This is a series of four sermons which answer the question "How are we saved?" These four sermons are "Prevenient Grace" "Justification" "Regeneration" and "Sanctification." This is a traditional Christian and particularly Methodist way of speaking of the process by which God first redeems us and then changes us as we grow in faith.
Once upon a time there was a couple who had a baby boy who was very ill. It was suffering from pneumonia and complications. These parents took their baby to a Catholic hospital. The doctors were not sure that the child would live. But the nuns at that hospital prayed. All night they had a prayer vigil for that baby and by the grace of God that baby lived against all odds.
I am that baby. I don't remember any of it. I was only 6 months old. But I have been told stories of how they prayed for me and cared for me. I don't remember the cross that one old nun wore but I have been told about it. How I played with it as she held me. Someone warned her that I would get fingerprints on it. She looked up and said, "He won't mind."
I don't remember any of these events. They all took place before I was old enough to remember them. Yet they touch me and always have touched me. Before I was even aware of it people were loving me in the name of the Lord. Who was I to those nuns? My parents weren't Catholic. I was just another sick baby. But they prayed for me and loved me. They loved me simply because God loved me.
To me this incident demonstrates God's prevenient grace. "Prevenient Grace" is a gift from God that comes before and prepares the way for greater gifts. The pre- in "pre-venient" means before. The pre-lude comes before the service. A pre-fix comes before a word. The second part of this word is -vien. It comes from a Latin root that means "to come." "Vini, Vidi, Vici" - "I came, I saw I conquered." A word closely related to "prevenient" is the word "intervene." That means to come in the midst of. To intervene in a situation you come while it is going on. Suicide intervention means to come while a person is about to kill themselves to stop it. To previen means to come before it happens; to intervene before hand. One form of this word is "prevent" which means to come before to keep something from happening. You get a vaccination before you are sick to prevent it from happening. But God's grace comes before not to keep something from happening, but to cause it to happen.
Let me explain. Did you know that when you decided to give your life to Christ you didn't do it alone? You made the decision, but something happened before that to pave the way for that decision. God was already at work in your life getting you ready for that day. Perhaps it was something that happened in your life or the words of a friend or the prayers of a relative, but God was at work softening your heart so that you would be ready when the time was right.
It was God's Spirit that convinced you that you needed Christ. On our own we would never recognize that need. Our wills and perceptions have been so distorted by sin. Without help we are unaware of our lostness. It is God's Holy Spirit that shows us our need. We would be unable to choose to do something as good and noble as deciding to follow Christ on our own. The capacity to even do that is a gift from God.
One of my earliest memories is of Sunday School in a Presbyterian Church singing "The B-I-B-L-E. Yes! That's the book for me I stand alone on the Word of God the B-I-B-L-E." Someone took me to that church and taught me things that would help me give my life to Christ later. That was God's prevenient grace working through my parents and the church. As I grew up my parents showed me the way a Christian should live. My Mother volunteered to work for the Red Cross. My Father went out of his way to help others. My wife, Melissa, was brought up Baptist. She has fond memories of her baptism. They are a source of strength for her. I don't remember my baptism because I was only a few weeks old. But I have been told that I was baptized. Before I was even able to say "Jesus" my parents were promising to raise me so that I could serve him.
God was working through my family preparing me to receive his love before I even knew I needed it. If I had been able to tell what I thought I needed I would have said, "A bottle or a clean diaper." But I needed, as all people need, the love of their Heavenly Father. And God was already at work preparing me to receive that love.
The Prophet Jeremiah told how God knew him and called him while he was still in the womb. I can identify with that. I can see God at work in my life long before I was old enough to know anything about Faith or God or Salvation. But that is the case with everyone. God is graciously at work in everyone's life that way.
Maybe there is someone here who has never given their life to Christ. God is already preparing you to come to him. Something brought you here to hear this message. Some influence in your life has led you to church. That is God's prevenient Grace! Maybe in pride some will say I will never surrender all to God. But God is still preparing them for a time when they will be confronted with that decision. It will still be their decision to accept or reject Christ, but God will still be at work in their lives preparing them for future opportunities. That is prevenient grace: a gracious gift of God that comes before salvation to pave the way for it.
God's ultimate act of prevenient grace was to send Jesus Christ to die for us. The Bible says, "God shows love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us." God didn't wait for us to become good and then say O.K. you're worth dying for now. God sent Jesus to die for us when most wouldn't have given two cents for us. God loves us enough to previen, to come before the fact, on our behalf. God gave his son before we had made any promises to him.
Think about it. If you were the only one who needed saving, Christ would have still died for you. Centuries before you were even born Christ came to suffer so that you could have eternal life. Centuries before you were born Christ came to demonstrate God's love to you.
That is prevenient grace. While we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for us. Before we even existed, God provided for a means of our salvation. And before we were born God established the church to tell us about it when we were ready to hear.
I gave my life to Christ when I was eight. I was watching a Billy Graham Crusade. And it wasn't hard. I had heard it said probably a hundred times that each of us needs to ask Christ into our hearts to be saved. But at that moment, I was ready to respond. It was easy because of all that God had already done in my life to prepare me for that day, and for the day when I accepted my call to preach.
For me the prayers and love of those nuns were a demonstration of God's prevenient grace. I was helpless just as all people are helpless in their sin. I was unable to even ask for those nuns to pray for me, just as a lost person is unaware of their need for salvation. But they prayed for me anyway. In the same way God sent Jesus to die for us while we were still lost in sin. And God graciously paved the way to lead us to salvation. What those nuns did means a lot to me. But I would never have known about it if someone had not told me. I was unaware of their love until I was told the story of their actions.
There are people out there who don't know what God has already done for them. They don't know because no one has told them. They need someone to tell them how Christ died for them. Pray for them! Show them and tell them that God loves them! You may be a means of God's prevenient grace that softens the heart of someone to respond to Christ.
I imagine it happening in the morning. One morning Adam and Eve woke up in the Garden of Eden and it was a good morning. You know the difference between a good morning and a bad morning, don't you? A good morning is when you wake up and say, "Good morning Lord." A bad morning is when you wake up and say, "Good lord, its morning." Every morning was good in Paradise. No one had any worries to keep them awake at night. All the food they needed was there in the garden for the taking. They didn't have to go to work or worry about money. Their whole existence was just living in paradise, heaven on earth. They didn't even have to think about praying because they walked and talked with God every day in the garden. They didn't even know what a bad morning was because they had never had one.
Then, the Bible tells us, the serpent tempted them to eat of the fruit on the one tree God said not to eat. And they ate the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil. Their innocence was gone. Before they had only known good, but now they knew evil too. Before they had not even known they were naked, but now they were ashamed of themselves and guilty of disobeying God. So they hid from God in the garden instead of taking a morning stroll with their Creator.
Now let's get one thing straight. A lot of people blame Eve for what happened. It's all part of the blame game that everyone plays. Adam blamed Eve, and Eve blamed the serpent. But if you read the story carefully you will see that Adam was right there with Eve the whole time, and he said nothing. You can't get out of your wrong doing by blaming someone else. We all have to take responsibility for our actions.
The story of the fall is an illustration, and an explanation, for the state on humanity. Like our parents Adam and Eve we were created to live in paradise and glory in the presence of our Creator. But we have fallen from that state for spiritual innocence. We have done things that we are ashamed of. Like the parents of the human race, we have disobeyed God. God created us to know only good but we have sought knowledge of evil. And that knowledge of evil will eventually destroy us. I am sure you all have seen the commercial for the emergency response system where the lady is calling, "I've Fallen and I can't get up!" Popular humor has gotten a lot of mileage and laughs from that phrase. I believe this is mostly nervous laughter. If you think about it, it is a frightful and awful state to be unable to help yourself. That is the state of all humanity. We have fallen from the blessedness of Paradise. And in our weakness we can't even get ourselves back up.
"I've fallen and I can't get up" might be a way to characterize Nicodemus' situation when he came to Jesus. He came to Jesus and said, "You are from God." This statement was a cry for help from a desperate man. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a member of the Sanhedrin. He came at night so that people would not see him. He was afraid of losing his stature in the community. But he came because he needed help. He needed to know God. He came to Jesus because he could see that Jesus was close to God. Nicodemus was saying, "Jesus, I have fallen and I can't get up. Can you help me?"
Jesus heard his cry and even before Nicodemus could put it into words he responded. Jesus said, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can see the Kingdom of God without being born again." This may be the most misunderstood phrase Jesus ever uttered. Nicodemus misunderstood it. And he was not the last. Some translations say "Born from above" others say "born again." In the original language what Jesus says can mean both. I believe Jesus meant both. Salvation is a new start that comes from above.
Salvation can only come from God above. Frances Asbury one of the first bishops of the Methodist church used to preach on the verse, "Ye must be born again."(John 3:7) Someone asked why he constantly preached "Ye must be born again." He replied, "Because surely, ye must be!" Salvation can't come from you, or from a philosophy. It is a gift from our Father who is in heaven; from above. The image of new birth is perfect. Being born is a rather passive thing. The one being born really doesn't do anything. Salvation is primarily something God does to us. We have fallen and can't get up, we need someone from above to reach down and pull us up.
But how does God pull us up? The Christian word that describes this is "Justification." It literally means to make right. It is a legal term that refers to paying back a debt. We did something against God; we sinned. According to the law of the universe we owe God a debt. We hurt God and God has the duty to sue us on behalf of the universe. In the name of justice and order we have to make amends. We have offended the moral fiber of the universe and the universe cries for justice. But we can't pay back that debt to God. We don't have the ability. So we are condemned to spend eternity in the prison of our own self centeredness and pride. We are cast form the paradise of God's presence into the hell of our own sinfulness.
But God loved us so much that he sent Jesus to pay the debt for us. Jesus did this by dying on the cross. We were condemned to die for heinous crimes against God and the universe. But God sent Jesus to die in our place. Through his action we have been freed from our condemnation and set free to experience God and goodness like we were meant to.
God created us to glory in his presence. But we had fallen. We were meant to experience the good gifts of God, but we sinned and came to know evil. By the blood that Christ shed God cleanses our souls of those evil experiences so that we can know good. God sent Jesus from paradise above to lift us from our fallenness into the Kingdom of heaven.
Up to this point the emphasis has been on God's action to save us. And that is as it should be. Last week I pointed out that God comes to us first. Through Prevenient Grace God awakens us to our need for salvation. And in that same grace God calls us to salvation. This week I have pointed out that it is God who lifts us out of sin into God's kingdom.
Salvation is a gift from God, but it demands a response. Jesus said, "God gave his only son so that any who believe in him may have eternal life." Like any gift, the gift of salvation must be accepted. Salvation is like a gift placed under a Christmas tree. It belongs to the one whose name is on it. That person can look at it and shake it all they want. It is theirs already. But it doesn't do them much good until the open it. If it is a sweater, it doesn't warm them until the open the box and put it on. Salvation was sent to us all wrapped up in Jesus. It is already ours. But we must accept the package and open it up for it to help us.
How do we accept this Gift? Just tell God you want it. Acknowledge that you need it. Just say a prayer and tell God that you accept Jesus as a gift of salvation from above. Most Christians call it the sinner's prayer, "Lord I am a sinner and I accept Christ as my Savior." Then you will have claimed the salvation that God has already given to you.
Claim your gift of eternal life. I know that many of you have been members of a church for a long time. But being a member of a church doesn't save you from your sin. Only through the blood of Jesus Christ are we saved. Accept him as your Lord and Savior. Ask him to lift you out of your lostness and darkness into the light of his presence.
Justification, or forgiveness, is a gift from God. There are gifts that people sit in a corner and gather dust. And then there are others that get used everyday. These latter gifts are the ones that people show off to others. They are looked at and handled every day and they remind the recipient of the giver's love.
Use the gift of Jesus every day. God gave Jesus for us. Nurture the relationship you have with Jesus. Remember how God loved you so much that he died for you. And show your gift to others and tell them how it was given to you so they can know how much God loves them.
How does God save us? The message of justification is that God gave his only Son to die for us. That gift frees us from the hopeless state of separation from God. Praise be to God! I have heard of people who grew up in the church and they say they never heard anyone say that they had to accept Christ to be saved. I have never been in a Methodist church where the need to respond to God's grace was not proclaimed. It makes me wonder if they were listening to what was being preached or even to the words of the hymns. Listen carefully; salvation is a gift, but you must accept that gift. You must accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior. The gift of Justification is yours. Accept it. Cherish it. Live it!
"So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new." Sometimes this verse is hard to swallow. We dearly want to believe it, but it just doesn't seem to fit with what we see in real life. Just look at the way Christians act. Christians are capable of some very unchristian things. If they are a new creation and the old has passed away why do they continue acting like the old creature. Others who claim to know Christ act un-Christ like, but so do we. Are we really something new, has the old sinful self really passed away?
This verse holds out hope for us, but sometimes those hopes seem to be dashed on the shoals of reality. We want to be have control of our tempers. We want to love others like Jesus. We want to stand up for the weak. But we still do the old things. We yearn for people to be changed by the Gospel, but sometimes it doesn't seem to happen.
Christians do not always appear to be a new creation wrought in God's love and grace. What makes this reality so hard to accept is that we so dearly want to be new creatures. The Bible is right. Paul was not lying. We are a new creation. That yearning and hope to be loving as Christ is loving is the sign of that change. It is the beginning point and the proof that the change is real.
How are we saved? Three Sundays ago I told you about God's Prevenient Grace. The good news of Prevenient Grace was that God takes the first step. God comes to us and calls us to repentance and salvation. Two weeks ago I talked about justification. By the blood of Christ God cleanses our souls and makes us right with our Heavenly Father.
But God's saving act doesn't stop there. Justification cleanses us of our past acts of evil. Regeneration is the other side of the coin. It is the process by which God prepares us for good works in the future. It is the flip side of Justification. When I was a child I used to love to ride my bicycle. One day I took the back fender off thinking that if would make me faster. It did, but if I rode through the mud it splattered mud all up and down my back. Oh, I could go home and my mother would wash my shirt, but then it would get dirty again the next time I rode my bike. Just cleaning the shirt didn't do the job. I had to change the bike and put the fender back on. In the same way when we are justified God cleanses our souls of the sins of our past. But if something is not done to change what we are, we will just get our souls dirty again. Regeneration is that changing. Justification cleanses our souls, but the tendency to sin is still there. God must also change our wills and modify our desires. God must give us the desire to do good.
When God created humanity, we were created in the image of God. The image of God doesn't refer to the outward form of a person. People come in many different forms: white, black, red, yellow, tall, short, and on and on. Genesis says that both male and female were created in God's image. All are created in God's image. The image of God is our spiritual likeness. God created us for Good works; we were like Christ. But we were misused for evil deeds and our former likeness was distorted. Like that bike, someone tore off a very important part of us; our desire to do good. Sin altered us so that we perform evil deeds not good deeds.
The sinful world into which we were born has made us look like it instead of like our Creator. Sin turns us away from God and teaches us to think about ourselves instead of others. God has to reorient us to do good. Through grace God regenerates or rebuilds what the world has distorted and makes us into what we were intended to be.
How does God change us? First of all the Holy Spirit gives us the desire to do good. People would always choose evil if it were not for the grace of God. We are so lost that without God's guidance we didn't really know the difference between good and bad. When we give our lives to Christ, God alters our will. Our desire becomes for Christ not for the material world. We are born anew of the goodness of God and we seek after those things. Sometimes this alteration takes a while but by the Holy Spirit God does it.
The Spirit gives us a new identity. Before we were born again we were children of the world. But now we are children of God. Before we had no power over sin, it had power over us. Now we have been given power to conquer all evil through the blood of Christ.
God also gives us a calling and a mission. God doesn't save us so that we can just come to church and sit on our justification every Sunday. God saved us so that we can spread his Good News. We all have a calling. Now before you go and apply for spring classes at the seminary listen up. Not all are called to preach. We are each called to serve God's Kingdom in a different way. God gives us that mission not to be a burden to us, but to be a joyous way that we live out the new life we have in Christ.
I want to share with you a story that I believe illustrates and demonstrates the truth that God is tuning us into new creatures. It is from the 1991 Annual Report of the General Board of Global Ministries.
These were not trained ministers. These were everyday United Methodists like yourselves. And God had changed them. God had given them the desire to do good. The world around them was seeking to kill or to protect itself. These people were different. The risked their lives, not to kill, but to tell people God loves them.
They had a new identity. They were no longer just Russians or Estonians. They were sons and daughters of the God of Peace. And they had a mission from God to make peace. They were new creatures wrought in the love and peace of God Almighty made ready for God's good works.
Regeneration is a gift, but like Justification we must accept it. Like forgiveness it is a gift that already has your name on it. But you must claim it. God never forces anything on us. God simply offers it to us.
Just being forgiven is not the entirety of the Christian life. Forgiveness and new birth are just the beginning. There is a whole lifetime that comes after that. The new life we have in Christ is a life of rejoicing in God's grace. It is a life of walking through heaven on earth with your creator.
Many Christians don't know this and they fail to claim the power and the abundant life that Christ is offering them. They figure they have gotten themselves into heaven and that is all. That is like getting into Disney world and then not riding any of the rides or seeing any of the shows. You miss the point. In Galatians Paul wrote for freedom you have been set free. We have been set free to enjoy the full glory of God's graces.
"So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation everything old has passed away, see, everything has become new." This is a promise from God. Christ has already made you a new creation. But you must claim that newness. Claim your identity as a child of God. Claim your calling as a co-worker with Christ. Pray to God to help you accept the newness of life that Christ has given to you. Brothers and sister in Christ, this is the glory and the joy for which you were born again, claim it!
"Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect." The Christian life is a journey in which Christ is our leader. The three sermons I have already preached show us the progress of that journey. Before we accept Christ, our Heavenly Father prepares the way for us and opens our eyes to our need for salvation. Jesus even died for us beforehand to help us on that journey. When we accept Christ his blood cleanses us of old sins and justifies us in God's eyes. Then the Holy Spirit transforms us into new creatures that are recreated to do God's good will.
Today we will talk about the next stage of this journey of salvation. It is called "sanctification." This word comes from the Latin word "sanctus" which means holy. Sanctification is the process of making us holy. In this stage of the journey God continues to transform us from what we were into what we shall be. The Holy Spirit re-forms us into the likeness of Christ our Lord and guide.
Imagine that your life is a garden. Each action is a different kind of plant. Some plants are good. They produce fruit that can be eaten or flowers that can be enjoyed, or they enrich the soil some how. These are the acts of love and grace that are cultivated in our lives when we turn them over to Christ. But some plants are evil. They produce poison fruit, or they crowd out the plants Christ planted, or they rob the soil of vitality. These are the sins that the former owner, the devil, planted in this garden. Sanctification is the process by which Christ weeds us of those sinful destructive ways that poison our hearts and choke abundant life. As Christ weeds we come to be more and more the way God intends us to be.
Jesus tells us that the final goal of the Christian Life is perfection. Jesus told his disciples to be perfect as God is perfect. Our first reaction is to say that we cannot possibly become as perfect as God! But Jesus never gives us a command that he does not supply the means of fulfilling it. The question that we should ask ourselves is: "If we are to be perfect like God, how is God perfect?"
God is perfect in holiness. In the Bible "holy" means to be set aside; to be apart from or different. For the ancient Israelites this meant God is different from the gods of the nations. The gods of the nations demanded human sacrifices, but God made it clear with Abraham and Isaac that human sacrifice was not the Almighty's will. In reality the gods of the nation were just carved images that people owned, but God was an invisible God that was alive and real.
"Holy" also means pure. God is unstained by the sinfulness of humanity. God does not have the kind of conflicted devotions that people have. God is steadfast. The Almighty keeps the promises made to us.
We are called to be a holy people. In our Old Testament lesson God tells the people to be holy because their God is holy. 1 Peter tells us to be a holy priesthood. A priest is a representative of God. God calls us to be living representation of God's holiness in this world. Our actions should show others how different God is from the gods of the world and how pure God is.
We are called to be perfect in holiness as our Heavenly Father is perfect.
How is God perfect? God is perfect in love. Jesus put this love in the most extreme terms possible. He said, "Love our enemies and pray for those who persecute you." And Jesus practiced what he preached. Jesus died to win salvation for even the people who hollered "Crucify him!" He even asked God to forgive those who were crucifying him.
We should treat each other with the same depth of love that Jesus demonstrated as he spoke to Samaritans and healed lepers. Christians, don't demean other peoples. Don't tell Polish jokes. When you do you are demeaning a whole race of people. And they include your brother Pope John Paul. Don't stereotype or call your brothers and sisters in Christ names. When Christians use stereotypes and derogatory racial language it demeans a whole race of people including our brothers and sisters in Christ. The world uses that kind of language, but we are different. Love your brothers and sisters that way God loved us.
God's love is a love that breaks down old barriers and transforms lives. Christ transformed us through his love. When we love as Christ did that is God's love at work in us and through us. And that love can transform others and our world. There is an example of this in history of the early church. There was an ancient Greek custom called "exposing" children. "Exposing" was a euphemism for killing. If someone didn't want a child or couldn't care for it they would take it out to a deserted area and leave it there. It would usually die of exposure. Christians saw how evil this was and they took in these children. As the years passed Christians became famous for taking in unwanted children. Eventually that ancient practice died out because people knew that the local church or monastery would take the children they couldn't care for.
God's love transformed that society and the practice of exposing children was literally loved out of existence. God is perfect in that kind of transforming love and we are called to be too. Think of all the people in our community who feel abandoned; those who are alone in the battle with life's problems. Perhaps if Christians were to strive toward perfection in love we would become famous for taking in those who feel abandoned. Then we could become agents of transformation in Harbison, Columbia and the world!
God is also perfect in mercy and justice. We usually think of those as two separate things, but God is so perfect that they are one. Just look through the Bible. God is always on the side of the oppressed because God hates oppression. Throughout the prophets, God tells people to care for the widows and orphans. These were the powerless people.
God's mercy and care for the poor is demonstrated to us in the way God saves. God needed a nation to be his standard bearer in the world. God could have chosen Greece or Assyria or Egypt but the Almighty didn't. Instead God chose a nation of slaves. Out of mercy God saved them from slavery and out of justice God let them defeat and shame the Egyptians.
When God decided to send Jesus, he came as a poor homeless child. Jesus could have come as the son of Caesar or some other great leader. But God's heart ached for the poor and the down trodden so God became one of them. And Jesus promised to come again and right all the wrongs that have ever been committed against the poor and the powerless throughout the centuries.
That is the kind of mercy and justice we are called to live out. We are called to take on the suffering of the poor and the needy just as Jesus did. We are called to speak up for the powerless just as God's prophets did. God blesses the needy and the powerless out of mercy and love. In like fashion we are called to favor those in our society who are needy and powerless. Not because they deserve it, but because our Lord God does.
I might have stepped on a few toes this morning. That is fine; we all need our toes stepped on a little. We all need a little kick on our complacency to get us moving sometimes. We only get our toes stepped on when we are standing still, and God is calling us to be on the move. We are to be moving on toward perfection. But that is only possible with God's help.
Sanctification is a gift just like Justification and Regeneration. Every facet of God's salvation is a gift. We were lost in darkness so God preveniently gave us the light of Christ to lead us out of darkness. We needed forgiveness so God gave his only son to die for us. We needed to be transformed so God gave us the Spirit to transform our lives.
Sanctification is also a gift from God. But we must accept it. If we truly want to serve God we must look to God first. In a moment I will invite people to come forward to the altar to respond to God's word. But I want us all to respond Christ's call to be perfect by saying a little prayer together. Repeat after me: