Sola Gratia
Use this guide to help your group discussion as you meet this week.
Transcript
O worship the King, all glorious above, and gratefully sing His wonderful love. Our children defender the Ancient of Days, a billion in slender and burdened with praise. Good morning. My name is Spencer. I'm one of the pastors here. I have a super fun announcement to make.
It seems that our restrooms in the lobby have been going a little crazy this morning. So if you need to use the restroom, you can go check it out. Maybe this situation has resolved itself in the last ten minutes. If it has not, there will be somebody to direct you to a different part of the building. You're welcome. Okay.
So we are in our five solas series, taking a break from walking through books of the Bible to look at the five anthems of the Protestant Reformation. The five main teachings, the five main doctrines that come out of the Protestant Reformation that formed the tradition that we are in now, that shape what we believe and how we practice what we believe. Last week we were in Sola Scriptura, which is Latin for Scripture Alone. And this week we're looking at Sola Gratia, which is Latin for Grace Alone. So when I was in, I became a Christian when I was 17.
That's when I came to faith. And when I came to faith, there were a few things that I understood. I understood that Jesus died for my sins. I understood that He was raised in order that I might have a new life in Christ, that I needed to be born again, that the old was gone, the new has come, is what 2 Corinthians 5 teaches. I understood some of the basics of the gospel, that faith was not the kind of the southern Christian in name only. I'm a Christian, but I don't actually practice this, that it was a full surrender to Christ.
I understood that, but I was real raw and green on everything else. I didn't really know the Bible hardly at all. And then I got to college my freshman year, and I was in a Bible study. And we were reading Ephesians 2 together. And I just went, what? Like this is in the Bible?
Like we were reading Ephesians 2, and it says that you are dead in sin outside of Christ. And then we keep reading, and then we get to verses 8 and 9. And it says, for it's by grace that you, this is what we read earlier together in our liturgy. For it's by grace that you've been saved through faith. That it's not of your own doing. It's not of works.
So that... Oh my God. Look at that. No? No? Let's go one more time.
My back. Head, hand, hand, hand. All right, you guys. I'm going to grip this like it's the rat battle. Here we go. Come on.
Oh, we're back. Here we go, you guys. Yes, technical difficulties all around this morning, but we're good. So, when I read that it was by grace alone, it blew my mind. I was like, you mean to tell me that I didn't bring anything to the table? That I brought my sin and my rebellion, but I have to do anything to earn the favor of God?
It absolutely, it wrecked me. I was like, this is amazing. And guess what? I was not the first person this happened to. I wasn't. 500 years before, the reformers who had not had the scriptures.
This is what we talked about last week. They did not have the scriptures that the Catholic Church had. The translation of the Bible that was in Latin. The common people weren't able to read it. But once the common people got the Bible in their language, they were able to read passages like Ephesians 2.
They went, what? This is in here. This changes the game. And that's what grace does. So, we're going to look at grace alone today and how beautiful and good this is for us. We're going to look at this in three different ways.
The first is the recovery of true grace. The second is the rediscovery of planned grace. And the third is the implications of endless grace. So, let me pray for us and then we will begin. Father, I thank you that we have your word, that it is sharper than a two-edged sword, that it pierces the division of soul and spirit of bone and marrow, that it sinks into our hearts to show us the goodness of the gospel and where we need to grow. And grace is beautiful and it is good.
But we need to have open hearts to hear what you have to say. So, God, I pray that you'd open our hearts this morning, that we would be present, and we would respond. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, first, we're going to look at the recovery of true grace. So, grace can be used, that word, broadly, to mean a few different things in the New Testament. It comes from the Greek word, charis.
So, if you're wondering why we named our third child charis, there you go. It means grace in Greek. It can mean a few different things. It's like people will often say, can somebody, before we eat, say grace? And what do they mean? I mean, can you say the blessing?
Because in the New Testament, you see over and over again, grace is used as a blessing. Grace to you. You hear about spiritual gifts and charismatic, right? Well, the base word for charismatic is charis. It comes from grace. Like, grace has a few different uses throughout the New Testament.
But when we are talking about sola gratia, sola grace, grace alone, what we're talking about is salvific grace, salvation grace. We're talking about how we are saved. And sola gratia and sola fide, grace alone and faith alone, are separated. They came to the realization of Martin Luther at the same time, the Reformers at the same time. But they're separated for a reason.
Because faith alone shows the mechanism, shows how we are saved. But grace explores why. Why we were saved. Now, Catholics and Protestants will both say that you're saved by grace. But how we define grace there is different.
And some of you might be saying, oh my goodness, we're going to argue about semantics and how a word is defined and how it's used. Yes. Absolutely so. Like, our faith is built on the Word of God. It's built on semantics. Like, if someone in the press pool for the President asked him this week and said, hey, are we going to be in a nuclear war with Russia?
And he said, possibly. Yeah. How he defines possibly is really important. The implications of that are huge. If he means, well, actually, yeah, possibly. And at this point, it's a real possibility.
We are buying potassium iodine pills. Like, we're building bunkers. We are getting ready for nuclear fallout. The implications of that are huge. But if you meant, well, actually, possibly.
I mean, there's an endless amount of possibilities. Right? So, I'm sure it's certainly possible. That's a way different definition of the word possible. The implications of that are way different. That's how it works with grace.
It's important how we define our terms. For Catholics, grace is a gift in cooperation. Okay? Grace is a gift in cooperation. They have a few different descriptors of grace, but one of them is justifying grace. So, for the Catholic Church, justifying grace, it starts with baptism.
Because in the Catholic Church, they believe that you are saved by baptism from a Catholic priest. And we as Protestants say, no. No, we don't believe that at all. But for the Catholic Church, yes, you are saved by grace at baptism. And that work continues in penance and in confession and in other sacraments. And grace, therefore, is a cooperative work.
And that is the teaching of the Catholic Church. Now, as we saw last week, as we saw last week in Sola Scriptura, that for the Catholic Church, Catholic doctrine is greater than the Scriptures. Right? So the Scriptures are supporting evidence for what the Church teaches. And we as Protestants say, no. The Bible says something different.
It says in 2.8 and 9 of Ephesians, what I mentioned earlier, For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing. It is the gift of God. Not a result of work, so that no one may boast. First, we look at this very differently. We say, did you not see?
It says, this is not of your own doing in the slightest, that grace is a one-way work of God. And the context of Ephesians 2 leading up to that shows that. It says that we were dead in trespasses and sins. Verse 1, you are dead in trespasses and sins. You are spiritually dead. Unable to make your way to God.
In verse 4, he says, but God being rich in mercy because of the great love with which He loved us. That's the great love that He loved us. Not the love that we bring to the table. Verse 5 and 6, he says, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. That God is the one that makes us alive. He says, by grace you have been saved and raised up with Him and seated with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.
That God is the one that raises us up in faith. One of the more popular definitions I've heard over the years that I appreciate for grace is an acronym for grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. That we get the riches of God, the infinite beautiful riches of God at the expense of Christ on the cross crucified. That is a gift to us. We cannot earn that in the slightest.
It would be like if I gave you a brand new custom Rolls Royce. Okay? Like the most expensive Rolls Royce in the world is a custom made Rolls Royce. It's about 10 to 12 million dollars. So let's say I give you that Rolls Royce.
You know what? I'm going to up the ante. It's got a full tank of gas. Which pretty much just doubled the value at this point. Right? So I give you this Rolls Royce and you go, man, that is so good.
And then you pull out your wallet and you got five fresh hundred dollar bills. And you say, here you go. One, two, three, four, five. Thank you. Thank you so much for this gift. I would be like, listen, I don't think you understand the exchange that just happened.
I just gave you a 12 million dollar car. I'm not looking for your money. Especially not that. That's us. When we misunderstand that the gift of Christ and what He has done for us, that His crucified flesh, His perfect record that was nailed to the cross on our behalf. That's a gift that we cannot earn in the slightest.
And it doesn't just affect how we define the mechanism, which is faith. Because Protestants, as we'll get into next week, we believe it's faith alone. In the Catholic Church, it's faith and works. It's not just that. It affects how we view ourselves. It affects how we view God in salvation.
Because in grace alone faith, there is no room for boasting. Like we don't have a righteous leg to stand on above anyone else. In grace alone faith, there's no separation between the priesthood and the laity. Meaning the pastors and priests and the lay people. In the Catholic Church, there is. There's a holy separation there.
All the way down to how they are dressed. There's a distinction there between the priesthood and the laity. But we as Protestants, because of grace alone, we look at that and say, no, we believe in the priesthood of all believers. We believe that all of us have received the same amount of grace. There is not this distinct holy separation between us as four elders of this church and you. Now, the Bible does call for respecting the pastors and elders of the church.
So we probably go too far in the other direction because we disrespect each other quite a bit. If you've sat in our sermons long enough, you know that I will make jokes about Chet who preaches the other half of the time. And then Chet will make funnier jokes about me when he comes up and preaches. Right? So we do this.
Probably go a little bit hard in the other directions because it does talk about respecting elders. But the point we're trying to make is that there's nothing great and glorious and super awesome about us. It is grace alone that we are who we are. In a grace alone faith, as we'll get in next week, there's no need for indulgences, which was a practice at the time of Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation of purchasing, buying indulgences to get people out of purgatory, which we looked at last week. Purgatory isn't scriptural anyways. But the idea that you could give money to get someone into heaven is evil.
We don't believe this in the slightest. The scriptures do not teach it. It is by grace and grace alone. There are no rituals, baptism, praying to saints, Hail Marys, anything that, any of those extras, also that we would add to it, none of it. It is by grace and grace alone. We, as Protestants, look at this and say, grace isn't really an act to begin with.
That grace is God's nature towards His people. It's His nature towards God's people. That grace is, like, grace is like a giant lake. Okay? It's like a big lake of God's grace. And what flows out of that is the river of faith.
Alright? So, faith flows from this lake of grace. And as our faith flows from this, there are no outside external tributaries. Right? There are no creeks or small rivers that flow into it outside of the lake of grace. Your good works, your being at community group on a regular basis, baptism, none of that is an outside work.
It all flows completely and solely from the lake of grace. From grace alone from our God. Even as we completed that in the liturgy earlier in Ephesians 2.10 when it says, for we are His workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. Those display the faith that God has gifted us but all of that, everything flows from the lake of grace. It all comes from the grace of God. And this had been missing for a very long time in the church.
And then when the reformers like Luther and Zwingli and Calvin, when these reformers and the people of that time read the Bible and saw this, they went, man, we've got to get back to this. This is really, really good news. And that began to be recovered. And as they were recovering this aspect of grace, one of the things that they rediscovered was planned grace. We're going to look at the rediscovery of planned grace. So, as they're rediscovering the Scriptures, they rediscovered this aspect of planned grace that had been lost for centuries.
This aspect of grace reawakened the church, the Western church, to the sovereignty of God in salvation. As they're reading the Scriptures, they began to see this, that a teaching that had been largely lost since about 400 A.D. Augustine was one of the last major church figures to write about this. They saw the Scriptures and said this idea of planned grace needs to be further explored. And in one of Luther's most famous works, he wrote something called The Bondage of the Will. And The Bondage of the Will, which is probably Luther's best work, in The Bondage of the Will was a response to a brilliant Catholic scholar named Erasmus.
Erasmus was brilliant. I mean, everyone in Europe knew Erasmus was one of the top scholars at the time. Now, Erasmus stayed Catholic because he sat on the fence during the Reformation. He agreed with the Reformers and their critiques of the corruption of the Catholic Church. Some of that led to the much-needed Counter-Reformation that cleaned up a lot of the really grotesque things that were happening in the Catholic Church and led it on a better path. But Erasmus was on the fence and he agreed with some of those critiques, but he disagreed with some of the theology of the Reformers.
And as the Reformers were being kicked out and excommunicated from the Catholic Church, he stayed put. He did not go with them. So Luther wrote a very respectful disagreement in the bondage of the will with Erasmus' view of salvation, which for Luther was a lot because if you read his writings, he wasn't very respectful of any of his opponents. But he was very respectful of Erasmus and he wrote this disagreement because Erasmus believed that sinners of their own free will and volition could cooperate with God in salvation. This is a doctrine of, it's called synergism, the idea that you can, your will and God's will combine for faith.
Whereas the Protestant tradition taught monergism, which is one, the will of God. And honestly, Erasmus' position in his theology went on to influence a lot of Protestant denominations, the Methodist Church, a lot of Pentecostal churches, even a lot of Baptist churches. But Luther disagreed with this and he wrote The Bondage of the Will. And in one of the sections of that text, he said this, First, God has promised certainly His grace to the humble. That is, to the self-deploring and despairing. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled until he comes to know that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsel, endeavors, will, and works.
And absolutely depending on the will, counsel, pleasure, and work of another that is God only. That he argues that it's utterly beyond our own will, our own good endeavors, our own counsel, that our hope firmly rests on the will, counsel, and pleasure of God alone. Some of you may be familiar with this teaching. This is the teaching of election or the teaching of predestination, the idea that God chooses those whom he will save. And we see this throughout the New Testament over and over again. I'll just give you a few passages.
In Ephesians 1, 4-6, it says, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. That God chose us before the foundation of the world, before time. He says, in love, he predestined us for adoption. That is being, as Ephesians 2 says, we're once children of disobedience. He brings us and adopts us into the family of God. He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he blessed us in the beloved.
You see that in Ephesians 1. You see it in Revelation. The book of Revelation, there are two references to this book of life. There are those that before time, their names are written in the book of life and in those who are not. And in 13, it's talking about those who are going to worship and follow the beast. That is the Antichrist type figure.
He says, all who dwell on the earth will worship it. That's the beast. Everyone whose name has not been written before the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who was slain. You get to 2 Timothy when Paul is writing to Timothy to give him encouragement. He says in verse 9, he says, who saved us and called us to a holy calling. Not because of our works, but because of his purpose and grace which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.
You see this teaching over and over and over and over again in the New Testament. you see the sovereignty of God in salvation. And as the Protestant Reformation was getting going and they were reading the scriptures for the first time, this was being rediscovered. Now, many Christians have wrestled with this, have wrestled with these passages. Myself included. I became a Christian in a Methodist church, which is a Wesleyan, Armenian tradition. And for years, I wrestled with this.
I wrestled with the idea of fairness in this. Well, how is it fair that God would choose some and not others? That's really what it boils down to. Like, I wrestled with this. How is that fair? I got people that I love, that I know, that don't know Christ.
How is that fair? I wrestled with this. And I had some reform-leaning brothers who would sit down with me and some of them not as, some of them very bluntly would say, listen, you know what's fair? Everyone goes to hell. They would say that we all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. We've rebelled against His good nature and His good works and His good design.
Fair is we all receive punishment. And I was like, I don't like how bluntly you're telling me this, but I don't know how to argue with you on that either. And I wrestled with this. And I would do this, it's a bit of a textual dance. I would say, well, no, what's actually happening is that God, outside of time, looks inside of time and He looks at us and He foreknows who's going to choose Him and He knows that who's going to choose Him and place faith in Him and that's who He elects and then outside. And in the past, and I would do this dance, which you can do philosophically, but the text just doesn't say that.
Over and over again, it makes it clear that it's God's sovereign choice. And I wrestled with this. I wrestled with the book of Romans over and over and over again. But I kept reading the Bible. And if you're struggling with any of these aspects of faith, which are very difficult, mysterious, that's my encouragement is to read the Bible and come back to the Bible. Don't deal in outside philosophy.
Come back to the Scriptures. And after years of wrestling with this, there was one summer I had a job at a resort cleaning public bathrooms. Had a lot of time to myself. Cleaning bathroom after bathroom after bathroom. I'm an extrovert, so I love talking to people, but that's a job where you don't talk to people because it's real awkward and weird. So I had a lot of time to think and I was wrestling with this idea, wrestling with this theology, and then it finally dawned on me, I don't have to know why God does what He does.
I don't have to know why God chooses whom He chooses. I don't have to know why God doesn't justifiably give the wrath of God towards all of us for our rebellion. I don't have to know why any of this is the way that it is because I am not God and His ways are higher than my ways. I will never understand the mind of God. These things are too wonderful for me. You know what's funny?
Paul, I think, felt the same way. Romans 1-11, those 11 chapters are some of the most beautiful, some of the most beautiful literature that's ever been written. It's incredible. And he's wrestling with this. Alright? He's saying very tough.
You get to Romans 9, you're just like, oh man, this is really difficult. He's under the inspiration that God is inspiring him. He's writing this beautiful, wonderful text. And then he gets to chapter 11, the end of his long argument because the first 11 chapters are theology and the last 5 are the application of that theology. And he's wrestling with this. And he finally just throws up his hands because it's just too wonderful for him.
And he just starts to praise God in verses 33-36. He says, oh, the depths of the riches of the wisdom and the knowledge of God. It's just too deep for me. He says, how unsearchable are His judgments. How inscrutable are His ways. Who has known the mind of the Lord?
Who has been His counselor? Who has given a gift to Him that He might be repaid for from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever and ever. He's like, I don't get it. I don't understand it. He's too glorious.
And I will rest in the mystery of God. And Luther came to the same conclusion in the bondage of the will. He says, the dreadful hidden will of God who according to His own counsel ordains such a person as He wills to receive and partake of the mercy preached and offered. This will, hear this, this will is not to be inquired into but to be reverently adored as by far the most awesome secret of divine majesty. The doctrine of God's plan's grace is not meant to vex and bother us into this existential crisis where we're like, I don't know. It's not what it's meant to do at all.
Our ways are not as ways. Our thoughts are not as thoughts. It is meant to drive you to a humble, deep worship where you just say, thank you Jesus that you saved me. I don't know why you saved me. I don't deserve it. I haven't earned it.
I've sped upon your goodwill. I've rebelled against you but praise you Jesus that you redeemed me. That is what it's meant to lead us to. That it's not of our own will and it's not of our own good works but praise God and if you can get to that place, brothers and sisters, you will find peace. You will find peace knowing that He's higher than us but He's good to us and as a finite human being that's good enough for me. So, when you get to that place, you can just worship.
That's why an amazing grace, you don't see, He didn't go in there and just write a whole bunch of things about all the theology. He just praises God. He says, amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, a broken wretch dead in sin like me. I once was lost but now I'm found, was blind but now I see. you can just praise God and rest in the planned grace that He's been given to us and when you get to that place, when you start to understand the depths and the mystery and the beauty of grace, then you can really appreciate and understand the implications of His endless grace. That's the third thing I want us to see today.
The implications of His endless grace. There are lots of them. I only have time for three. First, grace removes the pressure. Grace removes the pressure. In doing a lot of preparation for this series, I spent a lot of time reading different Catholic doctrine and scouring different Catholic teachings and I stumbled upon this Catholic blog from a monastery in Kansas and this monk was writing about one of the most famous stories of Saint Benedict.
So, Benedict of Nercia was basically like the Billy Graham of monks. Okay? Really big deal. And he was writing about this famous story about Benedict who one day was walking down a path and he became tempted to lust over the thought of a woman. Now, this is how he responded. I'm going to read word for word how this monk retells this story because I think how he retells it actually is very helpful to understand the difference here.
He says, just then he noticed a thick patch of nettles and briars next to him. Throwing his garment aside, he flung himself naked into the sharp thorns and stinging nettles. You catch that? He stripped off his clothes naked and he jumped into a briar patch. Then he rolled and tossed until his whole body was in pain and covered with blood.
Yet once he conquered pleasure through suffering, his torn and bleeding skin served to drain off the poison of temptation from his body. I want to read that again and absorb what he said. His torn and bleeding skin served to drain off the poison of temptation from his body. Before long the pain was burning. His whole body had put out the fires of evil in his heart. It was by exchanging these two fires that he gained victory over sin.
Now, part of me wants to admire that approach to sin because Jesus teaches to give a really serious response to sin. In the Sermon on the Mount he says, cut off your hand if you're tempted by lust. That is strong, intense, metaphorical language. You don't read the book of Acts and read about a bunch of one-handed apostles, a bunch of one-handed Christians. You're not going to read the book of Acts and read about how Paul and Barnabas were walking down a path that got tempted and they threw themselves into a barpratch and cut themselves up into the blood, the poison drained from their body. You're not going to read that because they believed in grace alone.
You cannot earn the favor of God and achieve perfection. Jesus did that on our behalf. So, you may look at that story. And look at that story. I think that's kind of silly. But I would argue that we do this in a different way.
That when we approach the sinful fallen parts of our nature, we do this. How many of us will work ourselves into deep anxiety or depression because we're trying to do it all. We're trying to achieve perfection. We're trying to prove ourselves over and over again to God, to others, for the approval of God, for the approval of others. We try to control everything we can because we've got to conquer sin. We've got to do it right.
And we work ourselves into this deep sadness and anxiety because we don't understand the grace of God. How many of us hurt ourselves because we don't like the sin and fallenness in our lives? how many of you have been tempted with suicidal thoughts because you look at your life and you just, you hate it. You hate the sin in your life and you wish it was over. How many of you engage in a negative cycle of cruel talk and you talk down to yourself all the time? You talk to yourself in ways that you would never let anybody else talk to you. We do this.
When we face our sin and our brokenness, we beat ourselves up. We're our own worst enemies. And it's no more effective or pious or holy than what Benedict did. And it never, hear this, it never fuels effective repentance. Christian, the pressure is off. If you're in Christ, there is no pressure that you're not having to fulfill the law and all the commandments of God because that's been fulfilled in Christ.
And that was nailed to the cross on our behalf. The pressure is off. Any attempt to gain righteousness on your own is pulling out $500 bills for a Rolls Royce that's trying to purchase a gift that has been given to us. You need to see the lake of His grace that is upstream and say, praise Jesus that I don't have to earn this. Though I deserve punishment, you paid for me. You need to rest in His grace.
The pressure is off. God, hear this, God the Father, He saw you and He said, you're mine. Before you were ever thought of, He said, you are mine. You are my child. That Christ, before you ever thought of, His death, His brutal death on the cross was for you. His blood shed was for you. that you are gifted the Holy Spirit who sealed your faith and who will carry you all the way to the finish line until He calls us home.
The pressure is off. We need to see the beauty of His grace from the moment of belief until we go home. Listen, the enemy, he can point at the worst parts of your sin and say, how gross is this? How bad are you? How disgusting is this? And you know what you can say?
Yeah, you don't know the half of it. But you also don't know my Savior. You'll never know Him. And He died for all of that and did something. And that's how good my God is. We rest in the grace of God and it takes the pressure off and the next thing it does is it removes our boasting.
Grace removes boasting. I personally have never understood the self-righteous Christian. It's been very hard for me to understand the thought process of anyone that positions themselves above anyone else. I just don't get it. I think maybe God has been gracious to me because He shows me my sin on a regular basis. And I see it and I'm like, man, that crap is gross.
No. Thank you, Jesus, that you died for this. I don't have a category for anyone that can position themselves over somebody else. I just don't. Because I'm like, have you not read when it says, not a result of works that none may boast? Do you not see that?
I don't understand that. But I do understand that you need to get past your own pride and inflated self-worth. Those are heinous in the eyes of God. And that maybe, may be the only reason that you've not gone down the rabbit hole of depravity. Right? For the self-proclaiming Christian that says horrible things about sexuality or drugs or work ethic or fill in the blank, maybe the reason that you've not gone down the rabbit hole of depravity is because God has not let you.
The reason that you are not a drug addict, the reason you did not fall headlong into the opioid epidemic is because God did not let you. The reason that you are not a jihadist Muslim is because you were born in this country. That was God's choosing. You were not born in the darkest parts of Afghanistan. The reason you are who you are is because the sovereign God made it so. So you have to get off your high horse.
You have to realize that you are who you are because God has been gracious to you. And approach him in humble repentance and worship. To look at our souls in the mirror and realize that every decent quality that is of God comes from him. Listen, this is an aside for a few of us. This also applies to those who boast about their theology. This also applies to those, and listen, I am as reformed as the next guy.
You can go to my office, you can go to my bookshelf, and I got Piper, and Keller, and Dever, and Grudem. I got them all. I got the Institutes that's right behind me. Listen, the person who is boastful about their theology has not been humbled by the doctrines of grace. It should not lead you to a position of arrogance. It should lead you to a deep position of humility.
Grace removes boasting, and lastly, grace gives glory. Grace gives glory. Paul, Luther, Calvin, each of them understood good. That grace alone means that it is from Him, and through Him, and to Him. It is to His glory. Calvin once said, he said, the glory of God shines indeed in all creatures on high and below, but never more brightly than the cross.
And that is sure, and that is true. Which means, listen, which means that the darkest parts of your flesh, the parts you are most ashamed of, the parts that plague you the most, that is where His grace shines the brightest. And that is where God gets unbelievable, uncomparable glory. That every time God bends a center to faith and belief, God gets glory. That every time you have victory over sin, God gets glory. glory that God willing as you are on your deathbed and there are saints around you singing hymns and you are murmuring them in your final breaths of life praising God, God gets the glory because all of that is by grace alone.
And that is what we have to remember. Matt and Kelly are going to come up and they're going to finish us out.