Touched By Grace
Touched By Grace, Rev. L. John Gable
May 8, 2016
How is it that you came to be who you are today? Have you ever stopped to consider the factors which have influenced your life to make you the unique individual you are? The circumstances which brought you to this time and place? The influences which have shaped how you act, think, dress, speak, behave, as you do? How is it that you came to be who you are?
Clearly there is no single answer to these questions. Some traits and characteristics we can attribute to our parents and upbringing, both nurture and nature, which we do with gratitude on this Mother’s day; others to the place of our birth and the period of history in which we live. Still others to our circumstances in life: our education, our experiences and opportunities, our encounters with others. Some perhaps we can attribute only to the way we were fashioned by our Creator. Sociologists and psychologists remind us that we are, in many ways, a patchwork of different experiences and influences which, when pieced together, make each of us the unique, multi-faceted, and in replicable individuals we are.
But what is the moving force behind all of this? Is it luck, chance, fate, self-determination, a divine plan? Are we masters of our own destinies or is there another? When I was in college I worked in a factory one summer in St. Louis. The owner was a client/friend of my father’s and it was his company, he founded it, he owned it, it had his name on the letterhead. One day he invited me in to his office and in the course of our conversation he told me his story. He said, “I started this company when I was 19 years old. I sold my wares out of a horse-cart which I pulled myself. I saved every penny I earned and built this company. Just look at it now – over 600 employees and a whole line of products. I’ve never been much of a religious man and I’ve hurt some people along the way – everybody does – but I’ve done it my way. I am a self-made man.”
This “self-made man” saw himself at the center of his own little universe. According to his own world view, he was the driving, shaping force which made his life what it was; he was his own beginning and his own end. When he told me his story I think he thought I would be impressed and inspired because he offered me a job once I graduated, but I wasn’t, in fact I had just the opposite reaction. Even as a young collegian, hearing his story somehow made me feel sorry for him. When I heard news of his death years later I couldn’t help but think of Jesus’ words, “What does it profit a man to gain the whole world, if he loses his soul?” When he went to meet his Maker, as each of us one day will, I hope he had something to say other than, “I have done it my way. I am a self-made man.”
There is another man in history who could speak proudly of his accomplishments. In his letter to the Philippians the Apostle Paul writes of his own background as a Jew and recounts that he had every right to be proud. He was a Jew’s Jew, a Pharisee’s Pharisee; circumcised on the 8th day, obedient to the fullest extent of the law. In every regard, Paul was a self-made man and by the standards of that tradition he had it made- until he was touched by the grace of God on the road to Damascus. In that encounter with the Risen Lord, he was made aware of the weakness of his own “self-made” character, and because of that encounter he would come to regard his former accomplishments as rubbish. He writes, “But whatever gains I had I have come to regard as loss for the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” (Philippians 3:5-7)
Listen to the change in his own “self-understanding” expressed in our Scripture lesson this morning. Paul writes, “I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.” That is a far cry from the proud, self-righteous Paul of his former life. What is it that brought him to this new self-understanding? His answer is profoundly simple and simply profound: “By the grace of God I am what I am.” He had been touched by grace.
It was the grace of God that allowed him to see the flaw in his own character and enabled him to recognize his own need. Isaiah recounts much the same experience when he found himself in the presence of the Lord. “Woe is me!” he cries. “I am lost, for I am a man of unclean lips! For I have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” How is it that Isaiah recognized his own uncleanness? No one had to tell him. He was able to recognize it in himself when He found himself in the presence of a holy and righteous God. It is the grace of God which enables us to recognize our own sinfulness. While it almost sounds contradictory, it is grace that actually first convicts us of our sin.
So often we think of God’s grace in terms which remind us only of a nice warm comforter on a cold winter night, but that is not the initial effect of grace at all. It first makes us aware of our sinfulness, not by accusing us of sin, but by showing us God’s standard of pure righteousness. Jesus never accused people of their sin other than the already religious people, He didn’t need to, it wasn’t necessary. In His presence their sins were made self-evident, as are ours, when we are in His presence. The closer we get to the light, the more we can see the darkness and stain in our lives; which means, we don’t need to go around telling people they are sinners, anyone with any sense of self-awareness already knows that about themselves; instead we need simply to introduce them to Christ and allow His grace to make their shortcomings and needs self-evident. Theologian Karl Barth suggests this approach should be our model for evangelism. Traditionally Christians have first tried to persuade non-believers of their sin and then presented them with Jesus as the answer. Barth suggests we go the other way around. He says we should first present them with the love and grace of God and then, in the light of that grace, allow them to see themselves as sinners and seek His forgiveness. I quote Barth in saying, “Grace is the gift of Christ, who exposes the gulf between God and His creation, and by exposing it, bridges it.”
This is how God’s grace works: in Paul’s life, in Isaiah’s life, in our lives today. By His grace He first exposes the shortcomings and needs in our own self-centered way of living, and then, once exposed, He gives us faith in Christ to bridge the gap. The grace of God first convicts us of our sin and then in Christ forgives us and sets us free from it. When God does that work in us we can say with Paul, “by the grace of God I am what I am.”
The story is told of a man who was arrested for embezzling a vast sum of money from the company for which he worked. When he appeared in court he was relieved to see that the judge who was presiding over the case, and who would ultimately give the ruling, was his closest friend. He was confident that the judge would let him off easy because of their friendship. At the completion of the trial however the man was found guilty and the judge ordered him to make full restitution of the monies he had taken, as well as pay a heavy fine. The guilty man was devastated. The severity of the sentence would surely destroy him and force him in to bankruptcy.
Later that evening there was a knock on the door of his home. There stood a messenger with an envelope containing a check made out in the exact amount of the sum of the sentence – signed by the man’s friend – the judge.
This story gives us a glimpse of what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. In God’s grace we are both judged and found guilty AND forgiven and set free. Barth says, “Jesus was the judge judged in our place.” Even when we were found guilty, He paid the penalty for our sin and set us free.
When we experience God’s grace in this way we can only respond in faith. When we are touched by God in this way we can only respond as Paul did saying, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”
But the grace of God must not end at this. God’s grace given to us is not intended to end with us; it is intended then to be extended by us to others. So Paul writes, “For by the grace of God I am what I am AND His grace toward me is not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I but the grace of God which is in me. Whether then it was I or they, so we proclaim and so you have come to believe.”
Once touched by God’s grace we are then called into new service. By grace we are empowered to preach and teach and witness and care, to the end that still others may come to receive that same grace and believe.
The movement of God’s grace, His unmerited love and favor toward us, is always the same: first it convicts us, then it forgives us, and then it sends us out to share that Good News with others. Look again at Isaiah’s experience in the presence of God. When he saw the Lord of hosts, he first recognized his own sinfulness, his unclean lips, and was convicted of his sin; then he was touched by the flaming coal, his lips were made clean, and by the grace of God, he was forgiven. But the story doesn’t end there, it was then that he heard the Lord’s call, “Whom shall I send and who will go for us?” And Isaiah answered, “Here I am. Send me.”
The same is true in Paul’s encounter with Christ on the road to Damascus. He was first convicted of the error of his ways, then was restored into a right relationship with God as he came to trust in Jesus as Savior and Lord, and then was commissioned to be the greatest evangelist the world has ever known. The touch of God’s grace is the starting point in the life of faith and of service to Christ.
So what of you and me? What can you say about how is it that you came to be who you are today? It is my prayer that you can say with Paul and with me, as I look at my own life, that I have been touched by grace. “By the grace of God I am what I am”, which then begs the question, “So what are you going to do with the grace you have been given?”