Sermon Tone Analysis

The Grace of Christmas

Real Transformer (Optimus Prime) vs. McD’s Happy Meal Transformer

There are the real versions, and there are the cheap knock offs.

And, of course, the appeal of the cheap knock offs is that you can have everything that the real version offers, but at a fraction of the price, if not free.

But still, only the real thing is the real thing, and the real thing is always costly.

Yet, at the same time, nothing works like the real thing.

The Grace of Christmas follows a similar concept.

There are alot of cheap knock offs that try to pass themselves off as God’s grace.

They’ll try to claim that they can do everything that God’s grace can do, but it won’t cost as much.

You don’t need to be transformed, you are who you are, and your brand of good is all that should matter.

And why take up your cross, you shouldn’t have to do that!

You deserve better.

But the truth is, what we deserve is far worse than anything we can imagine.

Yet God, by His Grace, came to earth in the person of Jesus Christ to pay for the sin of you and me.

And the Grace that He came by was not cheap.

And what’s more, cheap grace has no power.

It can’t transform you, and it can’t save you.

But God’s Grace made a way for our salvation.

The late German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in a very famous quote, explains this idea like so:

Cheap grace is the deadly enemy of our Church.

We are fighting today for costly grace.

Cheap grace means grace sold on the market like cheapjack’s wares.

The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices.

Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessings with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits.

Grace without price; grace without cost!

…

Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, Communion without confession, absolution without personal confession.

Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the Cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.

Costly grace is the treasure hidden in the field; for the sake of it a man will gladly go and sell all that he has.

It is the pearl of great price to buy which the merchant will sell all his goods…

Costly grace is the Gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock.

Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ.

It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life.

It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.

Above all, it is costly because it costs God the life of His Son: “ye were bought at a price,” and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us.

Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon His Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered Him up for us.

Costly grace is the Incarnation of God.

Costly grace is the sanctuary of God; it has to be protected from the world, and not thrown to the dogs…

–Dietrich Bonhoeffer (February 4, 1906-April 9, 1945)

The apostle Paul understood this when he wrote about the amazing grace that transformed him, and that’s what we are going to examine today.

Why?

We were sick with sin, and we didn’t even know we had a disease to be cured from, yet God, in His Grace, came in the person of Jesus Christ to save us from our sin.

Because as we come to Christmas this year, it is essential for all of us to understand, not just why Jesus came, but the function of the gift that God offers to us in Jesus Christ.

What Jesus can accomplish in you and through you.

But that can only happen if you don’t settle for the cheap grace.

It might look good, it might seem like it might work just as well, but you will find out, sooner or later, that the cheap grace that you thought would get you by, doesn’t work at all.

And you are in the same place you always were.

Stuck in your sin, your maturity and growth still stunted and delayed, discouraged and dissatisfied, and longing for deliverance.

Friends, I want to tell you today that the Grace of Christmas is your deliverance.

And maybe the gift of Jesus Christ doesn’t look as appealing to you as whatever else you might want to apply in your life, but I promise you, only Jesus can affect the transformation in your life that you desire.

He’s the One you’re looking for.

He’s what you really want to find when you open your present.

Let’s pray as we come to God’s Word this morning.

Some of you are familiar with the apostle Paul’s background, and some of you may not be.

Quickly, the apostle Paul was originally called Saul, and he was a strict Pharisee before becoming a Christian.

In his religious enthusiasm, he vigorously persecuted Christians, displacing Christian families from their homes, putting them in jail, and famously, holding the coats of those who were stoning Stephen, thus giving his effective approval of Stephen’s murder.

According to Pharisaic law, however, Saul was blameless.

If anyone could get to heaven by keeping the law, it would’ve been Saul.

One day, as Paul was riding to the town of Damascus, anxious to persecute more Christians, when a God stopped him through what the Bible describes as a bright light shining from the sky, literally throwing him off of his horse.

God spoke to Paul and saved him, and in doing so, changed Saul’s name to Paul.

You can read about Paul’s conversion in Acts chapter 9.

So here, in his letter to Timothy, who was Paul’s pastoral protege, so to speak, Paul is referencing his former life, and is at once astounded by the patient Grace that God showed him, so much so that Paul breaks into spontaneous praise at the end of the section.

So, why was Paul so amazed by God’s grace?

Why are we, as a people, still so amazed by God’s grace?

To the point where a song literally called, Amazing Grace, is among the most recognized melodies and first verses in the entire world, along the lines of the Happy Birthday song and the Star Spangled Banner.

I want to suggest to you that the gift of Grace that Jesus gives us, and that we celebrate every year at Christmas is so amazing because it provides and powers the transforming work of Christ in us.

It is God’s grace that transforms us from the wretches we are, to the righteous ones of God.

I think we can forget, or overlook, the significance of such a transformation simply because the headline in our lives regarding salvation is that we were going to hell but now, through our faith in Christ, because of the sinless life and sacrificial death and resurrection, we now can enjoy eternal life in heaven with God.

The transforming work of Grace is so important because it frees us from having to uphold the Law of God in our hearts and lives.

Make no mistake, the Law of God matters.

It is a standard of righteousness that God does not compromise.

However, human beings, you and me, have no chance of keeping all the Law because we are spoiled by sin to begin with.

So Jesus, fulfilled the Law and the Prophets, and thus was an acceptable sacrifice before God, for the payment of sin, and the accomplishment of salvation for all who would believe in Him.

So now, Christians can live from a position of righteousness, instead of having to work for a position of righteousness.

But we forget that easily don’t we?

How often do we try to barter with God?

We try to make deals with Him that if He will just do this for us, we will never do that again.

Or how often are we afraid to come into God’s presence because we are ashamed?

Or how often do we feel unworthy to serve Him or others because of the circumstances or actions in our lives at the moment?

When we get into these kinds of circular spiritual traps, we are forgetting that God’s Grace has transformed us and that we are a new creation.

The problem is that our new creation is something that we discover and that God uncovers over the course of our lives, so we might recognize our newness right away.

And because we don’t recognize our newness, we think we are not changed, or that somehow we have to do in our lives what God said that He has done and/or will do in our lives.

The 3-Fold Process of Salvation

Justification: Freed from the penalty of sin.

A legal position.

We are justified before God, and therefore we can inherit eternal life with Him.

Happens at the moment of salvation/regeneration.

Sanctification: Freed from the power of sin.

The uncovering of the new creation that God has made us over the course of our lives.

This is how we become more and more like Christ over time.

Happens over our whole lives.

Glorification: Freed from the presence of sin.

We enter into a sinless eternal, in sinless and glorified bodies.

Happens after physical death, completed at the resurrection of believers’ bodies.

Now, all of this, is work that God does on our behalf by Grace, and we access it through faith.

But we misunderstand Grace.

We don’t see Grace as a power that God uses to affect transformation in our lives.

We see Grace as a passive patience, as if God is just sitting there letting us get away with whatever we want.

But that’s not Grace!

With a misunderstanding of Grace:

Justification ------------------Sanctification------------------------Glorification