Sons of Grace

From Gospel Translations

What difference does grace make as I lead others? A leader who knows the grace of God knows that God loves him because Jesus has reconciled him to God through faith. He builds honest relationships based on the love of God for him and for those he leads. He has a heart conviction that God loves others, so he begins to love them more deeply and tangibly. And he has great confidence in the power of the Father’s love to change those he leads.

Grace should mark me with an honesty seen in a life of radical repentance and faith rooted in the certainty of God’s love. As I become convinced, not only doctrinally but deeply in my heart, that I have an interceding Savior and a loving Father in heaven, I am able to act on these beliefs and my life changes. New honesty becomes possible because God’s love surrounds and strengthens me for the truth. Hope grows because I begin to trust Him to change me and others to look like Jesus.

As a leader in the church, I must model two things consistently. First, others must see real evidence of God’s work to change me and to use me in ministry. They need to see my progress. Second, they also need to see the process by which I am changed, or at least some of it. They need to see me repent and get up after I fall. As a leader, I model repentance and change. That brings reality to me and to those who follow.

Grace also teaches me to love others so that I forge deep relationships with those I lead, not just professional connections. Jesus called the disciples His friends. I believe that all discipleship and all true leadership involves some level of friendship, some level of a tangible love relationship. Our models tend to be academic or professional, where emotional involvement is to be avoided. But I don’t see Jesus avoiding emotional involvement with Peter, James or John. He also showed them what it meant to love God the Father. Somehow many Christians seem to have gotten the idea that their goal is to maintain an even, careful, flat emotional life; avoiding extremes is the highest virtue. But I believe that Jesus was a passionate man: passionate about God and passionate about others.

Leaders need to encourage and strengthen others in the Gospel. When we remember and experience afresh the love of our heavenly Father, the gift and promises of the Gospel, our hearts are motivated with something other than guilt. We begin to pursue new obedience with passion. However, heart obedience isn’t just a matter of feeling. It is not waiting to obey until your heart feels like it. And it certainly isn’t the dry, heartless attitude of one who obeys because he must do his duty.

The answer to our cold hearts, the path of new obedience, is not that of better organization, more “how-to’s” and continual “gut checks.” The Gospel must be the power of salvation for the church as well as for the world. The Holy Spirit strives within me to convince me of God’s love, to conform me to the image of Christ, and to confirm in me my adoption. As I grow in my understanding of God’s love for me, His beauty, presence, and love encourage and empower my dependence and growing obedience.

God’s love for me is a powerful motivation. In an age of failing fathers, I had a living picture of this kind of love in the life and death of my own father about two years ago. Dad’s final battle with colon and liver cancer was relatively brief and difficult. With the aid of hospice folks and doctors he had trained through his own teaching and practice as a physician, he was able to die in his bed at home with family members gathered and singing hymns. I was not there since I lived far away. But in my last visit with Dad, he said several things to me. He said, “Son, I love you. I am proud of you and of what you have accomplished. One of the greatest privileges of my life has been to know you and have you as my son.”

Now what wouldn’t I do for him? What wouldn’t I do to bring honor to his family name? How could I not respond with all my heart to please a father like that? Not every father is like mine, but even as good as my father was, his love is a dim shadow of the great Father. Dad didn’t think I was perfect. But he did love me. Dad corrected me and even disciplined me faithfully. Sometimes we argued, but I never doubted his love for me.

It often seems that we fear teaching enough about God’s grace and love to break through fearful, unbelieving hearts and encourage Christians to believe all that the Bible teaches about our adoption and God’s love. We rightly fear sloppy emotionalism or contentless and shallow feelings masquerading as the power and passion of real love for God. But these ills are not cured by withholding God’s love from His children or by disparaging the certainty of His love that Paul prayed for in Ephesians 3. The cure is to feed others with belief in His love for them, a love that is powerful enough to correct, change, discipline, encourage, empower, lead, and direct even the greatest of sinners. The cure is to reveal the banquet of love that God has manifested most clearly in the person and work of Jesus revealed in the Gospel of grace. “Oh, taste and see that the LORD is good; blessed is the man who trusts in Him!” (Ps. 34:8).