 |
|
Dr.
Rodney Plunket |
 |
|
"Grace Upon Grace"
John 1:1-18
April 11, 1999
In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was
God. He was in the
beginning with God. All
things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came
into being.
With
these words John begins his Gospel, his account of the life of Jesus;
and this beginning is powerful. With
these words John reaches all the way back to the beginning of the Bible,
all the way back to Genesis 1:1. There
we read, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” John speaks of someone whom he calls the Word being back
there in the beginning, and John makes clear that this Word is divine
and this Word was so intimately involved in creation that without the
Word “not one thing came into being.”
In
verse 4 of this opening chapter John declares that in this Word “was
life, and the life was the light of all people.”
In John 1:10-12 we read that this Word
was
in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world
did not know him. He came
to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.
But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave
power to become children of God, . . . .
In
verse 14 John says, “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and
we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of
grace and truth.” This
powerful Word, this Word that created the world, this Word that
possesses the life that is “the light of all people,” this divine
Word came into the world and gave to all who receive Him “the power to
become children of God.” This Word is indeed “full of grace and truth.”
Then,
in verses 16-18, John says,
From
his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came
through Jesus Christ. No
one has ever seen God. It
is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made
him known.
It
is not until verse 17 that John gives a name to this divine personage
whom he calls “the Word.” The
name he gives to “the Word” is Jesus Christ.
And just before he tells us his name, John says of the Word that
“From his fullness we have all received, grace
upon grace.” The
Greek phrase rendered as “grace upon grace” is difficult to
translate and difficult to interpret, but I think that the best
understanding is expressed by G. R. Beasley-Murray in his
commentary on John’s Gospel. He
says that the relevant Greek phrase “appears to indicate that fresh
grace replaces grace received, and will do so perpetually, the grace
brought by the Word thus is defined in terms of inexhaustible grace, . .
. .” (Word Biblical Commentary, vol. 36, p. 15).
Jesus
has brought us life, and light, and “grace and truth,” and “grace
upon grace.” He is the
all-powerful Word of God that created the world and all that is in it.
His grace is as boundless as His power is awesome.
We
sing about that grace. Earlier
in our service we sang, “Nothing in my hand I bring:
Simply to Thy cross I cling; Naked, come to Thee for dress;
Helpless look to Thee for grace.”
This morning we have also sung about “Healing Grace” and
“boundless grace.”
But
do we really believe that through Jesus we have received “grace upon
grace”? Do we really
believe that the apostle Paul is right when he says, “For it is by
grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast”
(Ephesians 2:8-9)?
John’s
picture of Jesus as “the Word” to draw us into a dynamic and
life-changing relationship with Jesus the Christ.
I am here this morning urging all of us to be drawn into that
relationship. Quit trying
to be good enough. Quit
trying to be right enough. Quit
trying to earn your salvation in one way or another.
We cannot do it. We
have not yet realized how utterly lost we are if we think that we can
become unlost by our own efforts, by our own doctrinal precision, by the
strength of our own wills. And
when we try to be saved in any of those ineffective ways, we reveal that
we have not yet been captivated by “the Word” that “became flesh
and lived among us.”
When
we have truly realized His glory and the wonder of His righteous power,
we look at the power of our doctrinal rightness and the power of our
good deeds and they pale into insignificance. Listen to the apostle Paul in Philippians 3:4-9.
He writes,
If
anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have
more: circumcised on the
eighth day, of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew
of Hebrews; in regard to the law, a Pharisee; as for zeal, persecuting
the church; as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
But
whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the
surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I
have lost all things. I
consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not
having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which
is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and
is by faith.
Paul
is describing here his Jewish pedigree, all of those things he was once
so proud of. He evaluates
those things now that He knows the wonder of Christ Jesus; and he says,
“I consider them rubbish.” He
says he no longer even wants a righteousness of his own.
He wants the righteousness “which is through faith in
Christ.” He wants to be
found, he says, having “the righteousness that comes from God and is
by faith.”
Did
Paul work for Jesus? He
certainly did. Did his life
show forth manifold works of faith?
It certainly did. Did
the apostle John who taught that though Jesus we receive “grace upon
grace” work for Jesus? He
certainly did. Did his life show forth manifold works of faith?
It certainly did. But these great believers did not believe that they were
adding anything to the perfect work of Christ Jesus.
They did not do those things to be saved. There is nothing we can add to the work of this glorious
Christ. There is nothing
else needed. The works of
the believer flow naturally out of hearts that celebrate
the work of Christ. They
are works of faith; they are not works of fear.
They are spawned not by the desperate desire to be saved; they
are enabled by joy and by the power of the Holy Spirit whom God has
given by His grace.
Because
of God’s grace we can know that we are saved.
Because of the wonder and power of the divine Son of God we can
be sure of our salvation. John in 1 John 5:13 says, “I write these things to you who
believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have
eternal life.” The word
translated “believe” could just as easily be translated as
“trust.” The question
is not, what are we doing? The
question is, whom are we trusting?
Max
Lucado, in his book In the Grip of
Grace has a marvelous little parable (Dallas: Word Publishing, 1996,
pages 1-13). He talks about
a father with five sons. The
older son is a good son, always does what his father wants, and is very
closely connected to the will of the father.
The four younger sons have a little
more trouble obeying the father.
The father tells them everyday, “Don’t go near the river.”
The river you see is malevolent, it’s evil, wicked.
It drags you in.
The
boys everyday work their way toward the river and everyday the father
says, “Don’t go near the river, it will hurt you.
It will hurt you bad. Don’t
go near the river.” But
one day one son says,
I
am going to put my hand in the river and I want all of you to hold my
arm. Let’s make a kind of
a ladder for me and I am going to work my way toward the river and with
y’all holding me, I’m going to put my hand in the river.
And
he does. As soon as his
hand hits the water, the water just drags him in and the boys that are
holding onto him are dragged along with him.
Down they go, down the river.
They struggle and fight trying to go back upstream, but they
can’t. The river is way
too strong, way too powerful. It
just drags them away, down and down and down the river.
Finally
they end up on a bank somewhere a long way from home.
They don’t even know which direction home is, but they don’t
like where they are. The
weather is no good, and the people are savage.
They know this isn’t where they belong and that they should
have stayed home. They
realize they made a terrible mistake. They try every way they can to find a way back home, but they
just can’t do it. The
river is too strong to go back upstream.
The mountains are too high.
The land is far too rugged.
So they decide to exist in this land.
They
gather what they need to eat and keep themselves warm, and every night
they come back to the campfire, and they sit around and talk about home.
They talk about their father and their older brother and how much
they miss them both. And
they keep hoping that maybe the father or the older brother will come
and get them. For a long
time that’s what they do.
Then
one night, one brother doesn’t show up; he doesn’t come to the
campfire. The other three
of course are concerned, but it’s getting dark, and they can’t
really hunt for him. So the
next morning, they go out and they look for him, and they find him on
the edges of where the savages live and he’s building a hut. And he says,
I’m
going to forget about home, all that’s in the past.
I’m going to live right here and I’m going to build the
biggest hut, the biggest house in this village.
I’m going to accomplish something in this life, right here.
And
so, that’s what he does; he starts building this house.
His brothers plead with him to come back to the fire and to keep
longing for home, but he refuses. In
time he becomes just like one of the savages.
After
two or three days another boy doesn’t show up at the campfire, and
they go looking for him the following morning.
He has pitched himself a little tent, and he is sitting there
watching the brother who is building the hut and living this savage
life, and he says,
Would
you look at him? I want you
to look at what he is doing. Isn’t
he awful? Isn’t he evil? I’m
going to sit right here and I’m going to catalog every bad thing he
does. And if the father
ever does show up, I’m going to be able to tell him every bad thing
this boy’s done and I’m going to see that he gets appropriately
punished. Y’all go on
back to the campfire and do what you want to do, but I think you ought
to stay here and help me catalog all of this guy’s sins.
They
say, “No, we want to remember home.
We want to talk about home.
We want to talk about our older brother and our father.
No, we’re going back to the campfire.”
And
so the two remaining brothers do that.
But then, after a time, another brother quits coming to the
campfire and the youngest brother who remains goes and looks for him.
He finds him down by the river.
He’s taking rocks, finding rocks everywhere he can, big rocks;
and he’s easing them into the torrential river.
He’s going to build a path back to the father.
He believes that he can slowly but surely build a path all the
way back to the father. He
says,
When
I do that the father will have to accept me because I’ve worked so
hard to get to him. I will
have earned my way to the father. He’ll have to receive me and welcome me as a hero for the
great achievement I’ve accomplished.
The
youngest brother who is left says, “Don’t do this, come back to the
campfire. Let’s remember
home, and let’s wait on the father, and let’s wait on our older
brother.” But the other
brother says, “No, come help me build this pathway back to the
father.” But the youngest
brother says, “No I’m going to live in hope that the father will
come and get me.” So he
goes back to the campfire; builds himself a tent, and that’s where he
lives.
The
youngest brother wakes up one morning and realizes that someone else is
in the tent with him, and he looks up and there’s the older brother.
He’s come to get the boys and he says, “Where are your three
brothers?” The youngest brother tells him.
The
older brother goes to the one who’s built himself a house with the
savages and sees how he’s living, and he says,
Please
come home. The father misses you so.
He sent me to come get you.
I’m bigger and stronger and more powerful than you. I can pick you up and carry you home; it won’t even be
hard. Let me take you home.
But
the savages in the house say to that brother, “He just wants your
house! He’s just trying
to get you to leave so he can have your house!”
So that brother pretends not to even remember his older brother
and stays where he is.
The
older brother goes to the next brother, the brother who is giving his
time to the cataloging of sins, and he says, “Come home.”
But that brother says,
No,
I’m going to stay here until the father comes and I’m going to tell
the father how bad this boy’s been.
You know I’ve even been peeking in the windows at night; I know
everything he’s been doing.
The
oldest brother goes to the boy who’s building the path up the river.
He says, “Come home.” But
he says, “No, I can’t go home!
I can’t go home! I
haven’t earned it yet. I
haven’t built the path. Look!
I’ve already got five steps toward the father.”
The oldest brother says,
Yes,
but there are millions of steps . . . millions and millions of steps
back to the father. You’ll
never get to the father this way. And when the rains come, your stones are going to be blown
away anyway. They won’t
last.
None
of the brothers will go, but the youngest brother.
The oldest brother picks him up, and they set off on the journey
home.
When
you love Jesus and realize the wonder of Jesus, you know which of those
four characters you want to be. You
don’t want to be the one who pretends that this life is life the way
God intended. You don’t
want to be the brother who decides, “I’m going to be the moralist.
I’m going to keep everybody straight.
I’m going to tell everyone where he or she is wrong. I’m going to catalog their sins.” And you don’t want to be that third boy either, and that’s
the one we’re most likely to be I’m afraid.
The one who really believes, “I can do it my way.
I can get there by the strength of my own will and by the power
of my own might.” You
don’t want to be that one either, because you will never be good
enough. Your path to the father will never be long enough, because
the distance between us and the righteousness of our Father is infinite.
There is but one way to the Father.
Jesus says in John 14:6 that “No one comes to the Father except
through me.” There’s
only one way back to the Father’s house, and that’s by the one who
brought to us “grace upon grace.”
We will never be right enough.
We will never be good enough. But
that doesn’t matter because “Nothing in my hand I bring:
Simply to Thy cross I cling.”
Many
of you will remember K. C. Moser. Some
of us will have heard of him although we never knew him.
K. C. Moser was preaching and teaching on grace when grace was
not an “in” word in churches of Christ.
He impacted profoundly the life of Milton Jones, who’s written
a book on grace. In that book Jones talks about getting a chance to talk with
K. C. Moser one time and he asked him, “How do you sum up this idea of
grace? Here were his words:
“Nothing in my hand I bring:
Simply to thy cross I cling” (Grace
the Heart of the Fire [Joplin, MO: College Press, 1991], 24).
Who’s
righteousness do you want to wear on the Day of Judgment? Do you want to
wear your righteousness? I
don’t think so. I want to
be dressed as the song, “My Hope is Built on Nothing Less,”
describes. “Dressed in
his righteousness alone, faultless . . . .”
Why faultless? Because dressed in the righteousness of Jesus.
“Dressed in His righteousness alone, faultless
to stand before His throne.” That’s
grace, the grace of the older brother who gave His life so that I might
return to the home of my Father.
Receive
that grace! Receive that “grace upon grace” that Jesus gives!
Receive it now as we stand and sing!
Please come!
Top | Sermons | Home
|
