The grace of God is presented as the solution to humanity's foolishness, guilt, and helplessness in sin, as described in Titus 3, Romans 3, and Ephesians 2. This grace is not earned by works but is a free gift, composed of God's kindness, love, and mercy, manifested through the redemptive work of Jesus Christ. In Titus 3, the fullness of grace is highlighted, while Romans 3 emphasizes its freeness, and Ephesians 2 demonstrates its fruitfulness in transforming believers from spiritual death to new life and a heavenly position in Christ. Ultimately, the sermon concludes that salvation and eternal life are solely by God's grace, received through faith in Jesus Christ, not by human effort.
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Paul's letter to Titus, chapter three, beginning with verse three. For we ourselves also were sometimes foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hate them, and hating one another. but after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appears not by work of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saves us by the washing of regeneration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior that being justified by his grace we should be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.
As we have time this morning, I want to turn later on to Romans chapter three and into Ephesians chapter two to consider this subject of grace. But let me say this. In Titus chapter three, we have our foolishness. We also ourselves were sometimes foolish and disobedient. And the description of that foolishness is followed immediately by a description of the grace of God. In Romans chapter three, we have our guilt. And that guilt is immediately followed by a description of the grace of God. And in Ephesians chapter two, we have our distance and helplessness. And that description is immediately followed by a description of the grace of God. So we have our foolishness in sin, our guilt in sin, and our distance and helplessness in sin.
Now you find that the grace of God meets that, meet exactly in redemption. You have it in First Corinthians chapter one and verse thirty. Of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, even redemption. Redemption that is composed of three things, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification. For our foolishness in Titus three, the Lord Jesus Christ has made wisdom. For our guilt in Romans three, the Lord Jesus Christ has made righteousness unto us. And for our distance and helplessness in Ephesians chapter two, the Lord Jesus Christ has made sanctification. And those three things form the redemption of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So we have our foolishness and pious faith. For that the Lord Jesus Christ is our wisdom. Our guilt in Romans three, the Lord Jesus Christ is our righteousness. And for our dissonance and helplessness and obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ is our sanctification. Or I could put it this way. Here in Titus three, we have a description of the grace of God. And so in Titus three, we have the fullness of God's grace. In Romans three, and going on to Kindred passages in chapters four and five, we have the freeness. of God's grace emphasized. While in Ephesians chapter two, we have the fruitfulness of God's grace.
Let me go over those again. In Titus three, we have the fullness of God's grace. In Romans three, the fruitfulness of God's grace. And in Ephesians two, the fruitfulness of God's grace. And just in case we don't get to those latitude passages, let me touch on them briefly right now. In Romans chapter three, we have the freeness of God's grace, that God without any merit on our part, without any obligation on his, freely justifies us through the redemption that's in Christ Jesus. In Ephesians two, we have the fruitfulness of God's grace. That is what it produces. And in that second chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians, we have what we were, but the great contrast is what we have become by the grace of God.
And we see the fruit of God's grace manifest in the second of Ephesians. While here in Titus chapter three, we have the fullness of it. Because the apostle exhausts all language in Titus three to describe what the grace of God is in his fullness. It's composed of three things here in Titus chapter three. First of all, in verse four, you have the kindness of God. Again, in verse four, you have the love toward man of God, which, by the way, is all one word. And thirdly, you have in verse five, the mercy of God. Now, grace, therefore, because he goes on to say that being justified by his grace in verse seven, grace is composed of three things. The kindness of God.
The love toward man of God and the mercy of God. Now that love toward man of God may sound like a spirit expression, but I want to put it that way because love toward man is all one word in the original. The love toward man of God and the grace of God. Now briefly let's look at this passage and I do trust that in our time together we will have time to look at Romans and then at Ephesians. So we should just have time briefly to touch upon the teachings of each of these passages. In verse three we have what we were. I want you to notice in each of these passages that the grace of God comes in following a description of what we were in our sin.
And the grace of God meets us right where we were and in what we were. It's not that we're changed and then God manifests this grace. It's not that God gives us His grace in order to change us, but right where we are, there the grace of God meets us. And so we have the description of our foolishness. We were sometimes foolish. And those of us who this morning are saved by the grace of God look back upon what we were before we're saved, and we agree one hundred percent with the apostle we were foolish. Fools make a mark of sin, the wise men write in the book of Proverbs.
And who among us didn't make a mock of sins before he was saved? The idea of sin bringing any consequence or a being an offense to God was foreign to it. We could laugh at such a thought and go on our merry way in our own iniquity. We made a mock of sin and God said that man's a fool. The Lord Jesus Christ called a man a fool who made provision for time and not for eternity. who had such a great cross at the harvest time, he tore down his barns and built greater. And then God came to him in the night and said, Thou fool. Thou fool is night thy soul should be required of thee. And then whom shall these things be that thou hast provided?
And you and I, before we were saved, made everything of time and nothing of eternity. And God said, that man is a fool. That man is a fool. The Lord Jesus Christ called the man a fool when he said, the individual who builds a house upon a foundation of sand is a fool. The individual who neglects and rejects the words of our Lord Jesus Christ has built the structure of his whole life upon sand. And when the storm of God's judgment beats upon it, that house will fall with one tremendous crash. And grateful be the whole thereof. And you and I were like that. He refused. We completely ignored or rejected the word of our Lord Jesus Christ and built the whole structure of our life upon some shifting sand that would not stand the test of the judgment of God.
We were foolish. And so you could be down in the middle of this. We were disobedient. And for this cause the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Both help me agree with you. It was our natural best to disobey just as it is when an individual child is born into your family. It's his natural best to disobey. Now God has put moral integrity or did put it into the heart of Adam. God put a measure of responsibility into the life of Adam. Adam had to name all the animals that God created.
Adam had the responsibility of tending the Garden of Eden. But sin changed that measure of responsibility into a desire of independence, and that became disobedient. And so the thing that God has put within the heart of my child, responsibility as he grows up, sin has perverted it into independence and his own will instead of the will of those who are in the forest. And so our natural tendency to disobey, we were disobedient. And we haven't time to look at all these words, but I think with a great deal of thanksgiving to God that he can put in the past tense, we were hateful in hating one another, especially that Paul should write such things as that.
It wasn't in love. Titus was a Gentile and Paul was a Jew. And before Paul's conversion, the soul of Tarsim and Justice, who sat in the face of Titus, has looked at him, a dog of a Gentile. And the Gentile would just as soon have cut the throat of a Jew. In fact, the Roman governors in Judea often thought it would have been better to wipe them out than to have tried to have governed them. Hateful and hating one another. Now how does Paul write to this man? How does this former Jew write to this former Gentile? In the first chapter in the fourth verse of Titus, my own son in the common sense.
Paul, you see what the great of God does. Just Titus, my own son, in the common faith. Why? Paul led Titus to the Lord Jesus Christ, brought him into the greatest benefit that God could give to men. Why did you do it, Paul? All the great things. I was once hateful, and so will we all, in hating one another, but now God's greatest manifest. First of all, in preaching, first of all, in kindness. the first of these three things that you have in verse four. After that the kindness and love of God, our Savior, toward man, appears. This word kindness is often translated as goodness in the New Testament or good.
For instance, you have it in Romans chapter three and verse twelve. There is none that do as good. No, not what? It was used in the secular Greek of a moral goodness. Uprightness and honesty as well as kindness. Because you see, when God exercises his kindness toward us, it must be a righteous kindness. God cannot be kind to us and be unrighteous to us. When God is kind, he must be righteous. But it is a lovely word, kindness. You have it again in Ephesians chapter two and verse seven, that in that coming day he's going to display his kindness toward us in Christ Jesus throughout that countless ages of eternity.
But it's a moral kindness. And that's why no human being apart from the manifest grace of God can show any goodness. When you and I are wanting to show kindness, this is very seldom of the upright kind. You know how it is with you in the traffic coffers when you use the illustration so often. If he doesn't give you the ticket when you disobey the law, you think he's a good fellow. If he doesn't give it to you, he's mean. You see, you think he's a good fellow when he's unrighteous. But if he's righteous, he's not a good fellow. He's very mean to you. It's like James McGinley, the Scotch preacher from California on one occasion was sailing down the highway. about ten miles an hour faster than the speed limit. He discovered very quickly he had left his guardian angel, as he called it, ten miles behind him.
And so the traffic caught pulling in, the highway patrolman, breaking the speed limit. And you're going ten miles an hour faster than the speed limit. You know, if the speed limit was fifty, you were doing sixty, or if it was sixty, you were doing seventy, whatever it happened to be. But the traffic cop was very courteous. So the highway patrol was very courteous. So Mr. McGinney took the thing by the horn and said, Say, you're so kind to me. You've treated me so courteously, though I have broken law. You must be a Christian. No, said the patrolman. I'm not a Christian. I ought to be, but I'm not. So quick as a wink, Mr. McGinley whipped out his pocket testament, and he opens it up, and the first thing you know, the car doors open.
They're both sitting in the car, and there he's giving the man the gospel. And that went on for about thirty minutes, as he explained the way of salvation to the man, and urged upon an acceptance of the Lord Jesus Christ. Though he said the man at that time did not receive the Lord Jesus Christ, but he forgot all about the traffic tickets. And so as Mr. McGinley drove off, he said, I was rejoicing. My old nature was rejoicing that I didn't get the traffic ticket, and my new nature was rejoicing that I had witnessed to a soul about the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, that's the way we are. That man didn't give him the traffic ticket, and we thought he would be kind, but he wasn't. He was unrighteous. Now, God can't be that. God cannot be kind to walk while he's unrighteous.
He must be righteously kind. And so he is, thank God. So he is all kindness, the goodness of God, the men and women who are lost in their sins and disobedience to God and hating God and living in malice. And then we will arrest all that. Oh, how could God do this? Well, that's his grace, my friend. He sent his beloved son to the cross to die for us in order that kindness might reach you and me. And on the basis of the death of his own well-beloved son, God sent kindness out to all mankind today. And that kindness could reach you today, my friend, only because the Lord Jesus Christ died for you.
Because for your sake the Lord Jesus Christ was willing to give up his life and shed his precious love that God, for Christ's sake, might forgive your sins and lives. at this time, hurrying on, the love of God towards man. We get our word for entropy from this. It's only used one other time in the New Testament. This has the idea of compassion, and the word used for love in this phrase is the emotional word for love. It's the love of a heart that just reaches out and wants to embrace in affection the object of its love. A very affectionate word. It's only used one other time in the New Testament.
I mean this combination of love towards man. And Luke writes it in the book of Acts after their shipwrecked on the Isle of Morph. Do you remember how they had spent days and nights in that raging storm they hadn't eaten for so many days? They must have been a god-haggard looking bunch of men upon that ship before that storm was over. Has you ever been in a storm for sea, at sea for any extended length of time? You're usually too sick to eat. If you can't eat, you don't have time to eat. You don't get to change your clothes. You're in your bunk for four hours and you're stomping wet clothes and four hours later you're up back on watch. You can't leave those that way in wartime. And by the end of three or four days, you're a starry looking out. I'll tell you that. How well do I remember?
And these men had gone through storm like that for days and days and days and days. And now the ship was broken up and they were wrecked and coming in on broken pieces of wood and some of them swimming. They made their way to land and The dragoons, they were drawn out to the surf and cast up on this island. What a sorry crew they must have looked. A whole lot of them. And then Luke writes these words, We were shown no little kindness by the barber's people of that place. And his word kindness is this word love for men. You know, I don't know what those barbarians were like, but they just had pity in their heart for such a dragoon-looking company. And they showed them time.
Ah, my friend, God looked down upon you and me in our helplessness, our sin. What a sorry picture we present to the living and holy God, as he sees us wallowing in our sin, unhappy, fighting one another, mend at one another's throats. What an awful picture presented to the eye of God. And God has taken pity. The love of God towards men manifests in good. And then the last word is the word mercy. His mercy is included in that. There are two kinds of mercy in the Scripture. One is that which touches close to pity because of the helpless condition of an individual.
The other is the mercy that a criminal begs of a judge. And that's the word that she uses. You know, when a criminal asks mercy, he's acknowledging his guilt. And he's simply asking that the court show him some favor that he doesn't deserve. He casts himself on the mercy of the court. He realizes he has no case. He has no ground for acquittal and will not be justified by the court. And so acknowledging his guilt, he cast himself from the mercy of the cross.
Ah, my friend, that's a great miracle. I had no case before God. My sin mounted up in a great mountain higher than I could conceive. And I had to acknowledge I'm guilty of the law. And I had to acknowledge the sentence of God against me was just and righteous and holy. And I deserve to die. Not when God's mercy sees you. The mercy of God. It's used in Romans chapter nine, where Paul is writing of what Moses learned of God. When God said, I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion. So let it not of him that willeth nor of him that dwelleth, but of God that shall with mercy.
Oh, my friend, I could struggle and strive and set my will to do better and to please God. I could run. I could run in the way, seeking to eventually gain heaven in the favor of God, but because of my sin, God writeeth not of him that willeth nor of him that runeth. I have nothing, nothing, nothing I can do to gain the favor of God. Then God, mercy. Mercy comes out to me. You remember that those words were originally given in the third chapter of the book of Exodus. And in chapter thirty-two, Israel had been dancing around the golden calf and idolatry. They had broken the law of God.
They had forsaken the God that brought them out of the land of Egypt. And if God had risen up in pure righteousness, he would have destroyed that. People were right there in the plane of Saniah. Why didn't God do that? I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. Ah, my friend, and if God treated you and me in pure righteousness as we deserve to be treated, you and I would be bound for a lost eternity without one glimmer of hope. Then why should God send his Son to die for us upon the cross? Why should God offer a free salvation to you and me?
Only one reason. I will have mercy upon whom I will have mercy. The mercy of God. And so you have his kindness, his love toward man and his mercy. Could I say that his kindness is the height of grace? Kindness. Oh, how it elevates us. It's going to be shown through all eternity in Ephesians two seven. That's the height of his grace. The love toward man, that's the breadth of his grace. It reaches out and embraces the whole human race. And mercy, that's the depth of his grace. It goes down, down, down to the depth of the lowest sinner, whoever lives.
And God extends mercy through the Lord Jesus Christ of that individual. That's the grace of God. There's a prior manifestation of that grace in the Lord Jesus Christ himself, which is really the faces of our whole subject. He know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, that he through his poverty might be rich. Listen, my friend, is there a one of us? Is there a one of us with the goal to say that he deserved that Jesus Christ should die when the cross were hidden? That's the modernist gospel. See how wonderful man is that God would send his son for man.
We're quite a wonderful people, you know, when God thought that we were worth such a sacrifice as the sacrifice of his son. Man is a wonderful being. Ah, my friend, you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. We didn't deserve that sacrifice. We deserved condemnation. We were under condemnation, under the sentence of death. Was there any compulsion upon the Lord Jesus Christ to leave the heaven of glory and come to the sinful cross of Calvary with all its shame and suffering? Not at all. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich, he came poor. And you gave to the cross, my friend, and see how poor he came.
Heaven is a place of light unsullied by any darkness, for in God there is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. And the Lord Jesus Christ came from the highest heights of light all the way down into this world and on out beyond it, and into the midnight darkness that wrapped the cross around, came from light, went out into darkness, where he experienced the judgment of God on your behalf and on you. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, though he was rich yet for your sake, he became poor, that ye through his poverty, that's it, my friend, through what he experienced on the cross, his poverty, you and I might be.
That's the grace. His kindness, his love toward man and his mercy. Now briefly, Romans chapter three. I do want to cover all three portions of the Word of God in connection with grace. Romans three, and we have in this epistle the demonstration of our absolute guilt and the impossibility of God justifying us on the basis of our own words. It's totally impossible. Any man who talks about getting to heaven by his own works or efforts does not know, probably has never read with any measure of understanding, the epistle to the Romans. because Mr. Smart was bringing out the other night, or the other morning was.
When you come to chapter three, verses nineteen and twenty, you've got your mouth shocked. And any man whose mouth is still open, talking about his own works, getting him to heaven, that man has never been through the first three chapters of Romans or his mouth would be shocked in the acknowledgement of guilt. My friend, there isn't a leg for us to stand on when the Apostles threw those first three chapters. Whether you're Jew or Gentile, you haven't a leg to stand on if you'll read the verses of these first three chapters of Romans. We're guilty, none righteous, no not one, condemned with a shut mouth under the righteous judgment of God.
And then what? Then what comes in? Verse twenty-four. being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Justified how? Free by His grace. Ah, you see in Romans it's the freedom of God's grace. Why does God declare me righteous? By experience and work, the nature I'm not righteous. My friend, use a little common sense. Use your mind, your brain. How can God say you're righteous on the basis of your works when you commit sin?
How can God say you're righteous when you're not righteous? He can't do it on the basis of your work. So on a totally different basis altogether, he must declare his righteous. And since it cannot be on the basis of worship, it must be free. So it's great. And it's on that great basis of the shed blood of our Lord Jesus Christ whom God has set forth a propitiation in his blood through faith, as he goes on to say in the twenty-fifth verse. Because the Lord Jesus Christ has shed his blood on the cross, God's grace goes out to you and will justify you freely without a cause through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
Oh, my friend, you and I haven't one iota of righteousness before God. So God turns around and he says, on the basis of the shed blood of my son, I'm going to give you my own righteousness in Christ. And that's a free gift. All briefly, for the sake of time, the fifth chapter, I just want you to go through here very briefly on this subject of righteousness. Verse fifteen, but not as the offense, so also as the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God. And the gift by grace, which is by one man Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many.
The free gift, the gift by grace. Notice again the sixteenth verse. Not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. The gift, all the way through this chapter. Again in the sixteenth verse, but the free gift. is of many offenses under justification. The seventh thing, verse, What if by one man's offense death reign by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one Jesus Christ. Verse eighteen, toward the end of the verse, even so the righteousness of one by the righteousness of one, the free gift came upon all men.
unto justification of life. How God over and over and over and over shall the freeness of his grace, the free gift. By grace are ye saved through faith and not none of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. My friend, you can talk about faith and works if you want to. They go together all right. The faith, the true faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will produce works, but you can never talk about grace anymore. You can't do it. Grace is the freedom of God's gift to you and me when we didn't deserve it.
And over and over in this chapter, the apostle speaks of the gift of God, the free gift of God. What isn't a gift free? Well, he's just compounding words upon words to impress your heart and mind with the idea that it's free. You know, you've got a lot of things that are free that aren't free. You go into the store, and here's a big sign, free. You get such and such a thing if you buy something else. Well, it's not free. It costs you the price of what you had to buy to get. It's not free in the fullest sense of the word. My boy thinks he's getting things free in the cereal box, and he's not getting them free. It's costing me money every time we buy lots of cereals.
You asked him if that thing was free. Sure, it didn't cost him anything, but asked me if it was free. No, it wasn't free. It cost me some money. All these premiums and coupons that you get, you know, they're free. Well, they're not free. You've got to pay for them. But the grace of God is free. Free. It's the free gift. The FCC was, the Federal Communications Commission was considering a number of years ago restricting the advertising on the radio, but I guess they would have lost too much money. To exclude the use of this word free when there was any obligation in connection with it, that they gave up the ideas being hopeful.
But that's the true idea of freedom. If it's free, there's no obligation attached to it. you have the idea of God's freeness in Luke six thirty five where he's kind the same word we've been looking at in Titus three to the unthankful and to the evil and Luke says expecting nothing again that's free expecting nothing again and God gives the free gift of his righteousness now notice how he emphasize to that here in Romans five. Verse nineteen. For as by one man's disobedience many were made sinners, so by the obedience of how many?
One. So by the obedience of one shall many be made righteous. It's not by your obedience, neither is it by my obedience that were made righteous. It's by the obedience of one man, the Lord Jesus Christ. by his obedience, not by mine, nor by yours, by his obedience. And what was that? He was obedient to God, even to death. The death of the cross. Man in the Garden of Eden disobeyed unto death. The Lord Jesus Christ obeyed unto death. By the disobedience in Adam, you and I were constituted sinners.
By the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ. We're constituted righteous. It's the free by his obedience and not by our own. Now we must hurry. Ephesians two. I'm just touching on these and you can study them out for yourself. Ephesians chapter two. Verse one. You happy quickens who were dead. Oh, dead. Now what can you do with a dead man? Can you exhort him to work to clean up his life? Can you exhort him to live better? Can you tell him if he just obeys God, everything will be all right with him and he'll live again?
Can you tell him to do anything? No, he's dead. He's dead. The only thing a dead person can do is work corruption. That's exactly what happens. You put him in a grave and the body goes to corruption. And that's exactly what you have spiritually and morally in the rest of Ephesians chapter two. We were dead in verse one. We began to work corruption right away. Notice what he has to say. When in the time passed, you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience, among whom also we all had our manner of life in time passed in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others. And that's the corruption in verse three, the death works in verse one.
You're going to get to heaven by works, my friend, if you're unsaved this morning. The only thing you can work is corruption. And there's plenty of it in your life, whether you admit it or not. All these proud people who are going around the city of Augusta, just as they're going around the city of Florence, me and my good work. What a stench in the nostrils of God. It's corruption. That's all it is, corruption. The only thing you and I could work in our unsaved state was corruption. We were dead. in trespasses and sins. But now notice. Now notice. Verse five. Even when we were dead, oh yes, in the midst of our death and corruption, what? That quickened us together with Christ by grace.
Are you safe? Great. When I was dead, yes, when I was dead. When I was working corruption? Yes, when I was working corruption. What happened? Oh, God, the... God imparted grace to me whereby I could stand upright and obey His commandments and fulfill His word and thus get eternal life. No. No. You've got a misconception of grace if you think that's what grace is. We were made alive, quickened by His grace. That's it. When I was dead, He graciously imparted light. For in my state of spiritual death there was nothing I could do to gain it, to earn it, nor to deserve it.
But he imparted it freely in his grace. So you have it in Romans chapter four. All this verse that men and women can't quite believe. Even dear Alexander, why to preach St. George's of Edinburgh had a difficult time when he preached the sermon on that. I think he eventually got through it. It had a difficult time with it. But God justifies the ungodly. Who does he justify? The ungodly. Not the moral, not the refined, not the righteous. God justifies the ungodly. Because it's grace, my friend. It's free! Oh, but I'll tell you one thing. You once lay hold of the gift of God's grace and you'll not be ungodly anymore. There isn't anything to transform the life like the truth of the grace of God.
But now notice, I said Ephesians two is the fruitfulness of grace. And you have the results of grace here. For instance, in the twelfth verse, we who sometimes were afar off were made not. That's one of the fruits of grace. But I had in mind three things in Ephesians two. Verse five, when we were dead, we were quickened or made alive. Verse six, we were raised up together. And again in verse six, we were made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. We were made alive. That's the change of our condition. We were dead. We were raised together with Christ. That's the change of our position.
Resurrection speaks of its opposite various. And now the exaltation of that position, we were seated together with Christ, in Christ actually in heavenly. Just think of it, my friend. We were dead. What did God's grace do? Made us alive. Did it leave us here? No, it raised us. The walking units of life and now seated in heaven. He's in Christ Jesus. You can't get any higher than that. You can't get any higher than that. Where is the Lord Jesus Christ? In Ephesians chapter one, he's been seated in the heavenly place as far above all things. And where is this poor dead ungodly sinner in chapter two?
The very same word, seated in heavenlies. In Christ Jesus. Are you telling me anything but the grace of God that could take a poor dead sinner and put him that high? And I and you who are saved this morning by the grace of God are now seated in heavenlies in Christ Jesus. As the Irishman said, Glory be to God, how can a man drown with his head that high above water? Ah, that's it, my friend. The word seated in heavenlies. In Christ Jesus. Wonderful truth. That means our position this morning is exactly the same position as our Lord Jesus Christ. That our acceptance this morning is exactly the same acceptance as that which was afforded the Lord Jesus Christ when he entered into the presence of God.
That's my acceptance. Your acceptance if you've been saved this morning. Our nearness to God is the very same nearness as that. now enjoyed by the Lord Jesus Christ because our position is in heavenly in Christ Jesus. Do you see the fruitfulness of his grace? It made us alive, it raised, it brought us near, it seated us in heavenly in Christ Jesus. That's the fruitfulness of God's grace. Know what it is called. Nothing. Nothing is over. Oh, you know, there are a lot of dear folks that want to get into heaven by the back door. Oh, I'll be so happy. I'll be so satisfied if I could just get into heaven by the back door. Not I, my friend. Not I.
Not I. I want that abundant interest into the kingdom. I want to go in with every sail fully set and all the flags flying. I want to go in and all the fullness that God has given me in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so I shall, and so shall you. Because our entrance there is not by our obedience, but by his grace. Oh, my friend, it's free. Do you have it this morning? Amazing things. Free. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. You can have it this morning for the acceptance of it. Will you take it? Will you take it this morning?
Oh, not in him, the Lord Jesus. Will you take it? Will you? And with him. Oh, the greatness and the greatness of God.