Grace Freely Given

I know I have slacked a little in my sermons but I have been kind of busy lately :)  I promise to get back on track and I want to make sure to thank those of you who have been reading the sermons over the past year.  My hope is that your faith has increased and that God's grace and love has become more apparent to each of you.  May God Bless and keep you!

 Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,

2 To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord[a] and ours:

3 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4 I give thanks to my God always for you because of the grace of God that has been given you in Christ Jesus, 5 for in every way you have been enriched in him, in speech and knowledge of every kind— 6 just as the testimony of[c] Christ has been strengthened among you— 7 so that you are not lacking in any spiritual gift as you wait for the revealing of our Lord Jesus Christ. 8 He will also strengthen you to the end, so that you may be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.9 God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

 In the nine verses I just read, Christ is mentioned nine times.  Paul knows this is going to be a difficult letter to write because of what he is getting ready to tell the Corinthians.  Let me put it this way, if you critiquing someone and trying to do it nicely, you most likely start of with a compliment or something nice to say in general.  For example, if by rare chance, I have a boring sermon, and this is just an example remember, but if that day does ever come and you would like to tell me about it, you most likely will start with, “It is really nice out this morning, but that sermon was boring...” Or maybe you will say, “That is a really nice tie, but I didn’t follow your sermon this morning...”  When we are helping someone get better we often start with a compliment to make them feel not so bad about our critique of them.  If someone complimented my tie first, I could walk away saying, “My sermon wasn’t that good but man, at least I looked good doing it.”  Another example is how Griffin interacts with Cora.  When Griffin and I are wrestling, we put our foreheads together and start getting at each other.  Griffin had difficulty understanding that he cannot get that intense with his little sister just yet.  He will get forehead to forehead with Cora and talk to her and it is just a little much for Cora.  As his parents, we tell Griffin that it is nice that he is talking to his sister but he needs to back up a little bit.  This way, he knows that it is ok for him to talk and sing to her but that he needs to stay back a little bit.  Paul is using this exact technique in this opening to his letter to the Corinthians.  He knows the Corinthians have a lot to learn about what it means to be a Christian in a world that makes being a Christian difficult.  So he starts off with compliments, telling them they are sanctified in Christ and that they were called to be His holy people.  In mentioning Christ as often as he does in these nine verses, Paul is letting us know that Christ should be our first repeated thought in difficult situations.  Sometimes in the Church (capital C), we use bylaws and our thoughts of human justice to remedy a difficult situation.  And in our personal lives, we deal with difficult situations with our own mental and spiritual power but Paul did not do any of these things.  In the difficult situations Paul faced, he looked to Christ.  Paul first looked to the Cross and the love of Christ and used those as the tools to deal with difficult situations.  

In the second verse of our scripture this morning, Paul tells the Corinthians that they are sanctified in Christ.  In this context, I had to look up what it meant to be sanctified and it means to be “set apart or declared as holy.”  Think about that for a moment, Christ set each of us apart and declared us holy.  So this means that in the truest definition of the word, being Christian means that Christ died for us and we know it.  In knowing this fact, we then realize that this sacrifice makes us belong to God in a very special way.  Griffin and Cora belong to me just as your children belong to each of you and we all have had to make sacrifices on their behalf.  I would venture to say than any of you would be willing to make absolutely any sacrifice you would have to for you children just as God did for us.  Our children do not fully understand the sacrifices we make for them until the day they have children of their own.  For example, you totally underestimate changing a dirty diaper until the day you have to cut a onesy of your child with scissors so they do not get poo on their face or in their hair.  This is just one example and there are millions of others but these kinds of things are lost on our children for many years of their lives.  Finding our relationship with God, is not much different... Through much of our Christian faith, we have a tendency to underestimate what God has done for us.  Sure, we understand what he has done our behalf but it is only when we pick up that cross ourself and strive to live a life with the sacrifice of Christ surrounding every decision we make that we can fully understand that relationship.  

Our relationship with God is definitely a personal choice.  As parents, we can do everything possible to get our children to also take up their own cross and carry it with them through the course of their life but that choice is ultimately their own.  But, what we can do is make our faith such a priority that our children cannot help but see how great our relationship with God is.  Once that choice is made to follow Christ, we have to realize that Christianity is not individualistic.  Have you ever noticed how Paul addresses the different churches he writes to?   He says “to the Church of God in Corinth, to God’s holy people in Ephesus, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father, to God’s holy people in Christ Jesus at Philippi...”  All of these are addressed to a certain region but they are also addressed to entire Church of God.  Paul makes sure that each city he writes the letters are one part in the larger scheme of things by helping them understand that their church was not thee church.  When we too think of Church this way, we will remember more of the reality of what unites us and less of what divides us.  This helps us to understand that the message of cross can be spread across many different platforms but the saving grace of that message is unchanged.

Now we move onto the thanksgiving section of Paul’s opening to the letter of the Corinthians and we see that Paul continue to lift up the Church of God in Corinth.  Paul’s call to thanksgiving goes much further than just a simple “thank you.”  While I am sure God does appreciate our prayers of thanks, God is looking for something more and this is what Paul is also pushing us towards.  God truly wants us to rearrange our lives around Him and in doing so, this is how we really show God that we are thankful for what He has done for us.  Think about it terms of your own children:  what is the biggest, greatest, most awesome thing about seeing your children grow up?  The greatest reward as a parent is seeing your children accomplishing more than you even dreamed they could.  It is seeing them realize the impact of your faith in your life.  It is seeing them live according to morals, ideals, and rules of integrity that you set before them as they grew older.  As God’s children, He too gets the same delight as our Father.  When we surround ourselves with our faith and help others cultivate their faith, this is when God truly knows we are thankful for what He has done in our lives.  

 In the last six verses of our scripture this morning, we find Paul encouraging the Corinthians to be thankful for two different things: the gift of grace (charisma) and spiritual gifts.  The gift that is given freely and undeservedly comes from the greek word charisma.  This word has a much different meaning to us today but this word is one of Paul’s favorites.  This greek word means a gift freely given to a person, which they did not deserve and which that person could never earn by themselves.  This gift of grace is the only thing that fits into this category of charisma.  I racked my brain to come up with anything else that would fit.  I first thought of love but those that we love, like our spouse or our children, deserved to be loved and in the case of my wife, she has also definitely earned that love.  I thought of trust and respect, but that too must be earned.  I could not think of anything else that could fit into this category.  Our grace is truly something that is unearned, undeserved and something we cannot accomplish on our own.  God has given each of us certain gifts: the gift of gab, the gift to teach, the gift of patience, the gift of understanding and the list can go on and on.  All of you are good at something and it is that something, even if not noticed or realized, that God has given you to help spread this message of charisma.  When your gifts are realized, it brings a whole new atmosphere and character into your life.  These skills that we possess are not because of own achievement, and I know that can be a tough pill to swallow, but they are gifts from God; therefore we hold them in trust from God.  They are not to be used as we want as we see fit; instead, they are to be used as God has called us to use them.  We are called to use these gifts for the glory of God and the good of our fellow man.  

In closing, verse nine tells us that God is faithful and some translations say that we can safely rely on God.  In the course of our lives, we may have been let down by those we held closest and loved the most and this can make it difficult for us to fully place our trust into anything else.  God is faithful, we can fully rely on Him.  We will also come into difficult situations where we feel that we have been let down by God but it is in those times that we need to be like Paul and continue to repeatedly call on Christ.  There will be events in this life that shake our faith to its very core, there will be difficulties to overcome but if we prepare our hearts and minds through our faith then we will be able to continue to walk down the path that Christ has laid before us.  Pick up your cross and carry it through every step you take.  Amen.

God Bless,

Clinton

Fairview Christian Church