Chapell Unlimited Grace

The Heart Chemistry That Frees from Sin and Fuels the Christian Life
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5234-2
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 192 Seiten

How God's Unlimited Grace Leads Us to Heartfelt Obedience What if obeying God is not just dreary duty-going through the motions to avoid God's wrath or earn his favor? What if following Christ is pure joy-living in loving response to a grace so profound that it changes all our motivations and affections? Far from encouraging sin, this biblical understanding of grace fuels and empowers the obedience that God commands. Explaining why grace is important and giving us tools to discover it in all of Scripture, Unlimited Grace helps us to see how gospel joy transforms our hearts and makes us passionate for Christ's purposes. Experienced pastor and author Bryan Chapell takes insights from a lifetime of relishing God's grace and pours them into this highly accessible and engaging book, helping readers see how God's grace shines through all of Scripture, for all of life. 

Bryan Chapell is a bestselling author of many books, including Christ-Centered Preaching and Holiness by Grace. He is pastor emeritus of the historic Grace Presbyterian Church in Peoria, Illinois; president emeritus of Covenant Theological Seminary; and president of Unlimited Grace Media (unlimitedgrace.com), which broadcasts daily messages of gospel hope in many nations.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Chapell, Bryan

Leseproben

1

The King’s Gift

Once upon a time, there was a king who looked from his palace window and saw one of his children collecting flowers in a distant field. The king watched as the child collected the flowers into a bouquet and wrapped it with a ribbon of royal colors. The king smiled because the ribbon indicated that the flowers were being collected as a gift for his own pleasure. Then the king noticed that the child—because he was a child—gathered not only flowers. From time to time, the child also added some weeds from the field, and some ivy from the border of the woods, and some thistle from the unmown banks of ditches.

To help his laboring child, the king gave a mission to his oldest son, who sat at his right hand. The king said to his eldest son, “Go to my garden and pick from the flowers that grow there. Then, when your sibling comes to my throne room with his gift, remove all that is unfit for my palace from his bouquet. Make it fit by putting in its place the flowers that I have grown.”

The elder brother did exactly as his father had instructed. When the younger child came to the throne room, his brother removed the weeds, the ivy, and the thistle, substituting all with flowers from the king’s garden. Then, the firstborn son rewrapped the royal ribbon around the bouquet so that his sibling could present his gift to the king. With a beaming smile, the younger child entered the throne room, presented the gift, and said, “Here, my father, is a beautiful bouquet that I have prepared for you.”1 Only later would he understand that his gift had been made acceptable by the gracious provision of his father.

Grace for Weeds

This ancient parable sweetly reminds us of our heavenly Father’s grace. Each of us is the child with the weed-filled bouquet of good works. Though we may strive with energy and zeal to honor God, our deeds are never really worthy of his holy throne room. So our eternal King graciously provides the holiness he requires. He has sent his eternal Son, Jesus Christ, to make us and our efforts fit for heaven.

Christ’s sinless life, sacrificial death, and victorious resurrection are the perfect flowers that God prepared as substitutes for our “weedy” works. As we rely upon Jesus’s provision, rather than on our own good works or intentions, he removes the flawed and sinful deeds from the bouquet of our lives and replaces them with his perfections. When we stand before God in his heavenly throne room, everything we have given to God is made right by Christ’s work in our behalf. Christ’s flowers are provided by the grace of God that makes our lives’ bouquets acceptable and pleasing to him.

The aim of this book is to identify not only how these truths of grace affect our understanding of God’s acceptance at the end of our lives, but also how they empower our efforts to honor God every day of our lives. How grace makes our daily lives more like Christ’s is not always obvious. After all, as precious as may be the grace that substitutes Christ’s righteousness for our sin, and as comforting as it may be to know that God will provide the holiness he requires, such assurances may seem to let us off the hook for now.

If our works are not the basis of our standing before God, does that mean they don’t really matter? And if God is ultimately going to credit us with Christ’s righteousness, why should we bother to battle temptations or obey him?

The Math of the Mind

The answer to these questions requires us to acknowledge that there are some real, practical problems with the claim that God will substitute Christ’s righteousness for our imperfections. There is a math of the calculating mind that figures, “If God will ultimately substitute Christ’s good works for my bad behavior, then I might as well sin now.” We don’t have to sing, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we die.” We can instead chortle, “Eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow God forgives.” Any assurance of God’s pardon has the danger of W. H. Auden’s fictional King Herod’s reasoning: “I like committing crimes. God likes forgiving crimes. The world is really admirably arranged.”2

How do we answer that kind of logic? First, we should be careful not to counter this shady math by denying the gospel. Telling people that God will not forgive them later may scare some into temporary good conduct, but such a message betrays Christ. He taught, and gave his life to convey, the message that God would fully pardon all who trust that Jesus paid the final penalty for their sin (John 3:16). God really will forgive those who truly trust him to pardon them. Whenever we humbly turn to God and ask for his grace, he will grant it.

You cannot claim as “Christian” any message denying that the grace of God is greater than all our sin and always available to cover it. New obedience and daily living in harmony with Christ’s standards may enable us to experience God’s forgiveness, but we never earn it. God is not waiting for us to get good enough to deserve his mercy and pardon. The Bible teaches that those who truly confess their need of God’s mercy are truly forgiven (1 John 1:9). Though our sins be as scarlet marks against us, God will wash them white as snow (Isa. 1:18). He forgives murderers, adulterers, abusers, gossips, thieves, and liars (1 Tim. 1:8–16). He forgives us. No sin counts against us more than Christ’s provision for us (Rom. 5:20; 1 Pet. 2:24). Christ takes the worst weeds from the bouquet of our lives and replaces them with fragrant flowers of God’s eternal pardon.

The Chemistry of the Heart

So, if we cannot leverage good behavior by threatening that God will withhold his forgiveness from those who don’t deserve it, how do we counter the manipulative math that is so ready to take wrong advantage of God’s grace? We must employ a force stronger than raw logic—an impulse more motivating than calculations of personal advantage, pleasure, or gain. The force the Bible engages to motivate and enable us to serve Christ is the chemistry of the heart: love. Jesus said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).

The apostle Paul echoes this when he says, “The love of Christ controls us . . .” (2 Cor. 5:14). Without sentimentalism or apology, our Savior and his messengers advocate a chemistry of grateful hearts that is stronger than the math of calculating minds. God’s great grace toward us fosters such love for him that we want to please and honor him. His mercy toward us stirs such overwhelming thanksgiving in us that we desire to live for him. Love compels us.

How strong is this compulsion? Nothing is stronger. This is not simply a schmaltzy appeal to emotions. The most powerful human motivation is love. Guilt is not stronger. Fear is not stronger. Gain is not stronger. What drives a mother back into a burning building? Love for her children. Such love is stronger than self-protection, self-promotion, or self-preservation. Such love finds its highest satisfaction and greatest fulfillment in protecting, promoting, and preserving its object. A Christian for whom love of God is the highest priority is also the person most motivated and enabled to serve the purposes of God.

While there are many motivations that drive us—and many to which the Scriptures appeal—the foundation and priority of all that is done for God must be love for him, or else our expression of faith will inevitably be some form of dissatisfying selfishness. That is why Jesus taught that loving the Lord above all else is the foundation of our faithfulness to God (Matt. 22:37–38). Not only does such love enable us to find our deepest satisfaction in pleasing God; it also provides us the greatest strength for doing so. We will inevitably focus our resources of heart, soul, mind, and strength on what or whom we love the most.

The Power of Grace

What will spark such compelling love? That’s easy. The Bible says, “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). God’s greatest expression of love was giving his Son to pay the penalty for our sin. Through Jesus’s sacrifice we are forgiven and freed of sin’s ravages forever (John 15:13; 1 John 3:15). When we comprehend the greatness of this divine grace toward us, the chemistry of love stirs within us. And the more we perceive his grace, the stronger is our love.

Jesus taught that one who is forgiven much, loves much (Luke 7:47). Our love will be as strong as our realization of the guilt of sin and the hell of consequences from which we have been rescued. That is a primary reason Jesus and the apostles spent so much time warning people about hell. Their goal was not to scare us into heaven—that actually won’t work, for reasons we will explore later. Their intention was to give us a soul-deep appreciation of the eternal rescue Christ provides. By his grace we are freed from slavery to passions and pursuits that leave us guilty, exhausted, and empty. As a result of our liberation, we long to embrace and honor our deliverer. His grace enables us to do both.

Heart chemistry ignites devotion that is more compelling and enabling than any mental math endlessly computing personal...