Christ Church

Grace and Sweat

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

I am fond of saying that grace has a backbone, but I think it is time to explain what I mean by that. The context of these remarks is the general and current ongoing discussion about the worrisome trajectories of all those incipient legalists and antinomians out there. The incipient legalists are the ones the incipient antinomians are worried about, and vice versa.

The Text

“Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12-13).

Summary of the Text

We see that for the apostle Paul, obedience is not a bad word. It does not have negative connotations for him. The Philippians were beloved by him, and he commends them for their obedience (v. 12). This was not just when Paul was present, but also when he was not with them. In particular, he tells them (in his absence) to work out their own salvation with fear and trembling (v. 12). How is it possible for them to do this? God is the one who is at work within them, willing and doing in accordance with His good pleasure (v. 13). This means that the Philippians were to work out what God was working in. The labors of both parties, added up, did not come to 100%. God did everything in them. They did everything that was the result of what God did in them. Salvation is all of grace—even the work.

But what is the relationship of the grace of God to the (seemingly unrelated) world of hard moral effort? If the grace of God is in all and through all, and beneath us all, then why do we still have to sweat bullets? Are those who sweat bullets abandoning the grace of God? Are those who rejoice in free forgiveness forsaking the demands of discipleship? But not all conditions are meritorious.

Reconciled Friends

Spurgeon once said, when asked how he reconciled divine sovereignty with human responsibility, that he did not even try—he never sought to reconcile friends. If we think about it rightly, from the vantage of those jealous for moral probity, we will never try to reconcile grace with works—that would be like trying to reconcile an apple tree with its apples. And, if we think about it rightly, from the vantage of those jealous for the wildness of grace, we will never try to reconcile grace with merit, for the two are mortal enemies and cannot be reconciled.

But those who insist that apple trees must always produce apples will make the friends of free grace nervous, not because they have anything against apples, but rather because they know the human propensity for manufacturing shiny plastic apples, with the little hooks that make it easy to hang them, like so many Christmas tree ornaments, on our doctrinal and liturgical bramble bushes. But on the other hand, those who insist that true grace always messes up the categories of the ecclesiastical fussers make the friends of true moral order nervous—because there are, after all, numerous warnings (from people like Jesus and Paul, who should have a place in these particular discussions, after all) about those who “live this way” not inheriting the kingdom. Kind of cold, according to some people, but the wedding banquet is the kind of event you can get thrown out of.

Rightly Related

So what is the relationship of grace to hard, moral effort? Well, hard, moral effort is a grace. It is not every grace, but it is a true grace. It is a gift of God, lest any should boast. We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, and this is a description of someone being saved by grace through faith, and not by works (Eph. 2:8-10). This is the meaning of our text—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. For it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure.”We are called to work out what God works in, and absolutely nothing else. If we don’t work out that salvation (as evidenced by the fruit of it), then that is clear evidence that God is not working anything in.

If we work out some pressboard imitation (a salvation that has the look of real wood!), then that shows that God is not working anything in there either. Moralism is just a three-dollar flashlight to light the pathway to Hell with. And of course, if we are guilty of the opposite error, if our lives are manifesting a lineup of dirty deeds done dirt cheap, the only real sin we are avoiding is that of hypocrisy. Overt immorality is the fifty-dollar flashlight.

All Grace, All the Time

This is why we need a little more of “in Him we live and move and have our being.” Actually, we need a lot more of it. The answer to the grace/works dilemma is high octane Calvinism, and by this, I don’t mean the formulaic kind. If God is the one Paul preached — the one of whom it can be said “of him, and through him, and to him, are all things”—then where in the universe are you going to hide your pitiful merit? If He is Almighty God, and He starts to transform your tawdry little life into something resembling Jesus, who are you to tell Him that He is now wavering on the brink of dangerous legalisms?

The bottom line is that we cannot balance our notions of grace with works or our notions of works with grace. We need to get off that particular teeter totter. We have to balance absolutely everything in our lives with God Himself, who is the font of everlasting grace—real grace. Real grace is the context of everything. If we preach the supremacy of God in Christ, and the absolute lordship of that bleeding Christ, and the efficacious work of the Spirit in us who raised Jesus from the dead, then a number of other things will resolve themselves in a multitude of wonderful ways.

In Jesus, we are the new humanity. Is Jesus grace or works? Jesus lives in the garden of God’s everlasting favor, and we are in Him. In Christ, there are no prohibited trees. Outside Him, they are all prohibited. That means there is only one real question to answer, and it does not involve any grace/works ratios. The question is more basic than that, and has to do with the new birth.

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Putting on the Jesus Coat (Eph. 4)

Joe Harby on

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Introduction

Adam was created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27). After the disastrous fall into sin, mankind retained the image of God (Gen. 9:6), but it was barely recognizable, lying now in ruins. The purpose of Christ coming was to re- establish mankind in the second Adam, and to renew the image of God in us. This is why we are told in this chapter to put off the old man, to be renewed, and to put on the new man. That image is described for us here (v. 24), created in the likeness of God as righteousness and true holiness.

The Text

“I therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; Endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace . . .” (Eph. 4:1-32).

Summary of the Text

Paul reminds them again that he is a prisoner, and asks them to walk worthily of the calling he has just been describing for them (v. 1). What does that look like? In a word, it looks like humility (v. 2). Such humility is the foundation for the strenuous labor of church unity (v. 3). That unity is grounded in what God has done—one body, one Spirit, one hope, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God over all, through all, and in you all (vv. 4-6). We all have that in common. All believers, by definition, share that.

But to each Christian a particular grace is given (v. 7). Paul refers to the Ascension, after which Christ bestowed gifts on us (v. 8). Before He ascended He had to first go down (v. 9). The one who descended is the same one who ascended (v. 10). The gifts He gave (as listed here) are apostles, prophets, evangelists, and pastor/teachers (v. 11). These gifts were to equip the saints for the work of ministry, not to put on a hired show for the spectators (v. 12). These gifts will be exercised until we all arrive at the unity of the faith, to the perfect man (v. 13). At that time, we will no longer be gullible, the prey of false teachers (v. 14). Rather, we will speak the truth in love, which shows attachment to the head, who is Christ (v. 15). The entire body is connected to Him, and love is what makes it grow (v. 16).

That being the case, Christians ought not to walk according to the Gentile mindset (v. 17). Their problem is intellectual darkness created by heart blindness. When the heart is blind, the head is dark (v. 18). Their intellectual darkness not surprisingly is connected to moral corruption (v. 19). But the Ephesians had not learned Christ in that way (v. 20), at least not if they had heard the real Jesus and been taught by Him (v. 21). They had been taught to seize the old man, the old way of life, and take him off (v. 22). Then they were to be renewed in the spirit of their mind (v. 23), and put on the new man, who is of course Jesus Christ Himself (v. 24).

A cluster of ethical instructions follow. Stop lying, and speak the truth to one another (v. 25). Be angry, but don’t sin, and don’t let it fester (v. 26). Don’t give the devil a place, don’t let him have a foot hold (v. 27). Let the thief work with his hands on something, and share what he has earned (v. 28). Don’t speak in a foul way (v. 29). Do not grieve the Spirit (v. 30). Put away malice and all its companions (v. 31). Be kind to each other, tender-hearted, eager to forgive as you have been forgiven (v. 32). Don’t stand there as a spiritual leper, with little pieces of damnation falling off.

The Already/Not Yet of Unity

There are two kinds of unity in this chapter. The first is a gift from God, and it is a unity that needs to be protected and retained. We are told to keep the unity of the Spirit. In order to keep it, we have to already have it. This is a natural consequence of regeneration. Those who are part of the one true body of Christ have already, as a gift, true unity with one another. This is why a Baptist and a Presbyterian, belonging to different churches, can have true unity with one another. This kind of unity is disrupted by arrogance, by a lack of humility. This is why two Presbyterians, members of the same church, can be at one another’s throats. When this kind of unity is disrupted, it is always because of sin.

The second kind of unity is what we are all growing toward. This unity cannot be preserved because we are not there yet. This is what Paul refers to in v. 13, when he says that we will eventually come to “the unity of the faith,” or, put another way, to “a perfect man.”The lack of this kind of unity is not a sin, and not a problem. God governs human history, not us.

Look at a fertilized egg under a microscope, a person who will be a mature man 35 years from now. What you see is perfect unity. What is the first step toward the higher unity of the perfect man? The answer is division. Look at Adam before he met Eve. What do you see? You see unity. What was the first step in creating the higher unity of a human race of billions of people? The answer is division. Don’t tell God how to govern church history. But you should receive what He tells you about your demeanor in your particular corner of church history.

Knit Together

In verse 30, we are told not to grieve the Holy Spirit. At the beginning of the chapter, we are told to keep the unity of the Spirit (v. 3). We are told that there is one body and one Spirit (v. 4). The way we keep the unity of the Spirit is by humility—lowliness, meekness, patience, etc. The way we grieve the Spirit is by bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, evil-speaking, and malice (v. 31).

Humility and love help the body to grow. Anger, clamor and dissension do not. Keep what God has given. Do not grasp after what He has not yet given. To grasp after the second kind of unity prematurely is to replicate the sin of Adam and Eve at the tree. They wanted what had not been given to them yet. Those who strive for the second kind of unity almost always trample the first kind. Those who cultivate the first kind are being used by God in His glorious eschatological purposes.

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