Grace & Peace — Don McClure

The Gospel Promised in the Holy Scriptures

Romans 1 chapter 1 verse 1. I'm not gonna review, I'm just gonna read. Don't worry. Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called an apostle separated under the gospel of God, which he has promised to for by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures.

Concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared to be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead.

By whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name, among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ. To all that be at Rome, beloved of God, called saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Cleansing Through the Blood of Christ

That's our objective tonight, folks. Let's pray. Father, we do thank you for your word, your ministry. Lord, we thank you for communion. Lord, I pray that tonight there wouldn't be one of us that proceeds in your word with the slightest sense of guilt.

Lord, realize that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin. And Lord, as redeemed blood-bought sinners, we come before you tonight and just say thank you, Jesus, for your work. I am not worthy of anything, but in your great love and mercy and grace you have made me your own.

And so, Lord, I've taken you up on it and I don't want to just do it partially but fully. Therefore, I fully take your cleansing. Lord, I open your word and ask that you administer your truth to each one of us now.

You strengthen and bless every one of us in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, here is Paul continues on after he kind of lays a little groundwork of who he was and what his heart was essentially all about. He tells us there a little bit about the gospel when he says there, which he has promised to for by his prophets in the Holy Scriptures concerning his son, Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, declared the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.

Here, Paul, as he since kind of introduces us in an interesting and wonderfully one interesting way to the gospel, he wants to tell us here that what I am telling you about, number one, is that there's nothing new about it.

The New Testament Fulfilled in the Old

Essentially, one of the things I love, I heard once many years ago, I think in Bible college or something, but it says the new is in the old contained and the old is in the new explained. In other words, essentially what that phrase sort of means, in a sense, is that the New Testament is all contained in the Old Testament.

It's all there and prophetically laid out in seed form. And so the new is in the old contained, but the old is in the new explained. All these things that we see in the Old Testament, like, for example, so wonderfully tonight as we looked at Isaiah 52 and 53.

Somebody reading that for so long, you know, through history for hundreds of years, would wonder, what is this? But now in the New Testament, when we see Christ coming, when the Lord has laid upon him the iniquities of us all, and we begin to put the lines together, all of a sudden we see this wonderful truth and all these things there that in the Old Testament, they're so wonderfully explained.

Essentially, in many ways, you might say there isn't an awfully lot new in the New Testament, but basically a wonderful recording that so much of what was promised to occur in the Old Testament has. There's still much yet, of course, to happen, but essentially there is that we have this wonderful thing in the Bible that in no other book in all the world is like it.

No other events have ever happened like the events that are promised and laid out for us in the Bible, which are prophesied. And when you just stop to think of these prophetic issues that laid out Christianity, there is no other religion, no philosophy, no concept of the human mind or in human history that has anything like the Bible has when you look at the prophetic events about it that point to Jesus Christ and prove him to be indeed the Messiah.

All the other religions think or hope or dream or suppose. They all kind of wonder and talk and then they have to back up and apologize or re-explain something, but there's nothing like that in the Bible.

The Bible, when it tells us what's going to happen, it happens. And one of the wonderful things that God proves himself to the world to be God is he had no trouble at all laying out all of these future events of which he is the king and the master and the Lord over them all, and so as he ushers them in or produces them as he promised he would and then he does it.

It's nothing to him because that's kind of one of the nice things about being God. You kind of do whatever you want whenever you want to and then you can tell somebody beforehand you're going to do it, and when it is, people have to say, must be God.

And when you start stacking up events like that, and here when he talks about the things that the prophets give to us in the Holy Scriptures concerning his son Jesus Christ our Lord, and he said all these things prophetically there prove him to be indeed Jesus.

Prophecies Concerning the Messiah

And I'm just going to run through a few things here. I actually just have a list that you can get in many places, but just a few of the prophecies concerning Christ given hundreds and hundreds of years before about him.

And I won't give you the references for them, you can get them from me afterwards for a small price, but just the list of them right now is all we have time for. But essentially here when you just start thinking of these things, and then in your mind as we're going through, imagine looking five, six, seven, eight, nine hundred years before, laying these things out of events, and of a world that has yet to even come into existence, but events are happening, like that the Messiah will be crucified.

Well nobody even understood or knew what crucifixion was at the time. Saying he'll be born in Bethlehem, when here this little teeny town, saying there that a family that is going to come from. Bible tells us that the Messiah will be a descendant of David, an heir to his throne.

He would be anointed and eternal. He'll be born in Bethlehem, that he would be born at a very specific time. Daniel tells us about that in Daniel 9. He'll be born of a virgin. No easy task to do by that one all by itself.

He'll be right after his birth though, there will be a massive slaughter of children and he'll be taken down to Egypt. There's all these things hundreds of years before. Hosea wrote of that one. A way will be prepared before him and he'll have a forerunner that will come before him.

And he'll be declared to be the Son of God, have a ministry of healing. He'll ministry specifically in the region of Galilee. He'll speak in parables. He will have God's own name applied to him. He'll bind up the wounds of the brokenhearted.

He'll be rejected by his own people and crucified by them. But then after that there will be a resurrection, a triumphant entry. Though before that he'll be betrayed by a close friend for some 30 pieces of silver.

He'll be accused by false witnesses, spat on and struck. And yet there his vicarious sacrifice will be for the sins of the world when he would die. He'll be crucified with malefactors on each side. He'll be pierced through his hands and his feet long before crucifixion even known or being used.

Mocked, he'll be reproached. They'll gamble for his clothing. Side was pierced, yet a bone not broken. Buried with the rich for three days. And then he rose from the dead and he ascended to heaven. Now imagine just trying to take one, two, three, five, ten events.

But in this is only a scattering, only a few. But when you stop to think, who else in all of history, in all the world, even dreamed of writing something? Pick an event. You go ahead yourself. Good. Tell me, you know, how's it?

What? Anything. 700 years from now, what's the stock market gonna be? Will there be a stock market? You know, will there be a country with a stock market? When you would stop to just pick different things.

You know, who will be playing in the Super Bowl? What is a Super Bowl? You know, where all of the things of hundreds and hundreds of years ahead. But then to have, it's like this wonderful thing if you have this, I think of it sometimes like a bicycle wheel.

There when you've got all of these writers from different times and different places in history, but as God spoke to them and the Messiah was to come, it's almost like spokes on a wheel. That one writes of this and one writes of this and when he'll come and where he'll come, the family that he'll come from, the situation around his birth, you know, the the children being slain at his birth, going down to Egypt.

They're the ministry he'll have. The way he'll preach and live and the methods and the parables. One after another. But all of them, every one of them, like these spokes have come down to one event, one person, one place that only could have happened at one critical time in history by one person that could have fulfilled it and there he was, right in the midst of it.

The More Sure Word of Prophecy

No wonder the Apostle Peter tells us there that he says, even if we had been following some cunning devised fables of men, if somehow or another we were fooled by Jesus was just the greatest, you know, dog and pony act that ever came along.

He was so clever. He was so shrewd that he could even con us and he did it day in and day out for three years. And he says, but we have the more sure word of prophecy regardless of what we saw with our eyes, heard with our ears, handled with our hands, in every way that we look at humanly that can confirm him.

We have something greater than all of being with him for three years. We have a book that prophesied this is who he was and he was. And here Paul, as he refers to this is the gospel, this is what it is so wonderfully all about.

This is what sets Christianity and what gives Christianity the right to be absolutely dogmatic, to be unbending, to be inflexible, to be something when somebody wants to look and say, why do you have this Jesus the only way?

Why is Christianity when you can be so narrow about it? Well, I want to say, well, who else has been down the road that Christianity is? How, who else can you even gather together amongst, you know, the presence of the Word of God and Jesus Christ?

There is none. There's no second. There's nobody near. There's other people that imitated him. There's others that wanted to suggest they were prophets and nothing ever happened. All these other things that only proved a man's inability to produce the future and set them away from Christ and ruined their right to even be thought of in his category.

And thus we are ones that we have the right to to be what the world may think of as narrow or arrogant or hard or closed-minded. And sometimes I've had people come and ask me about Christianity and wanting to tell, you know, say, now can you, you know, I'm going to talk to you but, you know, will you be open-minded?

I said, no. No, I'm sorry, I can't. I mean, as if it's something that I'm going to renegotiate the most awesome truths in the world because somebody wants to sit down and say, I'd like you to renegotiate.

I said, no, I'm not open-minded about that. I know that better than my own name. I know that better than who I am. I know who he is. When I was growing up, my own brothers used to tell me they traded me in the hospital anyway.

I don't know if it's true or not, but the thing is, I think I might be who I am, but I would much rather, I'm much more convinced that he is who he is than who you are, who I am, who anybody is. And here when we stop and realize that this is what separates Christianity apart from absolutely every other form of thought, there's nothing near the category of Christianity.

And here when, so when Paul writes and he says, they're declared the Son of God but with power according to the Spirit of Holiest and by the resurrection of the dead. You look at what the prophets had to say and then you lay his life on top of these prophetic things and they match.

Every line, everything fits flawlessly, gloriously, wonderful. And he says, therefore, by whom, when he talks about Jesus, he says the most amazing thing about things that we'll look at and we're going to spend the rest of our time on tonight, here is that Paul says, hereafter you realize that there is such a God as this, who has done what he has done, laid all of these events out meticulously, carefully, wonderfully laid them out, planned them out over hundreds of years, preparing the entire, the entirety of world history around this event, bringing it to it, wanting to have a tremendous focus upon it that separates it apart from absolutely everything else.

Then he says, to think that after all that is done, to think that now after he has done it, he has come to us. He is now, after he has risen from the dead, he now comes to us and he says, by whom we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all the nations for his name.

He looks there and he says, now to think by God's grace we're included in this unbelievable world that's his. That he obviously came from and has gone back to and now we can be a part of it. That God has literally called us unto himself, among whom are ye also the called of Jesus Christ.

You stop to think that you and I, when we've come to Christ, we are now a part of another world, another economy, another kingdom. We're called unto him. We belong to this very one that laid all of these things out.

And then as he goes on in verse 7, he says, and to all that be in Rome, beloved of God, called saints, grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. And here I suppose to Paul, something that was so awesome to him, when you stop to think of it, one of the things that just absolutely transformed his life as he makes this comment and he uses it all the way through his life in all of his letters, he could never get far from the topic and that is grace and peace.

Saul of Tarsus Under the Law

It never goes far. You see, Paul was a man who lived an awfully lot of his life outside of grace. He had spent though, at the same time, a tremendous amount, I don't know that you could find a man, at least that I can study much of, that probably worked so hard to go to heaven.

I don't think you can find somebody that so desperately wanted to go to heaven, I suppose, in the Apostle Paul or Saul of Tarsus as he was before. When you look at his credentials and you realize here's somebody that circumcised the eighth day of the stock of the tribe of Benjamin, he tells us in Philippians there and he says in his life separated of the tribe of Benjamin and he says concerning the law, he says I was a Pharisee, I was perfect, I was blameless in all of these things, persecuting the church, I was zealous for anything that wasn't of what I thought was absolutely totally God and his truth and his work and he says zealously I stood for him in every possible way.

And here you realize this man, the effort that he went to try to live a life that would be acceptable to God. It's obviously his greatest desire. Somehow or another you can just see a man there that of all the passions and the dreams of life is I want to be acceptable in heaven.

I wanted more than anything in the world, I think you could safely say that about the Apostle or Saul of Tarsus at any rate and of course about Paul as he later became. But tragically though when you look at his life and you follow what we know of him that seemed like the harder he tried, the more miserable he was.

And the more miserable he was, the more miserable he wanted everybody else to be around him. I suppose if ever misery loved company, Saul of Tarsus was one of that. Every once in a while though when he found somebody with some love or some joy or some peace, his first task was I'm gonna wipe that off your face.

You know, sort of a guy. Anybody that came along, his efforts to destroy this terrible heresy called Christianity. And as Saul of Tarsus, as he looked at these people calling themselves Christians, who had never even thought of God, never tried to be acceptable of God, never some of them put forth an ounce of effort to be right with heaven, to be good, to obey anything.

Some of them rebellious, wicked people by his concept of life. Far, far from God and even thinking about God and yet here are these people. You know, all of a sudden they almost at the drop of a hat. You know, they had this theology amongst themselves there that they could find God.

And just like that their sins were forgiven. Christ had been risen from the dead and in a moment he came into their life and transformed their life. And that seemed to absolutely incense him. The fact that somebody without tremendous effort, without putting forth great, you know, conviction and proving that they truly wanted to be a citizen of heaven, that just like that somehow or another, that they could just go and have eternal life.

And that made Saul of Tarsus angry. He was, you know, somebody, he made it his personal vendetta to destroy this heresy, you know, called Christianity. And to wipe it off the face of the planet, if he could, in watching these people coming to Jesus.

And for that I'm sure that he hated Christ, even though he was only historical figure to Paul for a time. But he ended up, he got some papers from the chief priest, gave him the authority and gave him the right there to go out under the laws laid out by Moses.

And if there was anybody that was such a heretic, he could have them dealt with in almost any way from death to imprisonment. And all sorts of powers were given to him there. And Paul, of course, later on himself said that he consented to the first martyr's death, Stephen.

And then there were many others that he had put to death and he had imprisoned and people that he had made, you know, fatherless and families. He was a man there that he consented to a lot of people's death.

And because, you see, Paul was a man, he loved the law. He loved there the fact that there was something about life. I mean, I'm gonna spend my life trying to succeed in fulfilling the law, living a right sort of a life, good life, the way life ought to be lived.

And he felt that everybody ought to live under that law. Everybody ought to want to go to heaven. Everybody ought to want to please God. And the way you do it is through the law. Tragic thing, it didn't work.

But at the same time, Paul didn't seem to know that. I think it's Saul of Tarsus, his favorite song. His favorite song, I think, and I wrote these words. Tell me how you like this song. Amazing law, how hard the sound that pains a wrench like me.

I once was lost, still fear I am, was blind and I still don't see. T 'was law that taught my heart to fear, and yes, my fear still be. How miserable my heart still is, so miserable I'll be with thee. But I think he was somebody there that he just, he loved the law.

It never made him happy. Terry, you can take that and make a tune out of it. I've already got, I got the tune down too. I can give it to you. But anyway, but the, but he was a man there that he, the law, it was virtually everything.

But it seemed like, typical of what the law does, it only gives a couple joys. You get a little bit of joy in the law for a few fleeting moments, when for a few moments you think you might have attained it.

When you actually think you really did kind of pretty good, I suppose there's a little bit of, you know, happiness for there. And then there's also a little bit of pleasure, and I think the better pleasure is, is that when you find somebody else that hasn't fulfilled it.

Oh, everybody that's living in the law loves to find sinners that aren't. And that seems to be quite wonderful, because for a lot of people, once you're under the law, it's kind of a grading system, and in this, for a lot of people, it's kind of like grading on the curve.

And if you remember when you were in school and they graded on the curve, you know, the, the thing about, you know, grading on the curve is that you didn't do all that good, but one of your best joys was whoever you found that did worse.

You say, oh, I'm so sorry. Not really. But the, and then anybody that did better, it was now your job almost to say, well, they cheated. You know, or there are something there, and that's essentially the life of a Pharisee.

That's the life of anybody that lives under the law. I mean, that has to walk around trying, bless their poor hearts, but praying publicly, fasting publicly, carrying on as though they are so much better than anyone else, and when all the time, they're absolutely no different at all.

Absolutely no different at all. Human flesh is human flesh, and the fundamental nature of us is exactly the same. And either we try to deal with our sinfulness and our failures by trying to fix it up on the outside, by trying with our own human efforts, setting some standards, setting some law, and trying to keep it, or it is done on the inside, and that by grace.

And the law, though, as Paul also tells later on in Romans and in Galatians, the law only deals with the exterior. If you achieve it, it will promise you life, but if you don't, you're in trouble. And Paul says in Galatians 3 .10, for as many as are under the works of the law are under the curse.

For it is written, cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them. In other words, it promises you life if you do it, but if you don't do all of it, you're cursed.

All of it. Every bit of the law, you must do it. You know, it's the old illustration kind of having a chain link that goes from one side of a, you know, mountain to another with a chasm in between, and if you can have every link that's perfect, but just one weak link, that isn't going to hold you.

And here Paul, he makes it clear, you've come to find that if you fail in any, you failed in all. And so here Paul, this man who lived under this law, who tried for so many years of his life, trying to do it, never did.

And now he's actually out there trying to destroy the people that have discovered what he had always been looking for, and yet he is angry at them. On the road to Damascus, he's got papers going down there to imprison, you singing another tune that I wrote.

I've got a river of strife flowing out of me, makes the peaceful fear and the happy flee. I've thrown people through prison doors and thrown away the key. I've got a river of strife flowing out of me.

Wonderful another song, but that's, that's what, look at this, what do you think? Well, but anyway, here this man with this venom, with this strife, with this hostility, I've tried so hard, and yet what I've always dreamed of having on my face, these people instantly are finding.

Saul’s Conversion and the Gift of Grace

And all of a sudden he's knocked off his donkey, blinded, and he hears the voice, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he says, is it hard for you to kick against the goads? The Lord asked him, he says, you know, it means to offer painful or wasteful resistance.

You know, are you getting tired of kicking, fighting, trying, living to your standards, trying to achieve what has never worked? And you're so angry at these people that have just found it at the drop of a hat.

And there on the road to Damascus, is he in a moment, just like these thousands of people whose faces he had seen, who had professed and who were willing to die for it, who he had put to death, who when he looked at Stephen and he saw there a man who looked to heaven with the face of an angel, and these things had to torment him.

He wanted to drive this off their face, and all it did was make their face shine all the more, because in a moment they had received it, and there in a moment on the road to Damascus, when he says, Lord, who art thou?

I'm Jesus. And at that moment, just like that, the snap of a finger, his heart was quickened. All of a sudden he realized it was Jesus Christ that he had always been seeking his whole life, every moment of every day, and every desire to please God, to achieve what was blessed God, what would get him to heaven, what would satisfy the requirements.

All of a sudden, it all fit. And he realized, that's it. That is it. And when it hit him, in one moment there, all of a sudden, Paul introduces and became probably the chief teacher for all the history on this wonderful little word, grace.

This wonderful work of God, and as you know, the word grace is the Greek word charis, but it means unmerited favor. It means there that pleasure, that which affords joy, there it's that speaks of the loving-kindness, that God in his merciful act, where he just looks at somebody, and he saves them, and he redeems them, and he forgives them, and he puts his hand upon them, and he makes them his child, and he pours out his grace upon them, and they receive it.

And there, in an instant, the Apostle Paul understood. There, what he could never get, under any amount of effort, under the law, under grace, immediately became his. And by definition, it's an unmerited favor.

You can't merit it. You can't earn it. You can't work for it. You can only receive it. Like Paul had to receive it, just like, you know, the woman that had the five husbands, or the man that was demon-possessed, or the guy over here that had robbed and stolen, or the one that had done this, or whatever it was.

He had to stand there in the same line, in a moment, say, give it to me. Give me life. I want to receive it. And as far as the Apostle Paul concerned, from that moment on, every day of our lives are to be lived by his grace, according to his grace.

Grace as Paul’s Identity and Calling

And I just want to spend what little time we've got here, just giving you Paul's comments on grace that he said in so many of his epistles. Because grace became Paul's entire theme and song. It wasn't just a part of the gospel, or something that kind of fit in, and he talked about it now and then.

Grace was everything. It was something that, put to Paul, it became everything. When he found out about grace from that moment on, there was no other way to live. Grace gave him his whole new identity.

In 1st Corinthians, you can write him down and look at these, and go check them out later. I hope you will. But in 1st Corinthians 15 10, Paul says, by the grace of God, I am what I am. He looked there, and from that day on, whatever he was now, no longer Saul of Tarsus, but Paul, an apostle, a bond slave, a servant of Jesus Christ.

He could look there and he says, listen, whatever I am now, it had nothing to do with my efforts, nothing to do with all of that. It is all, it is God's grace that makes me what I am. Because, you see, it was God's grace that brought him to Christ.

In Galatians 1 15, he says,. But when it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, he called me by his grace. There on the road to Damascus is God at the day and the time and the hour and the event to say, Saul, Saul.

And he called him out of death into life, as much as when, you know, the Lord Jesus himself called Lazarus out of the tomb. Lazarus, come forth. There, I mean, when he spoke there with the power of heaven, Lazarus could do nothing but come forth.

I don't think he's going to say, oh, try me, I'm not coming. No, he's coming. In the here, when he called, and he says, you come. And there he came. It was the whole basis of his spiritual life. Grace was a daily requirement, daily to go on.

Acts 13 43, it says, Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas, who, speaking unto them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.

He said, Listen, you've discovered, you've come to him now. Stay in it. Abide in it. Don't ever leave his grace. And Paul, it became his whole ultimate reason for living. He told the elders of Ephesus, he says, None of these things move me, neither count on my life dear unto myself, but that I may finish my course with joy in the ministry that I have received of the Lord Jesus to testify of the gospel of the grace of God.

He says, I'm alive for one reason. I exist for one reason, and that is to tell anybody, everybody, all I can of grace, of this unmerited favor that God has. It's what produces maturity. It is this something there you need now, and then it's the stability, it's the maturity, the eternal inheritance of life.

Acts 20, 32, it says, Now, brethren, I commend you to God and to the word of his grace, which is able to build you up and to give you an inheritance among them which are sanctified. Here he looks, he says, If you want to know how it is that you'll be built up, you want to know the secret of your maturity and your inheritance, it's grace.

It's going to be the very same thing that you when you were there, hopeless and lost, eternally cut off. And there you just, God, I can't merit. Can you do anything? He says, That's what you need every day.

That's going to be the source of what's going to bring you into any maturity and any inheritance you're going to have for all the rest of time and eternity. It's all of grace, and it's absolutely free.

Justification by Grace Rather Than Works

Romans 3, 24 says, Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. In Romans 4, 4, he says, Now unto him that worketh is the reward, not reckoned of grace, but of debt.

Here he says, you know, he looks there and he says, You're justified freely by his grace and not by works. If somebody works, there is no longer grace. Charles Spurgeon once wrote, he says, If heaven were by merit, there would never be heaven to me.

If I were in it, I should say, I am sure I am here by mistake. I am sure it is not my place. I have no claim to it. But if it is of grace and not of works, then we may walk into heaven with boldness. To realize that God looks and he says, Not only I'm going to give you heaven by grace, I'm going to give you every breath you have by grace, any service you have, anything that you are, it's all of grace.

Romans 11, 6, and he says, For if by grace, then it is no more of works. Otherwise, grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then it is no more grace. Otherwise, work is no more work. In other words, Paul says, It's either one or the other.

If it is by grace, then it is not by works. But if it is by works, then it's not by grace. It's one or the other. You are a child of God. You live, you walk, you talk, you function, either by your own energy, your own commitments, your own convictions, your own efforts to be a Christian, or there is something that I am what I am by the grace of God.

Totally. Spurgeon again, he says, You might as soon take. He said, You might as soon yoke a gnat with an archangel as think of your going to help Christ save you. To join a filthy rag from the dunghill with the golden garments of a king or queen cannot be permitted.

Christ will be everything or else he will be nothing. You must be saved wholly by mercy or else not at all. There must not even be a trace of the fingers of self-righteousness on the axe and the documents of divine grace.

And when you and I get in and find ourself in heaven, we'll find ourselves saying, You know, there that is only by the blood of Christ, not by works of righteousness, nothing that I have done at all. And you see grace.

Grace, Calling, and Christian Humility

It has a wonderful purpose in somebody's life. Paul told Timothy and second Timothy one nine who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.

Here he looks at us and he says, Now he says, God, he he loves us. He's redeemed us. He's forgiven us. It is all of grace. And by his grace, he has a calling for our life. And he says, I have a purpose for you.

I have a plan for you, not because you're good, not because you've earned it, not because you're worthy, but because living in grace is the message of the Christian life. It also is something that keeps the person humble.

Romans twelve three, Paul says, For I say through the grace that is given to me to let every man that is among you to not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think soberly, according as God has dealt unto every man his measure of faith.