Have you seen these images
from California lately? That sort
of destruction, it’s hard to comprehend, how fast it all happened. One day everything seems fine. Then before you know it, someone is knocking
on your door in the middle of the night.
They’re telling you fire is bearing down on your house, and you gotta
get out. And you come back a few days
later to this.
Seeing that destruction reminded me of something. In life, some things you don’t want to ever
grow. You want your kids to grow. You’d like it if your income grew. You want to grow better in areas of your
life. But when it comes to fires like
those, you want them to die away not grow into the awful force they became. You want that little tropical depression in
the ocean to stay just that, to not become a storm or God forbid a hurricane.
Lots of people talk as if growth is an awesome thing. And lots of times, it is. We’d like to see our economy grow. We’d like to see our church grow. But not everything that grows is good. Cancers grow great. That’s part of what makes them scary. In life, lots of things can grow in your
life that don’t bring you life. Instead
they destroy you. Desires grow that
sabotage your marriage or your bank account.
Resentments grow that turn you hard and bitter. Fears grow that paralyze you, that hold you
back from living the life God intended for you.
Yet, even so, God wants you to grow. In the words, we’re about to hear, God makes
it clear how seriously God wants that. Yet, you can think you are growing in your
life the things God wants, when you are doing the opposite. Instead what is growing in you won’t bring
you or others life, it will bring the opposite. How do you grow in your life those things
that will bring you the life you deeply need?
How do you grow into the abundant beautiful life God wants you to
have? In
these words, God points the way. Let’s
hear what God has to say.
Does God want you to be perfect? More than that, does God expect it? Does God expect you to never make a mistake
once you become a Christian? If you
take literally the words that we just heard, you can think that. But God
isn’t telling you that. So, what is God
telling you? God is telling you that
while God does not expect perfection, God does expect progress. But the progress God expects looks quite
different than what many people think, including many Christians.
Still, you can
think that God wants perfection. Look
at what God through John says here: “No one who abides in God sins; no one who sins has either
seen God or known God. That seems pretty clear. And just in case, you wondered if you had it
right, a few sentences later, you read this.
“Those who have been born of God do not sin, because God’s
seed abides in them.”
But that doesn’t make
sense. Right at the beginning of the
letter, John wrote this: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the
truth is not in us. Then
a few paragraphs later, he says “Don’t worry when you sin, because in Jesus,
God himself will be your advocate.” Has
John changed his mind? Did someone take
over the letter, maybe John’s older, more uptight brother? No, the same guy wrote both things. That’s not the problem.
The problem is
that John wrote this letter in Greek, and in Greek what John says sounds much
different. Greek has a way of saying
things that language experts call the present progressive. So basically, what John is saying, comes
down to this. Those who have been born
of God do not keep on sinning or as the pastor/translator Eugene Peterson
puts it: they do not make a
practice of sin.
In other words, if
you experience God’s love in Jesus, it starts to change you. God plants a new seed within you, God’s seed.
And that seed starts growing. It starts developing in you a new way of
life, a new way of seeing things. But
what does that growth look like? What
does the seed of God grow in you? Too often, people have gotten the wrong idea
about that seed, including Christians.
For years, when I
was growing up, I had a certain idea of what that seed grew. It meant.
I didn’t drink, smoke or chew or associate with those who do. And
lots of folks still have a version of that idea. They think.
That seed means you have to have certain external markers. Certain behaviors set you apart. So, if
you read the Bible regularly, go to church, avoid certain “bad things.” (the
list can differ), then that seed is growing.
And they’re not entirely wrong.
But they’re only picking up on one part of the seed. And if that is all you have, then you won’t
grow any God fruit so to speak. All you’ll
grow is weeds.
Think about any
relationship you have, if that’s all you have, a set of right behaviors, that
relationship is not growing into what it needs to be. If in my relationship with my wife, all I do
are my duties, if I just do the right chores, run the right errands, avoid
being unfaithful, sure, it may be hard to find fault with me. But will it feel like a relationship, like
what a marriage should be? But what if
I don’t do those duties, that won’t be good either.
And it’s the same
with any relationship in your life, with friends, children, family
members. Every relationship has to be
more than simply the things you do or don’t do. Something more has to be there. And that’s even more true with God.
So, what does this
full seed look like? John tells us. He doesn’t tell us here. But in his account of Jesus’ life, the Gospel
of John, he does. John writes about
Jesus. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen
his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and
truth.”
In those last five words, John gives you a
picture of the seed that God plants.
God plants a seed full of grace and truth. If all you have are the duties, then all you
have is the truth part of the seed. And
half a seed won’t grow anything, at least anything good. It may grow self-righteousness, judgment,
legalism, guilt. But it sure won’t grow
what God desires.
No for the seed of God, the grace has to
go with the truth. But what does grace
even mean? It gave us some good songs,
like Amazing Grace, but what’s so amazing about grace really?
If you’ve paid any attention to the car I
drive, you’ll notice my red mini convertible has disappeared. I’m driving a beige car with a license plate
from Quebec. How did that happen? Several months ago, I totaled my mini cooper
in an accident. To make it worse, that
was my second accident in three months. And in both I was at fault. But when I called my wife to tell her what
had happened, she did something amazing.
She commiserated with my loss.
She got her parents from Quebec to loan us their car. She offered me support and compassion. And let’s be honest, after my screw ups, I didn’t
really merit that. Do you know what my
wife gave me. She gave my grace. She gave me unmerited favor.
That’s what grace is. It’s unmerited favor. It’s those times, when someone gave you far,
far more than you deserved. And when
you experience that, you know how amazing that can be, how powerful, how
life-changing. That’s the power that God plants in you. Why? Because
in Jesus, that’s what God has given you.
God has given you unmerited favor like no one else could.
In the most random moments, my son will
say to me, with the heartfelt-ness of an almost 4-year old “I love you.” What is going on in those I love you moments? He’s sensing the wonder of what he has
received, two people who regularly extend to him blessings he doesn’t merit at
all. I recently heard a comment from a
parent that a child is both overwhelming and under-stimulating at the same
time. That parent was right. Parents, good parents, give favor to their
children not because of what they can give back. No, they simply extend that favor because they
love them, and they are theirs.
And when you know God loves you like that,
and even beyond that, when you know that God gave up everything to bring you
home. When you know that you have received that
level of unmerited favor, so much so that you have become God’s very offspring,
it plants a seed within you, a seed full of grace and truth. And as that seed grows, your capacity to give
grace to others and to yourself grows. And
out of that grace, the desire to live the truth, to do the right thing grows as
well. But it begins with the grace. In that grace, you do change. You become
free of the broken places that bound you in the past, the out of control
desires that dragged you down, the long-held resentments that held you back. You become more and more like this One who
has graciously adopted you, who has joyfully and at infinite cost brought you
home. You become more and more the
offspring of God, not in name alone, but in reality. And,
you know, it is not your own doing. It
is the beautiful, wondrous, amazing gift of God.
Do you want to know that grace? Do you want to experience that truth? Here’s
all you need to do. You simply need to
believe it. You need to believe that
grace, that God’s grace is true and real for you. Why.
Because it is.
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