Grace: So Much More Than You Know & So Much Better Than You Think

GRACE

So Much More Than You Know & So Much Better Than You Think

Casual Discussions & Meditations On the Grace of God

Brad J. Gray

GRACE: So Much More Than You Know & So Much Better Than You Think

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission of the publisher.

The website addresses recommended and noted throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Brad J. Gray, nor does he vouch for the entirety of their content.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked nlt are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked niv are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Scripture quotations marked kjv are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.)

Scripture quotations marked tlb are taken from The Living Bible copyright © 1971 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.

© 2015 Brad. J. Gray. All rights reserved.

ISBN 978-1-312-97406-7

Published in association with Lulu.com.

Cover Photo and Design: Bradley Gray

Printed in the United States of America

Fourth Edition 2015. Revised.

To my wife, Natalie Jean Gray, whose unwavering support, tender care, and undying love are paramount in all my endeavors for the gospel of Christ.

Preface

I would be remiss if I didn’t precede what’s to be said and done in the coming pages with a foreword of sorts.

What follows is a ten-part discourse on the gospel of grace. It’s by no means exhaustive or exemplary. It’s merely my attempts to explain and share and showcase the amazing work that Jesus Christ has wrought in my heart.

I find that it’s easier for me to express what I know and feel through the written word; hence, this book. As will be explained further, I didn’t write this book for any one person in particular, save myself. This is a book that I desperately needed to read more than it desperately needed to be written.

I don’t boast in saying anything new or revelatory. As much as finite man can capture in tongue or pen concerning the grace of God can already be found in the volumes and works of those that have gone before us. Yet, the immensity and vastness of the gospel of grace is far greater than tongue or pen could ever report. We know, as the apostle John did, that there are also many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written (John 21:25). Likewise, the splendor and enormity of grace can’t be captured by transient human endeavors.

This book stands on the shoulders of Christ Jesus, the Lord, and His great saints and disciples that have fought for the grace and truth of His Word. Therefore, it’s only fitting that I, also, acknowledge those of whom have had the greatest influence on me in the preparation of these pages.

First, I must thank my parents, for their unyielding support, guidance, and prayer. It’s an encouraging thought to know that your mother and father are praying for you, every morning. And, indeed, their unremitting hope is only that I would serve Christ and His gospel with my life, with breathless expectation. Without my father’s extraordinary impact and example to follow, nor my mother’s unrivaled prayer and devotion to God, this little work would be nonexistent.

And how thoughtless would I be if I didn’t acknowledge the undaunting love my wife has shown and graced me with over these last few years. As she is the dedication of these pages, she is my heart and my all. I’m truly blessed of God to the highest degree for her presence, companionship, and affection. Never a day goes by where I’m not astounded by her faithfulness, intimacy, and love. Thank you, Natalie, for always being there.

And now begins this little treatise of grace, wherein we hope to discover its true worth, significance, magnitude, and value in the life of the believer. May the Triune God bless your heart, soul, and life by the words that follow.

Brad J. Gray,

December 2014.

Introduction

With the advent and shear onslaught of the World Wide Web, coupled with the explosion of social media, virtually anyone can get famous for saying or doing almost anything. The whole of society is seeking to become the next viral sensation that propels them from small-time to big-time with only a few clicks, even if that fame is only short-lived.

The same holds true in the religious realm. There are a plethora of religious and spiritual writers, bloggers, and pastors all (most of them, anyway) saying great things, though many of them different and, indeed, opposed. I fear that the next hurdle for many Christians of the incumbent generation is to discern between the truly passionate man of God and those who are merely speaking and serving for the propping up and exaltation of their own name.

Celebrity Pastors are all the craze in twenty-first century America. And don’t get me wrong, uniting under one voice for the cause of Christ and the sake of the gospel is beneficial and advantageous, but I’m worried that many so-called believers are letting a man tell them what the Bible says instead of finding it out for themselves. Far too many believers are tweeting the Scriptures without really knowing what the Scriptures mean. Many have let the Internet be their Bible and social media their devotional, a travesty to the nth degree. But, still, this next generation of preachers and expositors of the Word produces many that say nice things without putting much substance behind it. There’s a lot of fluffy, flimsy theology being postured to crowds of hungry souls across these United States, to the detriment of those who truly yearn to know God.

The idea of a celebrity pastor is somewhat alarming and disconcerting. So, too, did A. W. Tozer suspect, when he wrote, Promoting self under the guise of promoting Christ is currently so common as to excite little notice.¹

Most don’t even realize the wool that’s being pulled over their eyes as these life coaches masquerade as ministers of the gospel and shepherds of grace. Don’t be fooled, though. They’re nothing more than charlatans and dogs, wolves in sheep’s clothing. Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves (Matt. 7:15). A life coaching gospel is a false gospel. And up is springing a spiritually oblivious and undiscerning age that’s careening towards a precipice, blind to their own impending destruction.

But, I digress.

I must confess, I didn’t always know what God would have me to do in life, and, surely, His molding and fashioning of me is far from complete. On the contrary, it’s merely just begun, it’s but in its inception. But what I do know is that God would have me be sold out for Him, living with an abandon and conviction that only springs out of being continually captured by the gospel of Jesus’s untold, unbridled grace. It’s in that light that these chapters were formed.

Let me be forthcoming with what’s about to transpire by giving you a little insight about myself. I grew up in a fundamental, Bible-believing, Baptist home. I’m the son of two generations of pastors, with both grandfathers serving as preachers and teachers in various settings and ministries. My dad’s dad was a Bible doctrines professor at a major Christian university in the Southeast for nearly thirty years. My father is a senior pastor, who has himself accumulated over thirty years of pastoral ministry experience. Needless to say, I’ve grown up in church. My closest friends were always those with whom I attended church. Sunday School is a part of my molecular composition. And before you conjure up any more mistaken connotations or prejudices about me, and before you get the wrong idea about the intentions of what’s to follow, it’s necessary for me to be very clear with the aim of these pages.

The goals in writing this little book were diverse, but allow me to, first, set forth what was not and is not the purpose of this book.

It’s not for shock-and-awe, or to garner attention, or to become famous amongst Evangelical circles. My aspirations weren’t to sell millions of copies or be a New York Times best seller. As amazing an accomplishment as that would be, my intentions weren’t so superficial or egotistical.

It’s also not to serve as a diatribe against the Baptist denomination, or fundamentalism as a whole, for what it’s become. This isn’t the method through which I’m going to express my frustrations with my upbringing or how I blame my parents for how I am today.

This isn’t me, a hipster-millennial of generation-X, sticking a disrespectful finger in the face of so many staunch defenders and tireless stalwarts of the Christian faith that have gone before me and who have stood and fought to preserve the truths of the gospel we hold so dear today.

This is none of those things.

I wrote this book for the mere fact that I needed to read it. I wrote this book for me, for my own benefit, that through the course of study and prayer and meditation, has come to draw me nearer to my Lord and Savior than I ever thought possible. And lest you think this admission the epitome of selfishness and conceit, allow me to add additional clarification.

Whenever I get up to preach or speak in any setting, I always try to mention that the words I’m about to say and the points I’m about to make were first applied to myself, to my own heart and life. I don’t stand behind podiums and lecterns with the notion that I’ve somehow figured this thing out and that I have all the answers. It’s actually nearer to the antithesis of that. I speak and teach solely because I know with unflappable certainty that that’s God’s will for my life. I’m no expert, I’m just a sinner saved by God’s matchless grace, and I desperately want people everywhere to see and know the power of this transforming grace. That’s the approach of every one of my talks, for while we might not share the same issues and the same problems and the same circumstances and the same worries and the same heartaches, we all have the same need and the same Solution and Remedy for that need, namely, Jesus Christ.

As He is the focus of Scripture, and should be the singular focus of our sermons, so, too, is He the unparalleled Foundation and Cornerstone of all that’s to come in these discourses. He is and shall be the centre to which all the lines of [this book] shall be drawn.²

My heart is that we would see Jesus—the real Jesus—and be so humbled and awed and amazed by what we see that our lives can’t help but respond in the humble pursuit of holiness that He so longs for us to yield to.

For quite some time now, I’ve been searching, longing, and yearning to find the true meaning of the Christian life. If you were to ask, What’s the Christian life all about? to a panel of the most popular pastors in America today, you would probably get a mixed bag of answers. But what I feel the Holy Spirit has impressed upon me, is that our whole lives are to be captured in a simple, faithful look—a perpetual looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith (Heb. 12:2). This is what I believe our lives are to be about; and, moreover, this is what these pages attempt to accomplish: to cause us to see Jesus and His grace with fresh eyes, ready minds, and tender hearts. He must take the spotlight and we must retreat to the shadows.

I’m very leery of theologians and pastors and scholars alike who claim they’ve figured out the Scriptures. The vast truths and depths of knowledge contained in God’s Word can never be plumbed, nor can anyone ever attain its full apprehension. The bonds of human intellect can’t bear to comprehend the enormity of God’s full forgiveness and grace. This is a fact that must be acknowledged and accepted, or else we stand on the dangerous ground of our own assumptions and preconceived notions about God and His Word.

We humans are finite beings: there’s only so much that we’re able to understand and ascertain. Our reach is limited. Nevertheless, in our pride, we like to think much more of ourselves than we actually are, when in reality, we’re fallible, prone to error, and always failing. We’re addicted to pleasing ourselves and championing our own worth, whatever we deem that to be. We mess things up, a lot, and, consequently, our entire lives have become about fixing the very mess that we’ve made.

We possess fixed, finite minds—so why do we try and put an infinite God and His infallible Word into a neat and tidy box that we can make sense of? How pompous is it of us to assume that God works in ways that we can understand? How presumptuous is it to conclude that His power and grace are things we can fully comprehend? For one to place the God of Universe into such a box, which the mind of man might understand in full, is, perhaps, the most audacious act of human egotism.

With that said, I’m probably—no—I’m definitely going to offend some by what transpires in the following pages, and that’s okay. Grace itself is offensive and scandalous, sparking controversy and strife amongst all those who attempt to dissect and parse it. It’s unruly and wild, untamed and unconstrained. It’s unpredictable and dangerous, and "way more radical, offensive, liberating, shocking, and counterintuitive than any of us realize . . . Like Aslan in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia, the gospel is good but not safe."³ It’s risky and radical, and goes against all intrinsic notions of fairness and justice.

What I hope you see in the following pages, is that, quintessentially, grace isn’t a doctrine. Yes, we can exegete the doctrine of grace and concern ourselves with the implications thereof upon our systematic theology, but, in truth, doing so robs grace of its raw power. Impotent grace is grace that stays in the classroom; if you want to make grace powerless, put it in a textbook, and make seminarians memorize the tenets of it. Castrating grace is among the many travesties myriads of so-called theologians are profoundly guilty of.

No, what I hope to show you throughout this little work is nothing but grace, true grace, undomesticated and unadulterated. For, genuine grace is not a doctrine to be expounded, but a hug to be experienced.⁴

So, consider yourself hugged.

Chapter One

Misconstruing Grace

Our society is filled with buzzwords—words, phrases, and language employed solely to impress people who don’t know any better. Merriam-Webster defines a buzzword as an important-sounding usually technical word or phrase often of little meaning used chiefly to impress laymen.⁵ You can notice this specialized language employed almost everywhere. If you watch any twenty-four-hour headline news channel for any length of time, you will most assuredly be bombarded with a spattering of jargon and journalese, idioms and technobabble filled to the brim with political newspeak, all designed to push specific agendas or platforms, fair and balanced or not. And as impressive as these analysts and experts sound, the majority of the time, no one really knows what they’re talking about—even they probably aren’t totally sure.

This shallow attempt to dazzle and stupefy is used everywhere, not just politics: sports, pop culture, science, technology, business, etc. In any industry or any field, you can find a plethora of buzzwords designed specifically to make the user sound more impressive, bolstering his reputation, résumé, and platform.⁶

Sadly, though, the adoption of buzzwords, and the shallowness that comes with it, has infected the Church at large, to the point where flat, pithy quotes and sayings comprise the vast majority of messages today. The majority of what’s postulated behind the pulpit is hollow and shallow—nothing more than motivational speeches drizzled with a little God on top. Sermons, nowadays, are merely life coaching seminars with an extra sprinkle of Jesus.

This trend towards life coaching, away from life transforming, stems from the warped and distorted reasons many believe, and have concluded, that the church exists. We’ve wrongly—and shamefully so—succumbed to the overwhelming philosophy and disease that we must be entertained at all times, even during our service for and worship of God.

The advent of instant-everything has simultaneously eroded our ability to reflect, to ponder, and to muse. I’m allowed to say this because I’m part of it and amongst it: with the rampant use and misuse of social media by burgeoning millennials across the globe, we’ve likewise lost our capability for meditating, imagining, and wondering—losing ourselves in our thoughts is no longer a sought after pastime. We don’t and aren’t contemplating what was just said or announced or read, but are earnestly searching for whatever’s next. That’s great, but what’s next? is the mantra in everyone’s head. We’ve become addicted to informing, updating, and entertaining, all of which serve as nothing more than distractions that take our thoughts from the clouds of the crucial down to the ground of the trivial. This all reveals a deeper inner-problem that lies at the core of who we are: narcissism.

Twenty-first century society is so me-focused, it’s as if we’ve all been administered the narcotic of egotism. Everyone’s out for themselves; the thoughts of many aren’t in any way fashioned by what they can give, only on what they can get, what they can attain or achieve. What can I get? What do I need? What’s in it for me? How can you please me? What have you done for me lately? How’s this going to benefit me? This is the vernacular of the day. It’s no wonder, then, what with the pervasive marketing schemes being metaphorically forced down our throats that scream Have it your way! and what with the commercially-inundated culture in which we exist, that this me-focused ideology has contaminated the church and, more specifically, the pulpit. This self-absorption and self-obsession and, indeed, self-love has been allowed to creep into the sanctuary, and now, it festers like a cantankerous infection.

Subsequently, not only is society deteriorating, our pulpits are crumbling as well. Preachers are no longer preaching, and speakers have become masters at eisegesis—reading into a text of Scripture and twisting it and interpreting it to make it say what you want it to say—instead of exegeting it: simply letting the God’s Word of Truth speak for itself. Our worship has become all about entertaining and the pulpit for bettering. The vast majority of celebrity preachers, nowadays, have bought into this me-first school of thought and speak eloquently about how we can have our best life now and how it’s your time! And, not wanting to sacrifice numbers or revenues, the Word of God is sacrificed instead. I contend that nothing much makes God the Father more grieved, more perturbed, more sick than this life coaching gospel impersonating and lampooning as the Holy Word of grace.

grace gobbledygook

Of all the Christian buzzwords that are currently employed, none has the power to sever, dismember, and dissolve relationships like that of grace. I affirm that the cause of so many of the problems in the Church, and in churches across these United States, and even on the earth upon which we reside, is the result of misunderstanding, misrepresenting, misconstruing, and misusing God’s gospel of grace.

The word grace gets thrown around a lot, tweeted a lot, and preached about a lot; it has its own hashtag, as #grace is commonly used on Twitter by millions across the globe (this guy included). It has become cliché, almost, to preach sola gratia, grace alone. And now, grace has become a word that divides, rather than unites. It creates sides, rather than points us to Christ. It agitates, rather than relieves. It sparks debate and controversy, rather than praise and harmony. We’ve so misconstrued what grace is and what it does and what it’s supposed to do that we’ve forgotten the true intent of it being given to us in the first place. The cause for this misunderstanding and sweeping distortion of grace is varied, but chiefly, because we’re addicted to control, or at least our illusion and fabrication of it.

Even if you don’t admit it, or just don’t want to own up to it, every human being is affected and driven by an innate sense and passion to control their surroundings. The neurotic obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, made famous (charmingly so, thanks to Tony Shaloub) by USA Network’s brilliant show Monk, is characterized by an inescapable preoccupation for perfection and an intense pursuit of control. And whether you have this condition or