Titus 2:12

instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,

God’s grace being offered to us is an amazing gift. By its very nature, the gift is undeserved.  That God would show us grace, even though we are such sinners is a wonderful and blessed thing. That grace gives us salvation, which not only removes our sin and restores our relationship with God, but it also frees us from the coming judgment that would be meted out on account of our sin. Grace is truly a remarkable gift.

However, it would be a mistake to look at grace as only a get out of jail free card. Grace is also an instructor. One of the main lessons is God’s great love for us. God’s righteousness is such that He could not just forgive us. When sin is committed, blood must be offered to make it right. Now God had one of two options to deal with all of man since all man sinned. He could either pass all of them under judgment or sin His Son to die on the cross. The grace of God shows us how much He loved us.

On top of that, it teaches us that we should live a holy life. See, God’s grace was necessary because we had lived unrighteous lives. God’s great grace, which caused His Son to die, was necessary because of the decisions we made before hand. If God’s grace was necessary to redeem us from our old life, what does that say about it? It tells us that such lives were not only unworthy for us, but that they were detrimental to our souls. In essence, grace teaches us that our old lives condemned us. Having been redeemed by the grace of God, would we return to what required it in the first place?

instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age,

John 9:22

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.

     In John 9, Jesus heals a blind man that had suffered in this condition since his birth. When Jesus comes into contact with this man, people were wondering who was in sin. Jesus replies that it was no one, but this man’s ailment was so that God may be glorified. Jesus then heals him of the blindness, which has been done by no one else either before or since. This miracle truly did show God’s great glory, and the man was excited to tell all about it.

     As you can imagine, the Pharisees and other leading Jews were not happy with this man. First he was doing something that broke their traditions. Not only that, but he was proclaiming a miracle was done by their nemesis. So after questioning him, they question his parents. His parents admitted that he had been blind since birth, but refused to acknowledge that Jesus was the one who did it for fear of the Pharisees. Can you imagine? Their child and born blind since birth, and rather than glorify the one who had healed him, they deny any association to save their own name. It is downright shameful.

     Many times we can be just as negligent as these parents. The blind man was telling all who would listen, and even those who would not, about the man had healed him. The parents were too afraid, and while they did not deny that something special had happened, they most definitely did not give credit where credit was due. We can do that in our own lives. Not only in our physical lives, but also our spiritual. We have been healed of our iniquities. Do we proclaim it to all? Or do we hide it for fear fo disapproval from others? With all the great things the Lord has done for us, He deserves our acknowledgement of Him in our lives.

His parents said this because they were afraid of the Jews; for the Jews had already agreed that if anyone confessed Him to be Christ, he was to be put out of the synagogue.

Ephesians 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

     One of the more popular hymns at my church is called “Count Your Blessings”. The song encourages us to count the blessings that God has given us, particularly in times of hardship. In times of deep distress and sadness, we can forget about how many good things we have in our lives. By focusing on the things that we do have, we can take joy in even the most difficult of situations. While this song tends to bring thoughts of physically blessings to mind, it is important that we also remember that God has given us even greater blessings: those of the spiritual realm.

     The concept of money with children seems to be slightly misunderstood. They seem to know and understand that it is special. People make a big deal about it. They know that it can buy them stuff. Yet it would have been easy for a person to trade their nickel for my dime because the nickel was bigger. Or sometimes children may trade two pennies for a nickel, because after all, two of something is better than one, right? On top of that, they miss that money is a part of every day life. It can be a powerful and even life altering influence. Most of people’s lives are spent trying to earn money. Having money can open doors for you. Yet children do not really see that. All they grasp is that it seems important to people, it can be shiny, and it migh get them the toy they want.

     Our understanding of spiritual blessing can be equally short sided. Rather than blessings, we often times think only of the spiritual blessing God has given: salvation. And yet regarding God’s spiritual blessings as only the avoidance of punishment is to miss how grand and amazing the spiritual blessing really are. Notice all the things that God offers us in the rest of the chapter. Notice our place of prominence in the kingdom. Note that in chapter three he prays that God can do more through us than we can possibly thing or imagine. Often times we forget these. There is a grave danger in this, for in forgetting, we may trade our 100 dollar bill for two pennies and think that we were the ones who came out ahead.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ,

Romans 5:8

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

     It always heart wrenching for us to read stories about a person who risks and even gives his life for another. You hear of men who drown to rescue kids who were about to befall the same fate. He did not even know them, yet he dies for them. We find it honorable (and rightly so) when a Secret Service agent falls in front of the bullet for the President. A soldier dives on a grenade to save the other men in his company. All of these examples are inspiring to us, and they show great sacrfice, devotion and love to the ones that they save.

     The fact that Christ was willing to die for us is worthy of the same respect. More so in fact. Let’s say hypothetically that Osama bin Laden were found today and his execution was tomorrow. How shocked would you be if a family member of one of the victims from the twin towers came forward to make an announcement that day that said they would like to take the place of bin Laden, and will suffer the execution in his stead? It would be amazing that they could find it in their heart not only to forgive him, but to take his place and let him off the hook.

     Such an action could only be born from great love. Probably a greater love than many of us have within ourselves. Yet that is the great love that God summoned when He sent Christ to this earth. You see Jesus did not die for people He owed or who had showed Him the same love. Instead He was dying for people who had sinned against Him and became His enemies. In fact He was dying for the same people who crucified Him as well as those who were mocking Him as He was crucified. And He died for us. He showed us amazing love. What do we show Him in return?

But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 6:1

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

Paul had a lot of experience defending the Gospel message from the attacks of Jews. From city to city, the Jews opposed his teaching, and even some within the church would try to argue for the idea of Jewish supremacy and salvation through the Law. So when writing to the Roman Christians, Paul is able to easily anticipate their arguments, and this is one of the ones  that he brings up and then argues with. Some Jews may ask if they should continue in sin that God may have an opportunity to impart even more grace.

In the Greek language Paul wrote in, there were many ways to say no. Some were more forceful than others. In response to the argument given above, Paul uses the strongest no possible. He wants to emphasize that there is no room for sin in a Christians life. He then talks about how when we were baptized, the person who was dead because of sins was buried and then brought to a new life. Why would he do the things which brought him death in the first place. He follows that with a discussion of how before salvation we were slaves to sin, but now we are slaves to righteousness. That means that we cannot serve sin, but instead must serve righteousness.

It is important for us to see Paul’s strong reaction here. He makes it very clear that there is no place in a Christian’s life for sin. Not only that, the question asked above was not just about us continuing in sin for any reason. It was specifically so that God’s grace may abound. Sometimes we try to fool ourselves by thinking that our sin might be justified if it was for a noble purpose. What nobler purpose could there be but glorifying God? And yet sinning even to bring glory to God is forcefully dismissed by Paul. The can be no room whatsoever in our lives for sin.

What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase?

Hebrews 1:3

And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

     Of all the books in the Bible, the Gospels are the most important. This is not to negate the incredible value of the other books, because they are indeed necessary. However, the Gospels give us insight to Jesus and His life. This gives us faith when we can look and know that He is indeed God. It also though helps us to know who God is. The Hebrews’ author states that Jesus is the representation of who God is.  This means that if we want to know about who God is, we study Jesus and get a clearer picture.

     That is incredibly valuable to us. Without direct communication from God, it can be easy for us view Him as some mystical, unknown being. We can see and respond to those who we come into contact with everyday. While we have an ability to do that to some degree with God through nature, it is not the same and even then you have to be looking for it. How does God respond to my actions? My prayers? My sins? My repentance? At times we can feel unsure about the answers to these questions.

     This is where the Gospel comes in. By spending time in God’s word about Jesus, we can gain a more accurate knowledge of who God is. We see that when Peter repents and comes back to Jesus, Jesus shows love and patience. We see that when the Pharisees have a hard heart toward the word of God, God becomes angry and upset at their obstinance. We see that God has compassion on those who had ailments and came to Him in faith. There are these and hundreds of other lessons we can learn about who God is by studying His Son. As we grow in this understanding we can be more sure of our own actions. All of this by coming to understand Jesus better. After all, like Father, like Son.

And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,

Job 38:3

“Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!

Job’s story is a sad one. He woke up one day, and during that day he lost his money, his livestock, and his sons. The grief that he was going through must have been incredible. It really comes as no surprise that he sits and says absolutely nothing for seven days. His system must have been in a state of shock. It must have been incredibly difficult for him to even believe that it was true. And you know he must have been asking himself why did it happen to him.

When Job’s friends start suggesting that it was sin that caused such a drastic turn of events, Job starts protesting his righteousness. Yet he knows why they make such accusations. He is confused himself. Why is God allowing this to happen to him? Has he not done all the things which God desires? Was he not a godly man? If so, it made no sense to Him that God would allow this to happen. And then it happens: God actually answers job. And when he speaks, you know Job must have been terrified. Coming into contact with the Creator of the universe and having Him challenge you to explain how things should be is almost behind comprehension. You could imagine Job’s knees knocking against each other.

There are times in our lives where we have no clue why God has done what He has. We question whether God letting us suffering was the right thing for Him to do. We might even go so far as to question His commandments, thinking they are unreasonable. The fact of the matter is, God’s reasoning and view is often times so far above our own that we really have no idea why He does anything He does. We then have two options: we can trust that He knows best, or we can trust that we know best. Who has the courage to instruct God? Especially if such an encounter (and there will be one some day) were to occur face to face.

“Now gird up your loins like a man, And I will ask you, and you instruct Me!

1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

In 1 Corinthians 13, Paul brings up the very natural process of growing. One aspect of that is that a child does certain things that are not acceptable as the reach maturity. They have much more leeway in their speech, their attitudes, their shedding of clothes and the like. We understand that as a child that they do not understand the norms of society and that they have to learn the proper behavior for a given situation. Even if they may know it, it still takes time for them to memorize, recall and apply what it is they need to do.

While this is not Paul’s main point in 1 Corinthians, I do think that it has a application in our Christian walk. His observation about the changes that come about with time for our physical lives also apply to our spiritual lives.  When we are first baptized, we are new babes in Christ, just recently born. It takes time for us to learn the new norms and laws that God has provided for us. Even after our conversion there are times where we learn that we are babes in other areas. When we run into a problem we do not know how to handle, it may make us realize that we are still inexperienced in some ways. We are still children needing to learn how to act.

While at first it may be discouraging to think of ourselves as “children” in Christ, there is also hope. God understands that we are children sometimes, that we may not yet have all the answers. And even if we know the answers, He also realizes that it may take us a while to actually put into every day practice. Sometimes we may expect too much of ourselves, that we need to have all wisdom and understand as well as perfect actions. While we should continually strive for these things, we must also understand that there is a learning curve involved. If we fail we must not give up, but increase our diligence in learning the lessons needed.

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; when I became a man, I did away with childish things.

Leviticus 4:33

‘He shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and slay it for a sin offering in the place where they slay the burnt offering.

The Old Testament was given to us as a teacher. God used it so that he could teach men about sin. God did not have to wait thousands of years to bring Christ and offer Him as a sacrifice for our sins. And yet He did because it was a part of His plan. He wanted it to wait until the fullness of times. Part of that was dealing the kingdoms and having a fertile soil. The other part was that He used the Law to help men understand what sin was and its consequences.

One of the biggest lessons can be found in the sin offerings in Leviticus 4. What we see is that when a man sinned (and note that the sins under discussion or the unintentional or ignorant ones) he had to offer a goat or a lamb as a sacrifice. From this we can get a glimpse at the cost of sin. First it hurt the owner because it was a financial loss to give up an unblemished lamb. The second part though is the severity of sin. Blood had to be shed. They could not just scare the goat or injure. They had to place their hand on the goat and kill it themselves. Their sin meant the death of the lamb. They sat there and executed what they deserved on that lamb.

That lesson is carried over to Jesus. He was referred to by John the Baptist as the Lamb of God. The lamb that was sacrificed in the Old Testament was teaching us that sin brought about death. And yet a lamb’s life for ours was not a one to one comparison. To be truly fulfilled, God’s plan needed us to be redeemed by Jesus, the unblemished lamb. Redemption that could only come through His death. Having never slain a lamb for our sins, it might be easy for us to forget the correlation between sin and death and that it was us who put our hand on Jesus for the sacrifice and caused Him to die. Yet we must not forget because that lesson is the core of the entire gospel message.

‘He shall lay his hand on the head of the sin offering and slay it for a sin offering in the place where they slay the burnt offering.

2 Peter 3:18

but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen

At church one night, my six year old cousin came up to me exclaimed about his new tooth. He was very excited to show it off. For him it was a sign of growth and maturing, and of course it did not hurt that he knew the tooth fairy would be visiting him soon. However, the growing of a tooth, while exciting, can also be a bit difficult for a young child. Sometimes it is uncomfortable or even hurts. The entire process seems odd, the idea of being able to wiggle a tooth. Yet it is a part of the natural process of growing up. It is necessary for the tooth to fall out so that the new and improved one may grow in.

This process is not that far removed from our own spiritual growth. Peter tells us that we need to grow in our grace and knowledge of Jesus Christ. To do this may cause discomfort of even pain in our lives. It seems odd that God would ask us to do the things that he does. We do not understand our need for change. We are comfortable the way it is, and we do not like the discomfort of becoming the new man that God desires us to be. Yet it is important that we do so because it is necessary for us to remove old parts of our life to make room for the new and improved man that God expects us to be.

However, we need not view this as a negative process. Change, while at times uncomfortable, can be an important marker for us. My cousin was exhilarated about his new tooth because it  should  his maturing and it came with rewards. While our removing of old ways from our life may be painful or difficult, we can also find that there are ways to take joy in. We can rejoice that the awkwardness is a precursor to greater things. We can look forward to the spiritual rewards that growing up in Christ brings. And we can use it as a guidepost. We can be excited to see that we are indeed growing up in the Lord. After all, that is what we should be desiring, so it should bring us great joy to see that we are meeting our desire.

but grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. To Him be the glory, both now and to the day of eternity. Amen