Archives for May 2010

Remember from our last post – just as I now trust in the sinless life of Christ and in the death of Christ in my place as the basis of my relationship with God…and not my behavior…so God depends on the sinless life of Christ and the death of Christ as the basis of His relationship with me…and not my behavior!

Grace is God’s willingness to look at us from the perspective that sees his holy Son in our place. While we see our sin, God sees His son. As a consequence he loves and treasures us as much as if we had never sinned…as much as He does his own Son.

And so when we talk about “God imputes His righteousness to us” – this is what we mean. God thinks of Christ’s righteousness as ours – and because He looks at us through Christ, He makes a declaration about us that we are righteous.

Now next – the implications of this for us are huge, but most believers do not live as if this was true.

Before I put my faith/trust in the life and death of Christ – I had a problem…really two problems. First, my behavior, because it was sinful, created alienation from God. Isaiah 59:2 describes this, “But your iniquities have separated you from your God.”

But this was not my only problem – God judges and punishes sin, and so I was a condemned person. Alienated and condemned – that was my relationship with God when the basis of my relationship with Him was my behavior…my trying…my effort…or lack thereof.

But then God in His grace sends Jesus and Jesus does two things. He lives a sinless life and then on the cross takes my place and is punished for my sin…he experiences the judgement of God in my place.

So what does it mean to become a Christian, to trust Christ, to believe in Christ? Two things. It means I am now going to trust in the sinless life of Christ and in the death of Christ in my place as the basis of my relationship with God…no longer is the basis of my relationship my behavior or my ability to please Him.

Now, and this is so important – just as I depend on the life and death of Christ as the basis of my relationship with God, so God depends on the life and death of Christ as the basis of His relationship with me. Just as I no longer depend on my behavior as the basis of my relationship with God, so God no longer depends on my performance as the basis of His relationship with me!

The implications of this are huge and we will unpack these in the blogs to follow.

Earlier this Spring, a pastor friend in California was doing a series on experiencing God and asked if I would take the message on grace. I was delighted to do so, but the challenge was I had to summarize the grace of God in 35 minutes! Yikes! After pondering this for quite some time, I decided that we would look at three major acts of God’s grace and what the implications are of each one for us. Now I had three acts of grace and twenty implications to cover in 35 minutes!

Now you have the road map for the next few weeks…so let’s start with just listing the three acts of God’s grace that we are going to cover and then in coming blogs we will describe each of these and then look at the implications in our lives. These are radical and life-changing truths -so keep following.

What are the three acts of God’s grace that we will unpack? The first is this – that He has imputed His righteousness to us. Hmmm – we’ll make this a lot more interesting than it sounds. The second is that He not only views us differently (a slight hint about imputed righteousness), but He has also made us different…He has actually implanted His righteousness in us. The implications of this are key to getting off the treadmill of a performance-based faith. The third act of grace toward us that we will explore is that He adopted us.

In I Cor 15:10 the apostle Paul says, “But by the grace of God I am what I am.” In verse 9 he describes himself as a wicked, evil person, killing and persecuting the followers of Jesus. A person to be feared and avoided. But in verse 10 he says, “I am not like that anymore…everything that is now right about me – it is a result of God’s grace.”

Starting with the next blog, we will look at these three acts of grace and the “rightness” they create in us.