Grace - Uncaused Sovereign Act of God

Okay, so you got a handout. Mike and I were talking. I guess we were just hoping to get out of the hospital last week. And Mike pointed me to a portion within Romans, Newell's Romans, verse-by-verse commentary. And there's a section at the end of one of the chapters that have a few words about grace. So that's what you're going to get. You're going to get a handout for that. And these thoughts that Newell shares, you can pass that around. Sorry, I didn't mean to overlook you. Oh, okay. Thank you.

Mike, do you want to say a little bit about why you gravitated towards this and how we're going to use this in the next couple of classes? I can help as well, but it was your heart that kind of led to these words, and we thought in the next two weeks this would be a perfect way to summarize where we've been in this short time with Grace. We're thinking about that. So these thoughts are broken into four sections, and I'm going to take the first two and really kind of summarize and pack these in. You'll notice in the intro to this is that it says most of these bear reading twice, and that's the nature of these. These are really deep thoughts by Newell, right? He's got to the end of a portion of teaching and It's almost as if he's overwhelmed by just the learning that he's had, and so he starts to summarize these in his key thoughts.

And having not really looked at these in depth until Mike mentioned them to me, I realized that some of it's written in some different language, and we'll work through those pieces, but we're gonna look at these principles within the course of a lesson, and then Mike will finish up on the last two sections. So I'm taking the nature of grace and the place it puts you in, and then Mike's gonna talk about those next two sections there.

So the anchor verse here, Romans 5.2, this talks about the grace in which we stand.

So some of this might feel like a review, but Romans 5.2, so I got a little discombobulated with the screen share there. The first two, these first two halves that I'm covering today, one of them is what grace is, and then where grace puts you, right? And so Anchor Verse, Romans 5, 2, it talks about the grace in which we stand.

And I think the whole first two sections that Newell talks about really anchors on the idea, or the word, stand. And we mentioned that, it was actually one of the fill-in-the-blanks that you had in yesterday's conference, too. The grace in which we stand, so we're going to nail that understanding down according to the way that Newell was seeing it, and you'll have a chance to think about Does this make sense? Does this resonate with where we've taken this study thus far? So, let's start with a question.

Here's your question for this morning. Right now, how are you doing with God? Right now. How are you doing with God? Does the answer depend on your week? You had a good day yesterday. We did. Feeling pretty, I'm feeling like I've got a bit of a spiritual high. Maybe this is not the way you're thinking, but this is the way we, we, we operate, right?

How do you feel? Are you tired this morning? Kind of wiped out? Don't go for it. Yeah. Did you, did you leave something unsettled last night? You woke up to it. You're thinking about it. Um, you know, Right now, how are you doing with God? That's your question.

Romans 5-2, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand. So this Greek word stand, it's in the perfect tense. So what we're saying is that this is a settled position. Something was done to you at some point in time, and the effect of it endures on into the present. So this is a settled position. something that Paul is telling you in Romans 5 that's true of you now. So then I ask you, you know, you can see where the question is leading. How are you feeling about things with God right now? Well, the question is, where do I stand? Where do I stand?

So grace, grace is not, we think about grace as a feeling we have to maintain, you know, Am I being gracious to other people? Do I feel like my heart is truly tuned to grace? Or is it work, work, work, work? Do, do, do, do. And everything we look at today grows from this verse and what it means that grace is the ground you stand on and what actually is true about the one holding you up.

So Newell starts and asks the question, or I'm sorry, mentions the fact that grace is uncaused. What does that mean? And don't read just yet, but what does a cause require? a mover. But we know that an effect is a result of a cause, cause-effect. Where does a cause come from?

And grace is like that, because it's unique to our Creator. And everything he does is uncaused because it's his character. It's who he is by nature. Yeah, the quote that Newell opens this whole thing up with is, Grace is God acting freely according to his own nature as love, acting righteously in view of the cross. So three words to land on, freely, uncaused, and sovereign. What does freely mean? That God acted freely.

It's what, along the lines of what Miles was talking about there, is he wasn't forced? Was he under obligation? Did he have a contract to keep? Or just a promise? Okay. So, well, does he owe you anything? I just want to make sure. So God didn't owe you grace. He acts freely. And then the next word we talked about was uncaused. Uncaused is a word that kind of trips us up.

I think we assume that the cause of grace must be inside us somewhere. God's grace Oh okay, I see what you're saying. The giver, the one who makes the gift, who gives the gift, yeah. Can we assume that the cause of grace must be inside us somewhere? We can't, but do we? Okay, so here we have a doctrine. And we're already admitting that the doctrine hasn't reached how we feel about things sometimes. We've got to assume, God, there's something in me that, I don't know where it is, some kind of sincerity, something about maybe my hunger, maybe the fact that I'm at least trying that you are gracious to me. And I experience it because I want it.

Do you see how that even puts the, God doesn't, does not give the gift and the environment of grace to us because of something that you did or will do. Newell says that, no, it's not caused in you, there's nothing in us, and he goes on to say that the cause lies wholly in the giver and God. He didn't look at you and find just enough raw material to work with. You ever feel like you got just enough that God can work with this? He looked at you and what did he find? He didn't find anything. He acted anyway. Now, We've got freely, uncaused, and the third word was sovereign.

Why is it that grace places the worst deservers in the highest favor? In the highest favors, that's what Newell says there. Why do you think that the thief on the cross or Saul of Tarsus, the carnal Christians of the Corinthian church that Paul wrote to, Every one of them bathed in grace. Bathed. Covered in grace. Not because they were getting better, but because that's who God is. They seemed that they were free from sin. First of all, life.

You know, at the end of the fight, when he said, I'm free from sin. Yeah, the worst deservers, is the way he phrased it. So why does it matter that when we start to talk about the fact that grace is uncaused, sovereign, and freely given, I'm sorry, not freely given, freely, meaning that he had no promise to keep, he was acting freely of himself, why does that matter to you tomorrow? Why would that standing matter to you tomorrow? Okay. And is that meant to take pressure off of you? Okay. Right. So, that's not, you know, it's not a modus operandi. It's not to press on us, you know, to get us to talk. Well, think about it this way.

If the cause were in you, if the cause of God giving grace to you, wouldn't it be able to change in you? Yeah. So if grace is based on, what if we change? Does God's cause of grace change because we've changed? Do you see how, if the cause is in me, and if it's not uncaused, then it can't be grace by definition.

Then it's a law. Then it's a law. And it also makes God a debtor. If it's predicated on, if we do something, he owes us. And we think about this in salvation, we think about losing salvation. It was predicated on us, we can lose our salvation. But we say, okay, we've got salvation, we have assurance, but what about grace? And that's sometimes a different conversation. It's like, well, God didn't change between the way that He acted in salvation and the way that He acts graciously towards me in the Christian life. But somehow I think his character is changing, and I think that I can bring God's grace into my life by something that I do. But if I do that, then I have to also realize that I could lose that if I stop behaving the right way that blesses me with the grace that I'm hoping to cause. You see how that mindset changes the entire game?

And Titus 3.5 says it, and it's in the past tense, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy. This is past tense, finished transaction for you.

Grace doesn't help you. It doesn't. This is kind of one of the things that Newell that really stuck out. Grace cannot act where there is either merit, and he uses the word what? He uses the word dessert. And I was like, I don't know what that means. It looks like dessert. That's what it looks like to me, too. Well, it's an older term that means merit. That's the way I'm going to use it. So you can write merit above it for us in this century. But the word is still applicable.

Grace cannot act where there is either merit or ability. Grace does not help. It's absolute. It does all. So you have freely, you have uncaused, and you have sovereign. And now we move on to this idea that grace cannot act where there is either merit or ability.

So grace is slowly setting itself apart as a principle. and an action that only God can take, and it is unique and one-of-a-kind to Him, because there is nothing in our lives that corresponds to this act of grace that God has bestowed on us. I was stuck here for years. There being no cause in the creature why grace should be shown, the creature must be brought off from crying. cause to God for His grace. Sorry, on point four there, that grace cannot act. That's a really interesting way of stating it. It really kind of gets your attention, something that grace cannot do.

Wherever there is, you know, if there was any It's an interesting thing, defining what grace is, right? If there was any kind of merit whatsoever, there couldn't be grace. And so grace could only operate in a situation where we didn't deserve anything. Because if we did, it wouldn't be grace, right? But what he worded that, wait, grace can't do? OK, so if we think about grace as the operating system, and we're going along the lines of what Miles is talking about, grace can't be grace if there's merit. What about does grace help me out? So I've got this principle of the operating system, but how does it matter to me practically? Do I get a little help from the Lord? Can I get an extra dose of grace for this matter?

I think that's where that word abilities is without merit or ability. If we were able to live the Christian life even a little bit, then we would just need some help. But that's not what grace is. Grace says, no, you have no ability. Let me do it for you, right? Grace doesn't help. Grace does all. Where does that put you in the driver's seat? It puts you in the passenger's seat. Picks you right out and puts you in the passenger's seat.

Yeah, most of us even, you know, the ones that would swear, like, oh, I really, I do, I believe in grace. You know, it's just, they still picture grace as the thing that fills the gap between when things are good. It's like, well, I wasn't sick and God was, you know, I was experiencing God's grace and that's amazing. I was seeing about it. And then the thing happens and it's like, okay, that's survival. And then I'm looking forward to when God's still ingracious with me again.

Isn't the Spirit driving through you, so really you're driving? Let's talk about that at a different point. Yeah, well, obviously Christ is doing the living, but my human analogy is not a good one. I'll come up with a better one. Wow. I've got to be careful with my comparison to the Christian life to driving. We've got you in check there. I know, I know. This is good for me. Yeah, yeah.

Grace comes this way. And through the work of the Spirit, he believes in the person worth the price and gets saved. Race is such a foreign thing to me. And it's almost more important to me because it takes him out of his ability to communicate. And it's difficult, almost impossible, to actually help a person's race. So I think it puts us in circumstances where That's the pressure. So, with that, you know, the rest, you find through that process that you can rest, and God is grateful.

He didn't think that we would worry about it. Oh yeah. You guys hear that? If you worry a little bit, you'll contribute to God's grace. He'll know that you need grace more because you're worried about it. Now, that's personal, so I say it trivial like that. It's not, it's very personal because we have emotions and we have responses to the things and the trials that we're going through and those are very real and he knows about that. But those feelings of need are that.

They're not causing grace for you. They're opening your eyes to see that you need the grace that you already stand in. You're not taking hold of what you're standing in. And the moment of, there's no worthiness in me in which the grace that I stand. So I'm here purely as the recipient of an uncaused in me decision by my creator to place me somewhere.

And that somewhere is in his son. And that's how he expresses his grace through the believer to the point of your conformity and glorification with him, right? Yeah, that's in six. Yet, he finds himself blessed on another principle outside of himself. Will you stop going ahead? He was talking about that. Well, read Romans 11, 6.

But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works. Otherwise, grace is no longer grace. So grace plus earnings equals not grace. Grace plus earnings equals not grace. Add anything to it, and you've destroyed what it is in your mind. Because grace can no longer be grace in that environment.

So Newell uses kind of a contrasting phrase. He says that the creature, that's you and me, must be pried loose from trying to give God cause. He uses the word, I think, you read it earlier, I can't remember what the word was. Brought off. Brought off, so I adjusted that for myself, and it literally means to be pried or torn off of.

We have to be pried loose from trying to give God cause, peeled away from the instinct to contribute. And our sin nature is just, it cannot imagine an environment of grace. The nature cannot imagine an environment where it is not relevant somehow. Not relevant somehow.

And it's God that prides us off through the convincing and convicting work of his spirit, as believers, right? He prides you off that worthiness that you think you have, at least a little bit, or that cause that you have a little bit for his grace, and he places you as a complete recipient. Okay, I'm the example for the day. You've been pried loose and so have I, but God had to do that. He had to do that, and it's not a moral failure on our part. I mean, this attitude against grace is the water that we swim in. It's this man system.

We've talked about it. It expresses itself in law, right? We have to be pried loose from, we've talked about the law system and how grace functions differently, circle of faith and circle of grace with faith in the middle. Yeah, we live in a world that is based on law living. So that we have to be pried away from that. And that's what the Lord does as he communicates these kinds of truths that we see in Romans 11, 6.

So let's look at the next slide. That's how he freezes from the world. Yeah, that is. But he recreated the new life. They can consume the grace that is still unmerited. But now you're operating, and isn't that the point? God restores a relationship with mankind so that he can show mankind what is true of him. You stand in grace, but you have the flesh.

And Newell says something about, it sounds almost pretty mean until you see what he's doing. Flesh has no place in the plan of grace. This is the great reason why grace is hated by the proud, natural mind of man. Does God, or excuse me, does the natural man, does our flesh hate grace? Okay, you say that theologically, like in your doctrine, but does your flesh hate grace? It learns to love it. That's your flesh.

Whatever. Maybe I said that incorrectly. Well, what part, if we were to lay out the entire plan of grace that we've been talking about over the last many weeks, as we understand it, and it's far more vast than that, we know that, it's just an overview, but if we were to look at that plan of grace and understand what it was, what would be the professor's response to that? Deal with it. Yeah. hatred.

What about the flesh's response to that one part of it that wasn't in the gaps of suffering or anything like that? They're like, yeah, well, that place is good. You can stay in that little safe space, but no, it hates all of it. Well, flesh is fundamentally selfish and grace leaves no room for self. So I just, completely takes flesh out of the picture and that's the opposite of selfishness. Right. The flesh has no place in that plan whatsoever. And it only looks at it with hatred because it has no place in it. There's no I in there. And when I say the flesh is selfish, it means I want glory for myself.

I want to be, you know, I want to get what's due mine. Reward me. I did a thing. Go ahead, Mike. He created the heavens and the earth, and put them down, and evened and darkened them. What he really did was, he was a blesser. He wanted to give his creature And Lucifer comes on the scene and he decides that he wants to be like God. He wants to be in that position where people would admire him because humans would love him. And so when he buys that, Adam gets this thing that we call sin nature that always wants to be the blesser, wants to be in charge, wants to be the cause of everything in place of God who is the real one. So it's so ingrained in the fallen man that when God's grace Well, and then, once he figures out he got fired, he can not conceive of having no role.

Right? The true believer, and this is the pivot in what he was talking about, rejoices at the exclusion. The true believer, and so what does that mean? Rejoices at the exclusion. The true believer, why would, what do you think that means? Before I just tell you what it means. Why is it true? What exclusion are we talking about? Your role... I think this is where Mike Polo was getting at.

We do learn to appreciate grace, not our flesh, not nature and everything. But we learn to rejoice that our flesh has been put offline because it is of no value to God. We've done everything by grace. That only comes by knowing that's in nature. That's true. program has to be by His grace. It's salvation. No, and the understanding of what salvation is, and what the contrasting life in the flesh and life in the spirit, that's grace itself, if you're finding that out. But the truth about the sin nature is you're either in Satan or you're in Christ. And how do you know that? Because God shows it through grace. If he didn't show it to you, you would never know it. Yeah.

That's kind of ruled out the one nature. When you have that capability, you can maintain it. Paul says in Romans 7, 18, in me, that is, in my flesh, nothing good dwells. If my flesh had to contribute, I'd be lost. Since it doesn't, I'm free. That's why you can rejoice at the exclusion.

Grace doesn't include my works as a cause to receive it. The thing you're You know, the thing that this exposes is that God's grace doesn't need your performance in order to give rest to you. You say, well, what about the license to sin? We've already talked about that in this class as well as, you know, worked through it some yesterday as well. No, I think that when you understand where you are and what the flesh has no place in, once you understand that, that brings rejoicing. Thanks be to God. Oh, what a wretched man that I am, to the pivot of thanks be to God. I'm not the one that is the cause of your grace. I can't screw it up. Thanks be to God.

You're not going to mark it up. You're not gonna wake up in the morning, God's gonna say, you haven't done X, Y, and Z, and so you're only gonna get 5% of my grace today. I'm only gonna dish out just this amount. You stand in it freely, not because of anything that you did.

It was a gift. Grace is received. I've got a few minutes and I'm just gonna walk through this with you in summary. So we've seen what grace is, now where does grace put you? This is what we talked about yesterday. Grace places you in a place of acceptance in his son, in Christ. So when we say you stand in grace, what we're saying is that you've been accepted in Christ and you stand in him. He himself is your standing. Nothing that you've done, you stand in him.

You're not on probation. There's no 90-day trial. And you don't have a review. You know, annual reviews are always fun. God's like, hey, see, you've been teaching at Sunday school. That's cool. You got a Bible study on Monday night, but You know, we've got a new system and we don't need you anymore.

That's not what the Lord's doing in your life. You stand in Christ. Your past life does not exist before God. Christ is your life. And that's the takeaway here today. Position is what God settled. Condition is what you experience. They don't share a scale. When it comes to grace, your position and your condition don't share the same scale. That's the reason why we abide above. That's the scale that we must align condition with all the time because we don't see it, but we stand in it because we're placed in Christ and that's thinking positionally. That word must. That word died. You have died and your life is hidden with Christ in God. So we must. So we must. Let's pray.

Lord, how we thank You that we stand in grace because You have chosen to love us in that way. And we know that that standing is in Your Son, and we thank You that we have union with Him. And as we face the week and we go through the different trials, Lord, may we recognize that our performance and our Efforts do not cause the grace that you give so freely to us because of who you are. And so I pray that we might find ourselves just tuned in our heart to the grace that you've taught us about, that we have to be taught about. Pray that the Spirit would illuminate our hearts to what you've done by placing us in your son and how that impacts the love that you have for us in the moments of challenge and frustration and the fleshly hatred of grace that comes out in each of us. Lord, we just pray that we would rejoice in where we stand. In his name we pray. Amen.