United to Share God's Grace to Others

Isaiah 52:6–7 ESV

6 Therefore my people shall know my name. Therefore in that day they shall know that it is I who speak; here I am.” 7 How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, “Your God reigns.”

Prayer

Introduction

This morning, we will be continuing to unpack and explain our church’s mission statement. You can find the mission statement in the bulletin insert. We at Emmanuel Baptist are “a church united in Christ to share God’s grace and show God’s glory.” So far, we have considered what it means for us as individuals to be united to Christ and we have seen that our individual union with Christ has far reaching ramifications.

One of those ramifications is that because of our union with Christ, we are united to other believers. We are one body knitted together. As we saw last week, our union with Christ and each other should produce graciousness, kindness, forgiveness and tenderheartedness towards one another. This week, we are going to think about how we can and should share God’s grace to unbelievers.

Scripture

Our passage this morning is . If you are able, please stand for the reading of God’s Word. We do this to show appreciation to God for His Word, and in recognition that these are the most important Words we can possibly hear today. says,

1 Timothy 1:12–20 ESV

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

1 Timothy 1:12–17 ESV

12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

1 Timothy 1:12–20 ESV

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

1 Timothy 1:12–17 ESV

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

1 Timothy 1:12–20 ESV

I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen. This charge I entrust to you, Timothy, my child, in accordance with the prophecies previously made about you, that by them you may wage the good warfare, holding faith and a good conscience. By rejecting this, some have made shipwreck of their faith, among whom are Hymenaeus and Alexander, whom I have handed over to Satan that they may learn not to blaspheme.

Thank you, you may be seated.

Sermon

So, our big question this morning is, “How can we share God’s grace with unbelievers?” We discussed last week about how our union with Christ, how the grace we have received, is the fuel for us being gracious towards other believers, but I would suggest that our graciousness cannot stop there.

The, first way we can share God’s grace is to simply be a people of humility and graciousness. We see Paul modeling that for us in the passage and in his life. Paul never hid his past from people. He readily admitted that he was a blasphemer and enemy of Christ. He used that to show that Christ was sufficient to save the worst of sinners – which he considered himself to be.

Sometimes people look at the church and think that they couldn’t go to church because of this issue or that problem or these sins in their lives. Worse than that, people often have in their mind that they can’t go to Christ until they clean up their lives some first. Where do they get this idea? Well, they look at Christians and they can see that the lives of Christians are different – and that is a good thing! The problem isn’t that our lives are different from the culture around us, the problem is that often we act as if we never ever looked like the world. Like we never sin and never struggle with things and never have. Like I said, this is connected to what we talked about last week.

We ought to be using our past struggles and failures to magnify the grace of God in our lives. To do that, we first have to admit that there are struggles and past failures, and often we are reluctant to do that. But again, look at Paul. Look at the type of person he proclaimed that he was. A Blasphemer. A persecutor. An insolent opponent. Paul was an enemy of Christ and His Gospel, but that was the past. Christ had saved him. Changed him. Paul uses the change to point to the grace of God. We should do that same thing. We should be honest with ourselves, with each other (as we saw last week), and with the lost world. And use our past to share God’s grace.

Here are a few quick benefits.

It keeps us humble – if we knew that everyone knew how sinful we were, there would be little room to be puffed up.

It makes us approachable – One of the things I run into a lot is that when people find out I’m a pastor, they start apologizing for using foul language around me. It’s really quite funny. It is as if people think that a pastor has never heard those types of words in their life. That I’m going to burst into flames or something. I usually chuckle to myself and tell them that it’s fine and that they can’t use any words that I haven’t heard before. My point being, is that often unbelievers feel like Christians are unapproachable because the unbeliever doesn’t feel like they can be themselves around a Christian.

Being honest and opened about our past failures also helps us to be relatable. This is connected to being approachable. But if unbelievers know what we once were, they can better relate to us and us to them.

Now I want to make a few caveats. I am not saying to go out and sin and build up your testimony so that you can better relate to unbelievers. I’m simply encouraging us to remove our veneers of perfection and to let people see the mighty saving power of Jesus in our lives. I’m also not encouraging you to revel in the “good old days” when you had a good time doing this and that. Paul never speaks of his sinful past in such a way as to reminisce, but instead to share God’s grace. Live in such a way so that – like Paul – Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example.

Now, I want to look at a few passages, and I will make a few remarks about each one as we go along.

2 Corinthians 5:16–21 ESV

16 From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

says, “From now on, therefore, we regard no one according to the flesh. Even though we once regarded Christ according to the flesh, we regard him thus no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

The point I want to make from this passage is that we who were once in the flesh are reconciled to God through Christ and are called to ambassadors of that reconciliation. We share the grace of God by imploring others on behalf of Christ, to be reconciled to God.

1 Peter 2:9 ESV

9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

says, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” - We are set apart as a people that we may proclaim the grace of God that we have received.

We are set apart as a people that we may proclaim the grace of God that we have received.

Romans 10:13–15 ESV

13 For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” 14 How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? 15 And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!”

How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent? As it is written, “How beautiful are the feet of those who preach the good news!””

This passage is absolutely clear that if we do not go and preach the Good News, people will not hear it, and if they don’t hear it, they cannot call upon the name of the Lord and be saved. We are called to share God’s grace.

Now that I’ve laid a really thick foundation, I want to basically sum up what I’ve just said in some more succinct points. Back to our opening question, “How can we share God’s grace with unbelievers?”

First, by being gracious people. The world should know more about our gracious Lord than they do about our politics – for example. Let me explain by looking briefly at two approaches to abortion. Let’s say there are two different groups waiting outside an abortion clinic. One group has signs that are nothing but condemning and brutal in their approach, and they are yelling and chanting about how terrible of people the women are who are going into the clinic. The other group sits outside and prays for the women, and they approach the women in a non-threatening manner and give them a pamphlet and politely say something like, “Please at least read this pamphlet before you kill the precious child within you. I’m sure you don’t think you have another option, but you do, and I’m praying for you. Please for your own sake, and the sake of your child, don’t do this terrible thing.”

Both groups recognize the seriousness of the sin that occurs in that clinic, but out of those two groups, who is the woman more likely to respond to? What if she does go through with the abortion, but later is convicted of the terrible thing she has done – then who will she be more likely to talk to? The condemning group, or the gracious one?

First, be gracious people.

Second, be an example of how Christ can change lives. Now this has two parts. First of all, we actually have to look different than the world. Church, we undercut the Gospel when we tell people that Jesus changes lives, but we continue living in unrepentant sin. Secondly, and related, we do no good if we do live holy lives, but we can’t express how Christ has changed us. That is, if we pretend that we’ve always been pleasing to God, we cheapen what Christ has actually done for us and how desperately needed it was.

First, be gracious people. Second, be an example of how Christ changes lives.

Third, proclaim the good news. The first two points have to do with our lifestyle, but this requires that we actively tell the lost about Christ. Maybe you’ve heard the quote that says, “Preach the Gospel to all the world, and if necessary, use words.” That quote is nonsense. The very nature of preaching the Gospel the very definition of preaching requires the use of words. No one can know Christ merely by watching your life. They must hear the truth. Lifestyle-only evangelism is not a thing, because it is not evangelism. But our evangelism does need to be supported by our lifestyle.

In Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life, Don Whitney put it this way, “Living a life openly devoted to Christ also manifests a power that augments evangelism.” A little later he wrote, “The most powerful ongoing Christian witness has always been the speaking of God’s Word by one who is living God’s Word.”

A month or two ago, I preached on the biblical foundations for evangelism and missions, and also walked through a method that I like to use, but this isn’t that sermon. Let me just say this, find a biblical way to share the Gospel that you are comfortable with. If you know enough to be saved, you know enough to share.

I also want to encourage you that it is the role of the church united in Christ to share the Gospel. When I say that, I don’t mean the church as an institution or organization. I mean the church as a body of believers. It is our job, as individuals to proclaim Christ. We have a tendency to try to outsource our personal responsibility to others. We think that if we give money to missions, then that is good enough. That is not accurate. It is good to give to missions and is a way we can partly share God’s grace, but it does not replace the commands God has given us individually. Nor can we as a church outsource our personal, individual responsibility to Sunday School teachers or church staff. Let me put a finer point on that, it is not my duty to evangelize the lost because I’m a pastor. It is my duty to evangelize because I am a follower of Christ. Because we have received grace upon grace, we should constantly look for opportunities to share that grace with others.

Conclusion

For Believers, we have many excuses for not sharing the grace of God to the lost, but they are just that. Excuses. Frankly, we are often disobedient to the commands of Scripture, and that is sin. Sin that we ought to repent of. Brother’s let our lives and our words tell the story of how Christ saves sinners.

If you are here this morning and you are not a follower of Christ, why not? You cannot clean yourself up enough to make yourself pleasing to God. Only God can make you clean enough to be pleasing to Him, and He does that through Christ. says that “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.” Confessing that Jesus is Lord involves saying that He is King and admitting that what He says is true. It means admitting to being a rebel against His rule over your life. It means to turn from that sinful rebellion and trust in Christ alone as the one who saves sinners.

We are about to move into a time of worship through response. We believe that any time we hear the Word of God, we respond either in rebellion or in worship. Rebellion might look like standing and singing the song, but refusing to change or grow in Christlikeness, or it may look like continuing to reject the Gospel. Worship might look like singing joyfully because Jesus has saved you a sinner of the worst kind. Or it might look like repentance for neglecting to share God’s grace as you ought. Regardless of what your response looks like, I do hope you will respond in worship that brings honor and glory forever and ever to the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God.

Let’s pray.

United to Share God's Grace to Others

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