When I was a teenager, I remember going to several youth
camps and conferences where we heard testimonies of people who had been
converted to Christianity out of some pretty amazing life experiences. We heard
stories of people who were strung out on drugs or who were successful athletes
or entertainers who reached the top and realized they didn’t have it all. We
heard from gang leaders who had changed, people who had survived abuse, people
with some horrible disease…on and on. These were amazing stories of
transformation, but while the goal was to teach us about how God can transform
people, what it made me think about more often was the fact that I didn’t have
a really good story to tell about my conversion!
I grew up in the church, went to Sunday School and youth
group, was always the obedient and dutiful child. I went on mission trips. Even
in college, I didn’t drink, didn’t enjoy parties that much, didn’t do much of
anything that is typical of your average student. I believed it was “hip to be
square.” I mean, I was the designated driver at my own bachelor party…that
should tell you everything you need to know.
there simply wasn’t that interesting a story to tell, at least to my way of
thinking. I was always taught that salvation was a dynamic event, a moment in
time, a flash of revelation—like Paul getting knocked off his feet by a
blinding light, or like that scene in Monty Python when God rips back the
clouds and tells King Arthur what to do. Well, I hadn’t really had that. I had
just kind of always “been there” with God. Sure, I had asked Jesus into my
heart when I was in second grade, but that didn’t seem like anything unusual…nothing
really changed. It always seemed like it would have been better to have had a
dramatic conversion…like I was missing something.
When I became a Methodist, however, I began to realize that
salvation or conversion isn’t so much about the story of our past as it is the
reality of our present. If we believe in prevenient grace—the grace that goes
before our knowledge and love of God—we begin to realize that no matter whether
our story is dramatic or mundane, God is the one who has moved toward us first.
Any story about our conversion begins with God, not with us, and the reality of
our relationship with God is that it’s not merely historical—it’s bound up in
the present.
of John Wesley and the Methodists—which we can sum up in one word: grace. We
talked about how we were created in the image of God, to reflect God’s glory,
and that our vocation has always been to be in relationship with God and God’s
creation. We talked about how the first humans were created to be “very good,”
but that the humans wanted more than to be in God’s image—they exercised their
choice to disobey God in order to try and become gods themselves in effect.
They chose for themselves—a choice the Bible calls “sin.” Sin separated them
from their intimate relationship with God and set them and their descendants on
a journey far from God. Sin is our legacy, it is in our spiritual DNA, and we
are all carriers of that original disease—even if we somehow still believe
we’re pretty good.
seek a relationship with us, to transform us, and renew us in the image of God
we were created to be from the beginning. Remember the “one thing”—the goal of
grace of according to Wesley: renewal in the image of God. Not just our
personal renewal, but the renewal of all of creation “on earth as it is in
heaven.” Prevenient grace is God’s movement toward us, the grace that woos us
back to God and God’s image. Prevenient grace is the “porch”—the place where
God meets us, wherever we have gone and whatever we have done.
invitation, but there comes a point when we have to respond in order for a new,
transforming relationship to begin. There comes a point of decision, a point of
surrender, a point where we say “yes” to God’s offer of grace. It may happen in
a dramatic moment, or it may happen quietly and gradually, but grace always requires
a response.
grace. If prevenient grace is the porch, where we meet God, justifying grace is
the door—an entry point into a new relationship. We respond to God’s
invitation, and God responds to us. Our salvation, the beginning of our renewal
the image of God, requires something from us and something from God.
response to God’s offer of grace is faith. Notice what Paul says in Ephesians
2:8,9 – for by grace are you saved through
faith. It’s not our good works, not being a “good person” that saves us—it
is only faith in the grace of God that can begin to transform us.
Paul, faith was not merely an intellectual exercise but rather an active
movement toward God. The New Testament reveals that faith has always had two
components: repentance and belief. John the Baptist prepared the way for Jesus’
coming by calling people to repent
and believe the good news. Jesus said, “Repent for the kingdom of God is at
hand.” Paul told King Agrippa that his message was that people should repent
and turn to God (Acts 26:20). Repentance and belief are the movements of faith.
What is repentance? Well, when we hear that word it often
has a negative connotation. We think of it as being a bit depressing. I
remember one time after a worship service I had a woman come up to me and say
she really disliked it when we said a prayer of confession because it made her
feel bad. Well, that’s kind of the point. We can’t begin to change until we
realize that we need to change! To repent means to literall turn around—to do a
180, to move in a new direction. That’s all. It’s a change of course.
Repentance means change—which can be a good thing, but also a painful thing.
ourselves. We realize that we aren’t what we should be or could be. We need a
course correction, or maybe we even need to stop and do an assessment of our
lives. Repentance involves another word we might find a bit harsh: conviction.
That’s a word we associate with prison! But conviction is actually an essential
part of repentance and change.
engine” light comes on? What do you do when that happens? If it’s me, I start
looking for a mechanic right away. Something’s not right underneath. I’m not
sure what it is, but I need to find out. The repair might be costly, but it’s
the only way I’ll be able to keep moving forward and keep my car on the road.
Conviction kind of acts like the warning light of the soul—it brings us to the
point of change by telling us we have a problem. It’s only then that we can
begin to work on it, and we can begin to change.
we have to turn from something to something. We need something new to replace
that which is old—we need what Thomas Chalmers called the “expulsive power of a new affection.”
act, not just an idea or a thought-process. Belief is not simply agreeing to a set
of doctrines or propositions. Simply saying, “I believe in God” doesn’t mean
much. After all, even the devil believes in God!
component of faith. To believe means:
First, to have confidence and trust in the mercy of God.
Belief involves having a conception of God as love, that God is offering grace,
and that God wants to make us whole. It’s in vogue now for people to say, “I
don’t believe in God.” When they say that to me, my first question to them is,
“Which God don’t you believe in?” They usually say, “I don’t believe in a God
that is judgmental and arbitrary, a God who assigns people to hell, a God who
doesn’t do anything about the suffering in the world.” Well, I say, I don’t
believe in that God either. I believe in a God who wants to restore us through
grace, a God who loves us enough to die for us, and a God who engages our
suffering through his own suffering. That’s the message of the cross. We
believe in a God who doesn’t cut us off when we’re distant, but one who will
run to us and throw his arms around us when we return from failure in a far
country. Belief means that we have an assurance that this is the God who wants
to save us, and not the god of wrath, the god of hate, or the god of consumerism.
truly believe in God, we engage in an act of surrender, giving up control of
our lives to the Christ who is Lord—Lord over everything in our lives—our
relationships, our vocation, our family, our finances. Belief means we
recognize that God is above all and in all. Belief means we engage another word
that has a negative connotation: obedience. When was the last time you heard
that word? To obey means that we are subject to another, but in the case of God
our obedience is not a negative. In a counter-intuitive way, obedience to God
is an act of freedom. When we obey God, we are free to become the people God
created us to be because we are free from the burden of trying to find meaning
in all kinds of other places. The great Methodist missionary E. Stanley Jones
put it this way: Everyone obeys something or someone. And within obedience
there is freedom. An airplane pilot is free to fly anywhere he wants as long as
he obeys the rules of flight…(need rest of quote). Have you ever seen that
bumper sticker that says, “God is my co-pilot?” Now there’s a recipe for
disaster! God needs to be the pilot, or the flight is doomed.
respond to that offer of grace. When we choose to respond, we do so with faith
that is characterized by repentance and belief. When we respond with repentance
and belief, surrendering ourselves to God, God then does something for us and
in us—another movement of grace we call “justifying grace,” within which God
does two things: something for us and something in us.”
“justification,” which Wesley defined as “pardon, the forgiveness of sins.”
When we repent and believe, when we confess our sins, our need for God, our
need for change, God extends forgiveness to us. Forgiveness is healing, a
wiping clean of our past, giving us a clean slate on which to begin writing a
new story of a life being renewed in the image of God.
forgiveness. Forgiveness frees us from the prison of guilt and shame. When we
forgive someone else, we are released from the bondage of anger and the prison
of the past. Forgiveness is not the same as forgetting—rather it is the
redemption of our memory. We don’t forget, but we do learn. It is the process
of transforming evil into good.
I’ve counseled a lot of people over the years, and I would
say without reservation that the failure to give or receive forgiveness is the
root of most of the problems that people deal with. People have a hard time
forgiving others, the have a hard time asking for forgiveness, and have an even
harder time forgiving themselves. This is why we need to understand the power
of grace. God does not leave us in this prison, but wants to free us!
Forgiveness is freedom! The good news is that God has offered to heal our
brokenness through the brokenness of Christ. We are forgiven! God has done a
new thing for us. We are free!
We are given a new birth, and we begin to come alive as never before. The new
birth begins our renewal in the image of God. We are “born again” to become new
people with a new future—God’s future for us and for the whole creation.
Through God’s grace, we are given the power to begin to overcome sin and its
effects, we are given a new vision of wholeness. God begins a new work in us.
God begins to perfect us in his own image.
traditions emphasize being “born again” as though that is the primary focus of
God. Wesley would say that God works a new birth in us, but that God expects
that we will begin to grow up from there! A lot of traditions look at the
moment of new birth as the point at which one becomes a Christian—that the
moment accepting Christ is the ultimate goal. You accept Christ, you are a
Christian. Wesley (and I think Paul, too) saw the new birth not as an ending,
but as a beginning. We don’t fully become a Christian at that point of
decision, but rather we begin
becoming one. Becoming a Christian, becoming a follower of Christ, becoming a
person who reflects the image of Christ, is a life-long process—a journey of
grace.
that we are predisposed to. But Wesley would say that God’s grace is always
greater than our sin. The more that we continue to grow in God’s grace, the
more that we are filled with the Spirit and love of God, the less of an
influence that sin has over us. Any return we have toward our former life of
sin isn’t a failure of God’s grace, but rather a failure of our will and a
failure of faith in God’s ability to renew us in his image.
For Wesley, salvation is a dynamic experience and not a
static one. The question for us isn’t “When were you saved,” but Methodists
always ask, “Are you saved now? Are you on a journey of grace? Are you being
transformed and renewed in the image of God?” That is a continual choice on our
part.
refuse it at any point. Someone asked me if Wesley believed that we can “lose”
our salvation, Wesley believed first and foremost in God’s grace. God does not
ever rescind that offer of grace—that’s what prevenient grace is all about.
But, because we have the ability to choose, Wesley did believe that we could
exercise that choice to refuse God’s grace. Like the prodigal son, we can walk
away and go on our own journey. We don’t “lose” our salvation, our inheritance
of grace, but we can squander it and give it away. There are consequences for
our choices.
still looks down the driveway, waiting for us to return home!
though it may be. What matters is the story you’re writing with God right now.
Wesley was always asking the question, How is it with your
soul? Where are you in the journey of grace? Have you responded to God’s offer?
Are you ready to repent and believe? Or are you still in a far country? Have
you experienced the depth and breadth of God’s justifying grace? Have you
experienced his forgiveness? Are you ready to be forgiven? To forgive someone
else? To forgive yourself? Are you on the way to becoming the person God
created you to be?
Wherever you are on the journey this morning, I invite you
to join me in prayer…
