously within our community is never easy, it is also not that unique in our graceless world. Every ideological community and worldview tribe will typically have at least some level of graciousness within its own house, so this is not a particularly high bar in many respects. However, we as people graced by Christ’s blood are called to also be people of grace with those outside our community. And this is where our graceless world is at its most ungracious.

So what does Paul say to help us live as people of grace in a graceless world?

First, we are committed to love with God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love, as we’ve discussed before. That is the over-arching theme of all of these actions. And it is the foundation of all of our actions. We cannot live any of this out if we are not living in step with the Holy Spirit. Love is one of His fruits – not ours.

Flowing out of love, Paul highlights three categories of grace-filled living with those in the world.

Do no evil

The first category falls under the first qualifier of love we discussed earlier. Abhor what is evil (verse 9). Paul says, “repay no one evil for evil” (v 17) and “never avenge yourselves” (v19), and “do not be overcome by evil” (v 21).

This cuts right across the grain of our world right now. Just in the last couple of weeks we have had a politician gunned down because she wanted Britain to stay in the EU while the gunman wanted out, a whole club full of people gunned down because they held a differing view of human sexuality, and kilometres of digital ink spilled spitefully attacking other views in this week’s upcoming Federal Election. And all of these atrocities have been based only on a difference of opinion, a difference of worldview, not even in response to an actual perpetrated evil.

The call of Christ to His people is to abhor this kind of evil response to perceived threats and, even more, when faced with actual evil actions directed at oneself, to leave all vengeance and retribution to God (v19), because all legitimate vengeance belongs only to God. He is the only One who is capable of meting out vengeance righteously and justly. This goes so far as to not even curse our persecutors. Cursing involves wishing ruin or disaster on our enemies.[i] Our response, instead of vengeance and cursing, is to bless and be a blessing. This moves into the second category.

Bless and be a blessing

Living as a people of grace in a graceless world means that our aim is to live graciously even when the world hates us. Jesus says that we should not be surprised when the world hates us because it first hated him (). And this is becoming ever more and more true in our world. The days when Christianity was at least respected in the Western world are over. The Church has all but been shut out of cultural and political life. But that is okay. Jesus tells us it is going to be like this.

So what do we do? We stand firm together in Christ and we live radically authentic Christian lives at whatever cost. And what does this radical Christian life look like?

calls us to feed our hungry enemies, water our thirsty adversaries, and bless our persecutors (vs 14, 20). This will not be easy. This cuts across our natural sinful inclinations, but we must because Christ has called us to it. But we do not do this alone. We’ve got the Holy Spirit, the very person of God, living within us to help us along. This is His work within us. And we’ve got each other – the community of grace where we are weeping with each other when needs be and loving each other through all hardships.

Live honourably and peaceably

The third category Paul calls us to in Romans is to live honourably and peaceably in our graceless world (vs 17, 18). We are to do whatever we can to live in ways that the world sees as honourable, moral, and right and we are to do whatever we can to live at peace with those around us. Of course this doesn’t mean we live in sinful ways just because the world thinks it is honourable – remember we are to abhor evil and cling to the good (v 9). But it does mean that we are not to make our presence odorous to the world on any account but that of being Christ’s disciples.

And this is key to our public presence in a graceless world. We cannot claim persecution when we take flak for speaking out about moral issues or political issues – even if they are Biblical positions. It is right and good for us to speak out in our democratic society – our worldview should be on the table – but the flak we may take is not persecution. Persecution is the world taking out its hatred of Christ on us his children. So we must then be wise in how we discuss our worldviews with those around us so that we don’t take unnecessary flak and obscure the message of Christ.

The goal is to love people and invite them into the grace we have in Christ. If we utilize the same barbaric and graceless arguments that the world uses, how will it ever see and experience what true grace is? How will the name of Christ be glorified, if His people are indistinguishable from all the other worldview combatants?

We cannot expect grace from the world – and that is fine, we have all the grace we could ever want or need already through the saving work of Jesus Christ and we have the added bonus of living in a grace-filled community.

Conclusion

So how do we here at Exchange church live as a people of grace in a graceless world? And why should we even bother?

We live as people who love with God’s Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love that we extend to both those inside and outside our community. We seek to serve with deep affection those within our community and live graciously with each other. And we live honourable lives of love before all people, accepting the evil that they may send our way, trusting that Christ will bring justice or salvation to those people.

And we bother because God’s love compels us so much that we cannot but love the world. So we live as people of grace in a graceless world so that the world may see and experience grace and, hopefully, find God’s eternal grace.