Sola Gratia: The Freedom of a New Motivation

REFLECTION QUOTES

“The ultimate test of our spirituality is the measure of our amazement at the grace of God.”

~D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones (1899-1981), Welsh-born medical doctor and preacher

“…the New Testament doctrine is grace; and ethics is gratitude; and something is wrong with any form of Christianity in which, experimentally and practically, this saying is not being verified. Those who suppose that the doctrine of God’s grace tends to encourage moral laxity are simply showing that, in the most literal sense, they do not know what they are talking about. For love awakens love in return; and love, once awakened, desires to give pleasure.”

~J.I. Packer, British-born theologian and author

“God’s law is our pleasure when the God of the law is our God.”

~C.H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), famed London preacher

“The Gospel is bad news before it is good news.”

~Frederick Buechner, American writer and theologian

“It is high time for the church to honor its Founder by embracing sola gratia anew, to reignite the beacon of hope for the hopeless and point all of us bedraggled performancists back to the freedom and rest of the Cross. To leave our ifs, ands, or buts behind and get back to proclaiming the only message that matters—and the only message we have—the Word about God’s one-way love for sinners…. Two-hundred-proof, unflinching grace. It’s shocking and scary, unnatural and undomesticated, but it is also the only thing that can set us free and light the church—and the world—on fire.”

~Robert Farrar Capon (1925-2013), Episcopal priest and author

“Love…jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope.”

~Maya Angelou (1928-2014), American poet and author

SERMON PASSAGE

Ephesians 2:1-10 (NASB)

1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.