Abusing Grace?

Saturday, April 30th, 2011 at 7:56 pm  
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Paul said in Romans 5:20, “Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.” But that radical concept opens a theological floodgate. The biblical writer Jude warned that it is possible to “change the grace of our God into a license for immorality” (Jude 4 NIV). Why be good if you know you will be forgiven? Not even an emphasis on repentance erases this danger completely.

In Romans 6, Paul spoke directly to the point. “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” He gave a short, explosive answer: “Certainly not!” (vv.1-2) and used an analogy that starkly contrasts death and life. “How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (v.2). No Christian resurrected to new life should be pining for sin.

Yet wickedness does not always seem to have the stench of death about it. Sin can be downright appealing.

Paul recognized this, so he advised: “Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord,” and “Do not let sin reign in your mortal body” (vv.11-12).

If we truly grasped the wonder of God’s love for us, we would spend our days trying to fathom and share, not exploit, His grace.


I am unworthy to take of His grace,
Wonderful grace so free;
Yet Jesus suffered and died in my place
Even for a soul like me. —Roth

God does not save us by grace so that we may live in disgrace. —Faber

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Led by Grace

Saturday, April 16th, 2011 at 4:34 pm  
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April 15, 2011Led by Grace

by Charles R. Swindoll

Read Genesis 50:1–21

“Am I in God’s place?” Joseph asked them. Had he been a lesser man, he could have played “king of the mountain” and filled the role of God. “Grace killers” do that sort of thing. They exploit the power they have over others. They play a cruel and unfair game when they have someone cornered, someone who is vulnerable and at their mercy.

Joseph refused to do that. He didn’t do it earlier at their reunion, and he doesn’t do it now. In his obedience to God, he was restrained by feelings of tender mercy as he communicated God’s grace. “Am I in God’s place?” he asked his brothers, saying, in effect, “Brothers, listen to me. Let’s get this cleared up for the last time. I know what you did, and I know what you meant by it. I know you meant to do me evil. Okay? I understand all that. That was your plan. But God had other plans, and He turned the results of your evil intentions into something good. At one time I did not understand all this, but that time is long past. Get this straight—God meant it all for good.” Joseph never stood taller than at this moment in his life. As Churchill would say, it was his “finest hour.”

Guard your heart when you have the power to place guilt on someone else. Refuse to rub their nose in the mess they’ve made. Remember the father of the Prodigal Son. Best of all, remember Joseph. “Don’t be afraid,” he comforted them kindly. “I will provide for you and your children.”

I love the words of George Robinson’s timeless hymn: “Led by grace that love to know.”¹ It is especially pertinent here, because it so beautifully describes Joseph, who, like Christ, had a love that would not cease.

Joseph was led by grace. He spoke by grace. He forgave by grace. He forgot by grace. He loved by grace. He remembered by grace. He provided by grace. Because of grace, when his brothers bowed before him in fear, he could say, “Get on your feet! God meant it all for good.”

 

1. From “I Am His and He Is Mine,” words by George Wade Robinson (1838–1877) and music by James Mountain (1844–1933).

 

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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Grace to the Guilty

Monday, April 4th, 2011 at 7:52 am  
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April 03, 2011Grace to the Guilty

by Charles R. Swindoll

Read Genesis 45:1-8

Humanly speaking, the average individual, when faced with people who have done them such grievous wrong, would likely frown and demand, "Drop to your knees and stay there! You think you know what humiliation is all about. You wait until I'm through with you. I've been waiting all these torturous years for this moment!"

But not Joseph. He, too, was a changed man. He was God's man, which means he was a great man. And so, with the arm of the Lord supporting him, he could look into his brothers' anxious eyes and say, in all sincerity, "Do not be grieved or angry with yourselves because you sold me into slavery. It was not you who sent me here, but God. He sent me before you to preserve life." Allow me a moment to interrupt the flow of events and ask you: Did he operate from the vertical perspective, or what?

"But God!" Those two words change everything.

Joseph could never have spoken such words of reassurance if he had not fully forgiven his brothers. You cannot genuinely embrace a person you've not fully forgiven. Joseph did not see his brothers as enemies, because his perspective had been changed. "You didn't send me here," he said. "God sent me here. And He sent me here for a reason—to preserve life."

I love that. In today's terms: "Men, it wasn't you who pulled this off; it was God. It was my sovereign Lord who saw far into the future and saw the needs of this world and chose me to be His personal messenger to solve the famine problem of the future. You thought you were doing evil to me. But I'll tell you, it was God who worked outside your evil intentions to preserve life."

And he says it again, "Now, therefore, it was not you who sent me here, but God." But God! Underline that. "God sent me." Joseph was a man who operated his life—continually—with divine perspective.

 

 

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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A Banquet of Grace

Thursday, March 31st, 2011 at 10:26 pm  
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March 30, 2011A Banquet of Grace

by Charles R. Swindoll

Read Genesis 43:31-34

Joseph’s brothers were astonished at the way they were being treated. They had expected any number of things to happen to them, including possible death, but certainly not this. Now here they were, seated according to age, dining with the prime minister. And what a feast! They were served fresh garden salads, thick T-bone steaks, fried okra, overstuffed baked potatoes, cornbread, black-eyed peas, and big glasses of iced tea (if Egypt was anything like Texas)! Besides that, the prime minister unloaded more food from his own table.

Benjamin, interestingly, was served portions five times the size of the other men. Those hungry Hebrews must have thought they’d died and gone to glory. Benjamin himself may have thought, I know I’m thin, but this is ridiculous. What’s going on here?

By now Joseph was totally oblivious. This is Benjamin! My brother! He was so ecstatic, so overjoyed that he just kept piling on the food. Sounds like something an older brother would do for one he hasn’t seen in ages, doesn’t it? Especially when the elder is full of forgiveness and grace!

Amazing, isn’t it, how Joseph’s acts of grace freed up everyone around the tables. At the outset, there were feelings of anxiety and dread as guilt held them in its grip. Their fear had known no bounds as they returned to Egypt, wondering what they would face.

Within a brief span of time, they found themselves treated kindly, sitting around a banquet table loaded with food, and, of all things, relaxing in the joyful presence of royalty. What relief! Better than that, what grace! They were the recipients of favor they hadn’t earned and kindness they didn’t deserve. And they were overloaded with an abundance of provisions they could never repay. Is anyone surprised they were astonished and no longer afraid? Their fear was now displaced by grace. Why? One reason—Joseph. This great man, though not as yet known to them to be their brother, determined to forgive their mistreatment and, instead, demonstrate great grace. Rather than remind them of their wrongs and force them to pay for their cruelty and injustices from years gone by, he showed them favor to the maximum extreme. This reunion was really a banquet of grace—on full display—thanks to Joseph, a man of integrity and forgiveness. 

 

 

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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Grace to Endure

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011 at 12:07 am  
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March 14, 2011Grace to Endure

by Charles R. Swindoll

Read Genesis 40:20-41:1

When Joseph saw the cupbearer taken from the prison, he must have thought, Now’s my chance! This guy has Pharaoh’s ear. He’ll get me out of here. We don’t know whether Joseph knew what happened to these men, but when their release came within the predicted time, he must have figured that, with God’s help, he had given the correct interpretation of the dreams. So he waited hopefully for his opportunity to be released and set free.

Instead of being remembered and rewarded, he was forgotten for two more years. It’s easy to overlook that little fact buried in the midst of all these dream sequences and their interpretations. But for two years after the cupbearer left, Joseph remained buried in that dungeon. Notice the emphasis: two full years. Two long, monotonous, miserable years!

What did Joseph think about during that time? The human tendency would be: Will I be on hold forever, Lord? In fact, it seems like You have forgotten me! No, there was none of that. This remarkable man, victimized again and again, continued to wait—to trust—to hope—to lean on God.

Listen to me, victims of mistreatment; more importantly, please listen to God’s truth. He has a hundred different messages to give you during a hundred different dungeon experiences. He knows just the right message at just the right time, and all it takes to receive it is a sensitive, obedient, trusting heart. A heart that says, “Lord God, help me now. Right at this moment. Deliver me from my own prison. Help me to see beyond the darkness, to see Your hand. As I am being crushed, remold me. Help me to see You in this abandonment, this rejection.” Pray that prayer. Turn your trial into trust as you look to God to tenderly use that affliction, that dungeon, that abandonment for His purpose.

God has not abandoned you. He may be silent, but He has not forgotten you. He never left. He understands the heartache brought on by the evil which He mysteriously permits so that He might bring you to a tender, sensitive walk with Him. God is good, Jesus Christ is real—your present circumstances notwithstanding. My prayer is that He will do for you what He did for Joseph.

May He give you the grace to endure.

 

 

Excerpted from Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives (Nashville: W Publishing Group, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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