Grace at Christmas
Romans 3:23-24
“...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
and are justified freely by his grace
through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Christmas Gifts
One of the very best things and one of the very worst things about Christmas, I reckon, is the gift-giving.
At its worst, it’s a hypocritical, guilt-driven necessity, a calculated exchange in which you work your way through a long list of people that you don’t really like, trying to estimate how much they spent on you last year and match that in what you’re going to spend on them this year, mainly because you feel a sense of obligation to keep up the tradition. That’s gift giving at its worst.
At its best, it’s a genuine expression of kind-hearted, joyful, free generosity, in which those who give enjoy the whole experience even more than those who receive.
And in reality, most of the time, it’s somewhere between those two extremes, combining elements of both. That’s the nature of gift giving in a world of less than perfect people and less than perfect relationships. Grace is always a fragile, endangered thing, constantly at risk of being corrupted into exchange or merit or obligation.
But if grace is an endangered species, it’s an endangered species that’s worth preserving, because in the end it’s grace that we depend upon for our salvation; it’s grace that’s at the heart of the Bible’s picture of who God is; and it’s grace that’s at the very centre of what the real significance of Christmas is.
This month, in the lead-up to Christmas here on Sunday mornings, we’ve been focusing in on a few of the verses from Romans that we looked at earlier in the year, and reminding each other of them once again, as we think about Christmas and prepare for it together. And this morning, the verse that I want us to look at is from Romans chapter 3, and it’s a verse about grace, and you’ll see it printed out on the outline that you received when you arrived. Romans 3 verse 23 and 24: “...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
God’s Grace
I want to focus our thoughts this morning on these two verses, and remind us of three things that they have to say about the grace of God. You’ll remember if you’ve been here over the last few weeks that Paul is writing to the Christians in Rome about the gospel that he wants to come and visit and remind them of, on his way to take that gospel with him as a missionary to Spain. He writes them a letter about his coming visit, and the gospel that he will bring with him when he comes. And so he writes in the opening chapters about the content of the gospel, and about the backdrop to the gospel - about the reality of human sin and evil, and the universality of it, and the wrath and judgement of God that we all alike deserve. That’s the story so far. And then in chapter 3 verse 21 Paul comes to one of the great turning points in the letter, and he writes: “But now a righteousness from God, apart from law, has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify. 22 This righteousness from God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference...”
And so we come to verses 23 and 24, and the three things that they remind us of about the grace of God.
Costly
“through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”
Firstly, looking at the final line of the verse as it’s printed there on the outline, the second half of verse 24, Paul reminds us that grace is not cheap but costly. The gift of salvation that comes to us comes, Paul writes, “through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus”.
It’s a relative thing, cost, isn’t it. When someone is very poor, the tiniest gift is costly. If someone is really wealthy, on the other hand, and they give you the same present, you think that they’re cheap. So in what sense can we speak of God’s grace being costly? If God owns the whole universe, if he is infinitely rich in all ways, then what can God give that would possibly make a dent in his bank account?
But the Bible says that the heart of what God gives to us is something that is infinitely precious, and infinitely costly. He could have give us health and wealth and cars and real estate and jewellery, and it would have cost him nothing at all. What he gives us is something worth much more than that. He gives us the painful, sacrificial, precious forgiveness that comes to us through the death of his own son. SO the apostle Peter says elsewhere in the New Testament: “you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your forefathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ.” And Paul says here: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”
Grace is costly.
Undeserved
“...for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”
Secondly - and here I’m looking at verse 23, at the first line of the little extract at the top of the handout - grace is undeserved. That’s part of the definition of grace. If we think the path into relationship with God is through the good things that we do, through earning our way into God’s kindness, then we either end up in some sort of blind, arrogant self-righteousness, or we end up in guilty despair. Either way, we miss the grace of God. Because by its very definition, the grace of God is offered to sinners and the undeserving. And so Paul starts these verses of by reminding us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”. That’s you and me and everyone.
Free
“and are justified freely by his grace”
God’s grace is costly; it’s undeserved; and, thirdly, it’s free. Paul writes in the middle line of the quote, in the first half of verse 24: “and are justified freely by his grace”. God’s grace is free because it’s a gift. It’s not given to everyone - it’s given to those who repent and trust in Jesus. But it’s not given on the basis of merit or obligation. There is no-one who can stand before God on the last day and say to him: “I deserve to be let into heaven. I earned my place in here.” All of us depend on God’s grace, and God’s grace comes to us not grudgingly or reluctantly, out of necessity, but freely, out of love.
Three reminders about God’s grace: that it’s costly, that it’s undeserved, and that it’s free.
Responding to Grace
And flowing out from that, three reminders about how you and I can respond to that sort of grace.
Gratitude
Firstly, and perhaps I can start with the obvious, we can respond with gratitude. We saw last week, one of the things that is at the heart of what’s wrong with how we relate to God as human beings is that we respond with ingratitude. Everything we have comes from God, even our very existence, and yet, Paul says in Romans 1 verse we neither glorify him as God nor give thanks to him. That’s bad enough in the light of creation, in the light of the things that God has given us as our maker.
But in the light of redemption - in the light of what God has done for us in Jesus - then to respond to that without gratitude is a thousand times more offensive. If God has come in Jesus to rescue and deliver us, and he has done it at such a cost, then how much more do we have that ought to motivate us to thankfulness. I’m not sure if you know the words of the General Thanksgiving from the Anglican prayerbook, but I think it’s a wonderful prayer to pray - a great prayer to pray at anytime and a particularly appropriate thing to pray at Christmas. It goes like this:
Almighty God and merciful Father,
we give you hearty thanks
for all your goodness and loving-kindness to us and to all people.
We bless you for our creation and preservation, and all the blessings of this life;
but above all, for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ,
for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.
And, we pray, give us such a sense of all your mercies,
that our hearts may be truly thankful and that we may praise you not only with our lips, but in our lives,
serving you in holiness and righteousness all our days, through Jesus Christ, our Lord,
to whom with you and the Holy Spirit, be honour and glory, now and for ever. Amen
Grace calls for gratitude, not only on our lips but in our lives.
Confidence
Secondly, I want to suggest that the grace of God in Jesus is a very powerful basis for confidence. If God has given to us at such cost and with such kindness - if he has done so in a way that was so completely independent of any deserving on our part; if our relationship with God is built not on our deserving but on his kindness, then we can have real reassurance and confidence in our relationship with God, an in the stresses and uncertainties of life.
So Paul writes a little later in Romans, in chapter 8: “What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died — more than that, who was raised to life — is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written: “For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” 37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Generosity
Grace calls for gratitude; grace lays a foundation for real assurance and confidence; and, thirdly, grace spills over into generosity. Jesus said to his disciples: “Freely you have received, freely give.” He taught us to pray: “forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” When God has brought you into the economy of grace, you can’t help but begin to learn how to be generous.
We still live in the middle of a world that operates on a different principle than grace, of course. We still live in a world that operates on reciprocity and exchange and deserving, and there’s a sense in which we just have to live with that I think. We don’t want to be less kind to people than they deserve. But grace operates over the top of all that system of exchangeand deserving and reciprocity; grace operates on a different basis - it gives to those who can’t give back, or to those who don’t don’t deserve, or to those who won’t reciprocate, and it operates not out of constraint but freely and gladly. Grace imitates the way that God has treated us.
Let’s pray that this Christmas God gives us opportunities to be genuinely grace-driven in the things that we do and the things that we give.