6/6/2022 • Desk of Dennis Piller
Growing in grace and growing in friendship with Christ
We have talked about how God’s grace saves us. According to Eph 2:8-9,
We’ve talked about how God’s grace justifies us. According to Romans 3:24,
But God’s grace also sanctifies us. According to 2 Thessalonians 2:13, “because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth.” Indeed, not only are we in right standing with God, but also our right living… depends on grace.
Sanctification is the process of being set aside, in our case, being set aside for the purposes of God. 1 Corinthians 1:30 says, “But by His doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption.”
John Wesley's understanding of grace moves beyond forgiveness and acceptance of our identity as beloved children of God. God's goal for humanity is the complete restoration of the divine image and the conformity of all creation to the image of Jesus Christ. Sanctification (from sanctus, holy) denotes the process by which the believer is made holy and whole in response to justification.
God's grace seeks nothing less than a new creation in the likeness of Jesus Christ. Sanctifying grace is God's freely given presence and power to restore the fullness of God's image in which we are created.
Wesley talked about sanctification in terms of Christian perfection by which he means the entire "holiness of heart and life."
God’s grace also empowers us to service. God wants us to be so full of His grace in our lives that we can say with Paul: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Corinthians 15:10).
The grace of God is not earned by works, but it produces work done in His service. Grace, which is God's life, comes into us and works in us and through us so that we can be all and do all in His service. Philippians 2:13 says, “for it is God who is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. This means that whatever gifts and abilities God has given us by His grace; we should use them for His glory. God's grace and blessings were not given simply for us to sit in church and feel good. Rather, they were given that we might not only be blessed, but also be a blessing.
One dynamic or expression of God's grace is prevenience or "preventing" grace. Prevenient grace includes, according to Wesley, "all that is wrought in the soul by what is frequently termed ‘natural conscience,' …
all the ‘drawings' of ‘the Father,' the desires after God, … that ‘light' wherewith the Son of God ‘enlighteneth everyone that cometh into the world,' showing every man ‘to do justly, to love mercy,
and to walk humbly with his God;'
ALL the convictions which his Spirit from time to time works in every child of man." While taking the seriousness of human sin and brokenness seriously, Wesley believed that God's grace prevents the total destruction
of the divine image in us.
GROWING IN GRACE
Grace involves both gift and response. Our identity as sons and daughters of God is God's gift to us. Living in the world as redeemed children of God is our gift to God. Justifying grace reconciles us to God, incorporates us into the body of Christ, and sets us on the journey toward wholeness. Sanctifying grace continuously forms us in the likeness of Christ and sheds the love of God abroad in our hearts, our actions, and our relationships.
In other words, we grow in Christlikeness as we open our lives to God's presence and power at work in us and the world.
Growing in grace and discipleship
cannot be done within our own strength.
The One who invites us on the journey toward the fullness of grace accompanies us and supplies our needs.
The God who liberates us and gives us a new future enables us to live toward that new creation by providing means by which we can grow…
in grace.
https://www.facebook.com/castingcrowns/videos/805840673439892/
Casting Crown Scars in Heaven
Excerpts these last few days are taken from Bishop Kenneth L. Carder (retired) professor of the practice of pastoral formation at Duke Divinity School. Originally published in Interpreter, November-December 2016.
