David Anguish
Sermons produce spiritual growth in much the same way vegetables produce physical growth. You seldom remember any one serving, but the cumulative effect of years of such healthy fare builds your strength. Likewise, though sermons do make an impression, usually we don't remember the particulars in any of them very long, but are instead edified by a steady diet of sound teaching which, over time, makes us spiritually mature men and women.
An exception came to light in a conversation my parents and I had not long ago. In the context of a discussion of God's grace, my mother shared a memory of a statement made by a preacher she heard nearly fifty years ago. In a gospel meeting in the church she then attended, the man said, "The only way you are saved by grace is if your name happens to be Grace." In other words, Grace will have to do what it takes herself. And so will Sue and Bob and David and George.
Now, I have long heard that some among us once stressed works of obedience to the point that grace was denied. I can even recall impressions formed from some of the preaching I heard as a youth which, erroneously, led me to conclude that grace was something believed by other religious groups, not us. But I have never heard anyone report such an explicit disregard of so many Bible passages.
When my mother reported this, I was incredulous. "Had he never read Paul!!?" I asked. How anyone can read a passage like Ephesians 2:4-9 and, in the name of preaching the gospel, make such a statement is beyond me. Even a reading of Acts, that book we have loved and used so much through the years, should keep such a thing from ever being said. Luke repeatedly stresses the role of grace in the growth of the early church as men and women were added to the church (see for example Acts 15:11; 20:24, 32, just three of the twenty verses in Acts where the word for "grace" is used).
Then there is Romans 11:6. Writing in the context of a written proclamation of the power and meaning of the gospel in which he shows conclusively that both Jew and Greek are saved only because of the intervention of God, Paul declared, "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace."
My study of history leads me to think that I know how the complete distortion of this truth could have been proclaimed by the preacher my mother heard. You see, there is much in the New Testament about our responsibility in salvation. It teaches that, though Christ died for all - the very act which extends God's grace to humanity - not all will be saved. Some will not accept the stipulations of his covenant. They will not perform the works of faith which God has said are necessary before one is considered a part of the body. Out of zeal to convince our religious neighbors of the necessity of such acts, some have swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme and diminished - or denied - the place of grace.
But let us also admit that there might be more to the resistance to grace than zeal run amok. Grace is a hard thing to accept. To do so means that we have to admit that we are unworthy and incapable. That we are weak. That apart from him, we can do nothing. And yes, that even our righteous deeds are no more than filthy rags in his sight (Isaiah 64:6). Human nature being what it is, we would rather not do that. So we look for another way, one which lets us bask in the fact that we don't do what so many do even as we do more than many ever try (cf. Luke 18:9-14).
Whether resistance to the idea of grace is traceable to these things or some others, Paul's words will not relent. "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace." God said it. That settles it.