Grace and peace to you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Hear the Word of God, from 2 Peter 1.8-9:
8 The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 But those who fail to develop in this way are shortsighted or blind, forgetting that they have been cleansed from their old sins.
The Scripture text from 2 Peter is translated in positive terms in the New Living Translation (which I’ve been using in this Lenten sermon series): The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. However, in the original New Testament Greek, it actually reads in negative terms: The more you grow like this, the less you’ll be lazy and worthless…
Lazy and worthless? Ouch!
In his commentary on this passage, Grant Osborne writes: “Peter was picturing a person who could be working but preferred to sit idly in the marketplace doing nothing, of no use to anyone. Fruitfulness in the Christian life is a primary demand…Peter’s point is that we must work with all our energy to produce these virtues (moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, love) under the empowering presence of the Spirit, and we must yield to the Spirit so that they progressively grow and produce a harvest of right living…God does not magically infuse them in us through the Spirit. We are expected to work very hard at putting them into practice in our daily lives.”
“Work very hard?” Double ouch!
In the early 1500’s, a German priest named Martin Luther was determined to live in a right relationship with God for all eternity. In keeping with the perspective of the Roman Catholic Church’s teaching at the time, he sought to earn God’s salvation through constant efforts to do “good works.” In the process, he found himself disappointed and disillusioned at his prospects. However, Luther was a brilliant and devoted student of the Bible, and he rediscovered the powerful New Testament truth that salvation is a gift to be received rather than a reward to be earned. Salvation (in essence a right relationship with God) has been made possible by Jesus’ death and resurrection; Jesus has already completed the “good work” needed to provide this salvation. Passages such as Ephesians 2.8-9 hammered home this ultimate truth to Luther:
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.
Luther’s recovery of this central New Testament teaching led to the movement known as the Protestant Reformation, which shook the Church and the world…and is continuing to do so. The bedrock message of the Reformation can be summarized in the “Five Solas” (a reference to the Latin terminology used therein):
1. Sola Scriptura (“Scripture alone”): The Bible alone is our highest authority.
2. Sola Fide (“faith alone”): We are saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
3. Sola Gratia (“grace alone”): We are saved by the grace of God alone.
4. Solus Christus (“Christ alone”): Jesus Christ alone is our Lord, Savior, and King.
5. Soli Deo Gloria (“to the glory of God alone”): We live for the glory of God alone.
To all of this, I can only say…Amen!
However, I want to return for a moment to Ephesians 2.8-9. You see, the Apostle Paul doesn’t conclude his paragraph (and thus his thought) with verse nine; the paragraph concludes with verse ten. Here is his complete thought:
God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
In other words, we are saved BY grace through faith…and we are saved FOR obedient productivity.
Do you remember the “theological equation” I shared in the first sermon of this Lenten series?
“Grace + Response = Growth”
We grow in productivity and usefulness to Christ when we practice in daily life the virtues listed by the Apostle Peter in his second New Testament letter: moral excellence, knowledge, self-control, endurance, godliness, brotherly affection, and love. Obedience is our faithful response to the grace God has already once-and-for-all extended to us through His Son Jesus. As Peter reminds us in our Scripture text:
The more you grow like this, the more productive and useful you will be in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.
In The Glorious Pursuit, Gary Thomas writes:
“How do we become humble? By practicing humble acts. How do we become gentler? By practicing gentleness. We need the regeneration of the Holy Spirit to be empowered to act in a new way, but we also need obedience to activate and solidify the virtues into our souls...Obedience is our calling, our cover, our privilege, and our honor, precisely because of who we’re called to be obedient to. Obedience to God means freedom from the crowd’s opinion, deliverance from our own rank desires, and liberation from the tyranny and stranglehold of sin. Obedience is the spiritual attitude of Christ that completes the clothing of ourselves in His character…Obedience, ironic as it seems, will give you back the life you want to live, a life of fullness, mission, and purpose.”
On Palm Sunday, followers of Jesus often focus on the response of the crowds as He approached Jerusalem at the beginning of His final Passion week. The people cried, “Hosanna!” The term literally means, “Save us!”
And He did…through the cross.
On this Palm Sunday, perhaps we should focus not on the crowds but on Jesus, for His arrival in Jerusalem was the ultimate act of faithful obedience.
When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross. Therefore, God elevated him to the place of highest honor and gave him the name above all other names, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2.8-11).
May we be found faithfully obedient to Jesus Christ as Lord on Palm Sunday and on every day of our lives. If we are, we will be found productive and useful…eternally.
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
Amen.
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