Prevenient Grace - United Methodist Distinctives
1 Tax collectors and other notorious sinners often came to listen to Jesus teach. 2 This made the Pharisees and teachers of religious law complain that he was associating with such sinful people—even eating with them!
3 So Jesus told them this story: 4 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. 6 When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”
Last week we looked at the bad news: Though God created us in His image and in perfect relationship with Him, by Adam’s sin and by our own sin, we destroyed God’s image in us and ruined our relationship with Him. Unfortunately that bad news became the normal human condition: we are without God.
Without God, the best we can hope for is a state of sleep. Like Rip Van Winkle, we slumber on, unaware of God’s touch all around us.
Fortunately for us, we weren’t left without an alarm clock. The seminary word for the alarm clock, the wake-up call from God, is Prevenient Grace.
Without God’s grace, the situation would be hopeless, but fortunately we do have God’s grace. God reaches out toward us before we are even able to reach out to Him.
John 3:16, one of the most famous verses in the Bible, tells us that God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but would have eternal life. Though the eternal life part is contingent on our belief, Jesus’ death is not. He died for us, whether we believed in Him or not – part of our communion liturgy is this passage from Romans 5:8: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That proves God’s love for us.
Like the sheep and the coin from Jesus’ parables, we didn’t necessarily set out to become lost. In fact, it could be that the lostness had nothing to do with us. But regardless of how we became lost, we begin with several things in common with the sheep and the coin. First of all, at the beginning of the story, they were lost. It can be easy to point at certain factors to excuse someone’s lostness. They came from a bad upbringing. They had a rough life. They didn’t get enough attention. Or, on the other hand, it can be easy to point fingers at someone who "should have known better" but was lost anyway. They were brought up right. Their parents gave them everything. They came to church for so many years… Whatever the case, and however someone got lost, that is our initial state, and that brings me to the second commonality we have with the sheep and the coin. Like it or not, there’s nothing either of them can do about their lostness. The sheep can bleat, but that doesn’t do a lot of good out in the vast wilderness. A coin can’t do much of anything but lay there and wish it weren’t lost. We, in our sinfulness, can’t do anything on our own either. In sin, we’re lost and there’s nothing we can do about it.
But we also have something positive in common with the sheep and the coin. Did you notice that there’s someone searching for both of them? No matter how lost we may be, we can not stray so far that God isn’t still reaching out for us.
How, then, does God reach out to us before we even acknowledge Him? Part of how His grace works is called "moral law." This is what Paul was talking about in Romans 2:14-15, where he says, "Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and their thoughts either accuse them or tell that they are doing right."
If it was just a case of moral law letting us know that we were wrong, it would be a pretty heavy burden for us. But instead of simply telling us we’re wrong, it lets us know that there’s nothing we can do ourselves to be "right." Instead, it pushes us toward the gift that Jesus Christ gave to us through His sacrifice on the cross.
We’re a pretty individualistic, self-help-oriented society. We believe that within each of us is the ability to "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps" and to thus better ourselves, to achieve whatever it is that we set out to do. The "self made man (or woman)" is one of the ideals in our culture. On the other hand, there are also those who are for some reason unable to pick themselves up; how do we view them? There is a correct way to view them: as a whole lot more like us than we care to admit.
Did you notice the reason why Jesus told these parables? He told them because the religious elite were grumbling about the kind of losers Jesus was hanging out with. I can hear the complaints now: "He should wait until they clean up their acts before he hangs out with them!"
But He didn’t, and that’s exactly the point about His Prevenient Grace. He approaches us before we’re worthy to hang out with Him. Revelation 3:20 presents a great picture of Jesus, a picture which has been reproduced on stained glass on our east wall. "Listen!
I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me."
Maybe some of you are standing just inside the door today, hearing Him knock on the door. That’s Prevenient Grace! If you are there, it’s time answer the door, to invite Him in, to do a 180 turn from your sins. Because if you don’t let Him in, if you choose to remain in sin, there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. But if you’re willing to open the door to Him, you’ve taken the first steps along the journey of salvation!
3 So Jesus told them this story: 4 “If a man has a hundred sheep and one of them gets lost, what will he do? Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. 6 When he arrives, he will call together his friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost sheep.’ 7 In the same way, there is more joy in heaven over one lost sinner who repents and returns to God than over ninety-nine others who are righteous and haven’t strayed away!
8 “Or suppose a woman has ten silver coins and loses one. Won’t she light a lamp and sweep the entire house and search carefully until she finds it? 9 And when she finds it, she will call in her friends and neighbors and say, ‘Rejoice with me because I have found my lost coin.’ 10 In the same way, there is joy in the presence of God’s angels when even one sinner repents.”
Last week we looked at the bad news: Though God created us in His image and in perfect relationship with Him, by Adam’s sin and by our own sin, we destroyed God’s image in us and ruined our relationship with Him. Unfortunately that bad news became the normal human condition: we are without God.
Without God, the best we can hope for is a state of sleep. Like Rip Van Winkle, we slumber on, unaware of God’s touch all around us.
Fortunately for us, we weren’t left without an alarm clock. The seminary word for the alarm clock, the wake-up call from God, is Prevenient Grace.
Without God’s grace, the situation would be hopeless, but fortunately we do have God’s grace. God reaches out toward us before we are even able to reach out to Him.
John 3:16, one of the most famous verses in the Bible, tells us that God loved the world so much that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish, but would have eternal life. Though the eternal life part is contingent on our belief, Jesus’ death is not. He died for us, whether we believed in Him or not – part of our communion liturgy is this passage from Romans 5:8: while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. That proves God’s love for us.
Like the sheep and the coin from Jesus’ parables, we didn’t necessarily set out to become lost. In fact, it could be that the lostness had nothing to do with us. But regardless of how we became lost, we begin with several things in common with the sheep and the coin. First of all, at the beginning of the story, they were lost. It can be easy to point at certain factors to excuse someone’s lostness. They came from a bad upbringing. They had a rough life. They didn’t get enough attention. Or, on the other hand, it can be easy to point fingers at someone who "should have known better" but was lost anyway. They were brought up right. Their parents gave them everything. They came to church for so many years… Whatever the case, and however someone got lost, that is our initial state, and that brings me to the second commonality we have with the sheep and the coin. Like it or not, there’s nothing either of them can do about their lostness. The sheep can bleat, but that doesn’t do a lot of good out in the vast wilderness. A coin can’t do much of anything but lay there and wish it weren’t lost. We, in our sinfulness, can’t do anything on our own either. In sin, we’re lost and there’s nothing we can do about it.
But we also have something positive in common with the sheep and the coin. Did you notice that there’s someone searching for both of them? No matter how lost we may be, we can not stray so far that God isn’t still reaching out for us.
How, then, does God reach out to us before we even acknowledge Him? Part of how His grace works is called "moral law." This is what Paul was talking about in Romans 2:14-15, where he says, "Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and their thoughts either accuse them or tell that they are doing right."
If it was just a case of moral law letting us know that we were wrong, it would be a pretty heavy burden for us. But instead of simply telling us we’re wrong, it lets us know that there’s nothing we can do ourselves to be "right." Instead, it pushes us toward the gift that Jesus Christ gave to us through His sacrifice on the cross.
We’re a pretty individualistic, self-help-oriented society. We believe that within each of us is the ability to "pull ourselves up by the bootstraps" and to thus better ourselves, to achieve whatever it is that we set out to do. The "self made man (or woman)" is one of the ideals in our culture. On the other hand, there are also those who are for some reason unable to pick themselves up; how do we view them? There is a correct way to view them: as a whole lot more like us than we care to admit.
Did you notice the reason why Jesus told these parables? He told them because the religious elite were grumbling about the kind of losers Jesus was hanging out with. I can hear the complaints now: "He should wait until they clean up their acts before he hangs out with them!"
But He didn’t, and that’s exactly the point about His Prevenient Grace. He approaches us before we’re worthy to hang out with Him. Revelation 3:20 presents a great picture of Jesus, a picture which has been reproduced on stained glass on our east wall. "Listen!
I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you and you with me."Maybe some of you are standing just inside the door today, hearing Him knock on the door. That’s Prevenient Grace! If you are there, it’s time answer the door, to invite Him in, to do a 180 turn from your sins. Because if you don’t let Him in, if you choose to remain in sin, there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. But if you’re willing to open the door to Him, you’ve taken the first steps along the journey of salvation!
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