Mathis Habits of Grace

Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines
1. Auflage 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4335-5050-8
Verlag: Crossway
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 240 Seiten

The Christian life is built on three seemingly unremarkable practices: reading the Bible, prayer, and fellowship with other believers. However, according to David Mathis, such 'habits of grace' are the God-designed channels through which his glorious grace flows-making them life-giving practices for all Christians. Whether it's hearing God's voice (the Word), having his ear (prayer), or participating in his body (fellowship), such spiritual rhythms of the Christian life have the power to awaken our souls to God's glory and stir our hearts for lifelong service in his name. What's more, these seemingly simple practices grant us access to a host of spiritual blessings that we can only begin to imagine this side of eternity-and the incredible joy that such blessings bring to God's children today.

David Mathis serves as senior teacher and executive editor at desiringGod.org; a pastor at Cities Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota; and an adjunct professor at Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis. He and his wife, Megan, have four children. He is the author of several books, including Habits of Grace: Enjoying Jesus through the Spiritual Disciplines.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mathis, David

Leseproben

Introduction

Grace Gone Wild

The grace of God is on the loose. Contrary to our expectations, counter to our assumptions, frustrating our judicial sentiments, and mocking our craving for control, the grace of God is turning the world upside down. God is shamelessly pouring out his lavish favor on undeserving sinners of all stripes and thoroughly stripping away our self-sufficiency.

Before turning our focus to “the means of grace,” and the practices (“habits”) that ready us to go on receiving God’s grace in our lives, this much must be clear from the outset: The grace of God is gloriously beyond our skill and technique. The means of grace are not about earning God’s favor, twisting his arm, or controlling his blessing, but readying ourselves for consistent saturation in the roll of his tides.

Grace has been on the move since before creation, roaming wild and free. Even before the foundation of the world, it was the untamed grace of God that jumped the bounds of time and space and considered a yet-to-be-created people in connection with his Son, and chose us in him (Eph. 1:4). It was in love—to the praise of his glorious grace—that “he predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus” (Eph. 1:5). Such divine choice was not based on foreseeing anything good in us. He chose us by grace—not “on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace” (Rom. 11:5–6). It was “not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began” (2 Tim. 1:9).

With patience, then—through creation, fall, and flood, through Adam, Noah, Abraham, and King David—God prepared the way. Humanity waited and groaned, gathering up the crumbs of his compassion as a foretaste of some feast to come. The prophets “prophesied about the grace that was to be yours” (1 Pet. 1:10). And in the fullness of time, it came. He came.

Invading Our Space

Now “the grace of God has appeared” (Titus 2:11). Grace couldn’t be kept from becoming flesh and dwelling among us in the God-man, full of grace and truth (John 1:14). From his fullness we have all received grace upon grace (John 1:16). The law was given through Moses, but grace and truth are here in him (John 1:17). Grace has a face.

But grace would not be restricted even here, even in this man. Grace would not just be embodied but break the chains to roam the globe unfettered. It was sheer grace that united us by faith to Jesus, Grace Incarnate, and blessed us in him “with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places” (Eph. 1:3). In grace were we called with effect (Gal. 1:6) and given new birth in our souls. Because of grace unmeasured, boundless, free, now our once-dead hearts beat and our once-lifeless lungs breathe. Only through grace do we believe (Acts 18:27) and only in grace do we receive “repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 2:25).

But such wild grace keeps going. We are given the Spirit of grace, experience our long-planned adoption, and enabled to cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15). We receive “the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace” (Eph. 1:7).

Grace keeps breaking through barriers and casting away restraints. Grace justifies. A perfect, unimpeachable, divinely approved, humanly applied righteousness is ours in this union with Jesus. We are “justified by his grace as a gift” (Rom. 3:24; Titus 3:7). Through this one man Jesus, we are counted among “those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness” (Rom. 5:17). And so we happily say with Paul, “I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness were through the law, then Christ died for no purpose” (Gal. 2:21).1

Breaking into Our Lives

And just when we think we have been carried far enough, that God has done for us all that we could imagine and more, grace shatters the mold again. Grace sanctifies. It is too wild to let us stay in love with unrighteousness. Too free to leave us in slavery to sin. Too untamed to let our lusts go unconquered. Grace’s power is too uninhibited to not unleash us for the happiness of true holiness.

So it is that we “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Pet. 3:18) and live “not under law but under grace” (Rom. 6:14). Grace abounds not through our continuing in sin, but through our Spirit-empowered, ongoing liberation (Rom. 6:1). Grace is too strong to leave us passive, too potent to let us wallow in the mire of our sins and weaknesses. “My grace is sufficient for you,” Jesus says, “for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9). It is the grace of God that gives us his “means of grace” for our ongoing perseverance and growth and joy this side of the coming new creation. And the grace of God inspires and empowers the various habits and practices by which we avail ourselves of God’s means.

Flooding the Future

Just when we’re sure it is done, and certain that some order must be restored and some boundary established, God’s grace not only floods our future in this life but also spans the divide into the next, and pours out onto the plains of our eternity. Grace glorifies.

If the Scriptures didn’t make plain this story of our glory, we’d be scared to even dream of such grace. Not only will Jesus be glorified in us, but we will be glorified in him, “according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 1:12). He is “the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ” (1 Pet. 5:10). So Peter tells us to “set your hope fully on the grace that will be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:13). It will be indescribably stunning in the coming ages as he shows “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph. 2:7). Even the most mature among us have only begun to taste the grace of God.

Chosen before time. Called with effect. United to Jesus in faith and repentance. Adopted and forgiven. Justified. Sanctified. Glorified. And satisfied forever. This is grace gone wonderfully wild. This is the flood of God’s favor in which we discover the power and practice of the means of grace.

Put Yourself in the Path of God’s Grace

It is in this endless sea of his grace that we walk the path of the Christian life and take steps of grace-empowered effort and initiative. It works something like this.

I can flip a switch, but I don’t provide the electricity. I can turn on a faucet, but I don’t make the water flow. There will be no light and no liquid refreshment without someone else providing it. And so it is for the Christian with the ongoing grace of God. His grace is essential for our spiritual lives, but we don’t control the supply. We can’t make the favor of God flow, but he has given us circuits to connect and pipes to open expectantly. There are paths along which he has promised his favor.

As we have celebrated above, our God is lavish in his grace; he is free to liberally dispense his goodness without even the least bit of cooperation and preparation on our part, and often he does. But he also has his regular channels. And we can routinely avail ourselves of these revealed paths of blessing—or neglect them to our detriment.

Where the Grace Keeps Passing

“The essence of the Christian life,” writes John Piper, “is learning to fight for joy in a way that does not replace grace.” We cannot earn God’s grace or make it flow apart from his free gift. But we can position ourselves to go on getting as he keeps on giving. We can “fight to walk in the paths where he has promised his blessings.”2 We can ready ourselves to remain receivers along his regular routes, sometimes called “the spiritual disciplines,” or even better, “the means of grace.”3

Such practices need not be fancy or highfalutin.4 They are the stuff of everyday, basic Christianity—unimpressively mundane, but spectacularly potent by the Spirit. While there’s no final and complete list of such practices, the long tally of helpful habits can be clustered underneath three main principles: hearing God’s voice, having his ear, and belonging to his body. Or simply: word, prayer, and fellowship.5

In the last generation, we have seen some resurgence of interest among Christians in the spiritual disciplines, many of which were considered “means of grace” by our spiritual ancestors. “The doctrine of the disciplines,” says J. I. Packer, “is really a restatement and extension of classical Protestant teaching on the means of grace.”6 Whatever the term, the key is that God has revealed certain channels through which he regularly pours out his favor. And we’re foolish not to take his word on them and build habits of spiritual life around them.

What Means of Grace Means and Doesn’t

To put means with grace might endanger the free nature of grace. But it need not do so—not if the means are coordinate with receiving and the exertions of effort are graciously supplied. This is emphatically the case for the Christian. Here there is no ground for boasting.7

The one on whom we lean is “the God of all grace” (1 Pet. 5:10). He not only elects the undeserving without condition (Rom. 8:29–33; Eph. 1:4) and works in them the miracle of new birth and the gift of faith, but he also freely declares them righteous by that faith (“justification”) and begins supplying the flow of spiritual life and...