Habit 4: Enjoy a Grace-Based Identity SPREAD HUMILITY AND GRACE
The world teaches us to achieve our way to “salvation” and to build a name
for ourselves. God teaches us that we are dead and guilty in our sinful rebellion against him, that “sinner” is the name we have built for ourselves. God reveals that we can only “receive” our way to salvation. Only God’s gift of grace (undeserved love) expressed supremely through the substitutionary life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus can give us the new life and secure identity we desire. The gospel melts pride and forms a happy humility that’s contagiously freeing to non-believers. The good news of the gospel is not just the ABCs of the Christian life, but the A-Z of the Christian life: We are saved, and we grow, by receiving and enjoying grace—we are new creations in Christ who are eternally secure by grace alone, have nothing to prove, and are no better than anyone else.
MEMORIZE
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. - Romans 3:23-25
“Were I asked to focus the New Testament message in three words, my proposal would be adoption through propitiation, and I do not expect to ever meet a richer or more pregnant summary of the gospel than that.” J.I. Packer
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STUDY ROMANS 3:9-31 AND EPHESIANS 2:1-10 TOGETHER.
What do these texts teach us about sin, judgment, pride, and our old identity?
What do these texts teach us about grace, humility, and our new identity? What connections can you make between these texts, what our culture says (and doesn’t say) about sin and finding an identity, your own story, and the core book you are reading?
“The gospel is this: We are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe, yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.”
MEMORIZE
- Tim Keller
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. - 2 Corinthians 5:17
IDENTIFY WHERE YOU ARE MOST TEMPTED TO BUILD A PERFORMANCE-BASED IDENTITY INSTEAD OF ENJOYING A GRACE-BASED IDENTITY.
Discuss these dynamics as a group, and trace connections to your stories
(Habit 3). Why and where are you tempted to find your identity in your performance rather than in Jesus’ performance for you? How does this show up in your life and impact those around you? What makes you afraid of grace—of letting go and repenting of building your own identity, and just receiving the wild grace of God? Create a culture in your group of noticing these tendencies in one another, repenting together, and enjoying grace together. Let’s be a people who live from our identity (we are loved!) instead of for an identity.
“Most of us tend to base our personal relationship with God on our performance instead of on his grace.” Jerry Bridges
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“What is grace? Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable. It is being loved when you are the opposite of lovable. The cliche definition of grace is ‘unconditional love.’ It is a true cliche, for it is a good description of the thing.”
Paul Zahl
DEVELOP A HABIT OF NEVER BASING YOUR JUSTIFICATION ON YOUR SANCTIFICATION. Justification is the one-time event that occurs when we are born again, where God forever clears us of our guilty verdict and, because of Jesus, views us “just-as-if-I-never-sinned” and “just-as-if-I-always-obeyed” (these two phrases summarize the heart of justification). Sanctification is different, sanctification is your lifetime process of growing as a disciple. One of the biggest errors Christians make is basing their justification (a gracebased identity) on their sanctification (how they are currently performing and progressing/not progressing). This gets the teaching of the New Testament backwards, creates an unstable identity, and misses the transforming power of grace. Discuss together how you could make a habit of avoiding this error. We need to be a people who preach the gospel to ourselves regularly. Perhaps we shouldn’t get out of bed in the morning until we’ve reminded ourselves that we are justified, beloved, new creations in Christ.
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“Only a fraction of the present body of professing Christians are solidly appropriating the justifying work of Christ in their lives. Many have so light an apprehension of God’s holiness and of the extent and guilt of their sin that consciously they see little need for justification, although below the surface of their lives they are deeply guilt-ridden and insecure. Many others have a theological commitment to [the doctrine of justification], but in their day-to-day existence they rely on their sanctification for justification… drawing their assurance of acceptance with God from their sincerity, their past experience of conversion, their recent religious performance, or the relative infrequency of their conscious, willful disobedience. Few know how to start each day with a thoroughgoing stand upon Luther’s platform: you are accepted, looking outward in faith and claiming the wholly alien righteousness of Christ as the only ground for acceptance, relaxing in that quality of trust which will produce increasing sanctification as faith is active in love and gratitude. In order for a pure and lasting work of spiritual renewal to take place within the church, multitudes within it must be led to build their lives on this foundation. This means that they must be conducted into the light of a full conscious awareness of God’s holiness, the depth of their sin and the sufficiency of the atoning work of Christ for their acceptance with God, not just at the outset of their Christian lives but in every succeeding day.”
RICHARD LOVELACE 40
BE A SON, BE A DAUGHTER.
The doctrine of justification is a legal metaphor—we’ve been made “right”
with God. The doctrine of adoption/sonship is a relational metaphor—we’ve been adopted by our Heavenly Father, we are no longer orphans but are now his sons and daughters. Whether you grew up with a negative or positive father figure, your Heavenly Father is the best dad ever—and he’s your dad, and he loves you, and you get to live for eternity as his beloved son or daughter. Life tries to foist many identities upon us adults, but probably the most powerful and freeing identity to embrace and enjoy as a Christian is being a child of God. Live into this identity more and more. By all means be an adult, but first and foremost you are a son or daughter of your Heavenly Father who invites you to relate to him with childlike dependence, freedom, and joy. What would it look like for you to live from this identity this year? Use Appendix 3 (The Orphan vs. Child of God Checklist) to help you get specific handles on this, perhaps picking 1 or 2 areas of growth opportunity that God impresses upon you from the list. Focus on an area that overlaps with the 1 or 2 growth goals you picked from Habit #3: Story. Don’t try to deeply work on more than 1 or 2 areas of your heart at once, deep change requires focus and time.
“What is a Christian? The question can be answered in many ways, but the richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God as Father.” J.I. Packer
“Who am I? I am a child of God, the bride of his Son, and the dwelling place of his Spirit. And this identity is given to me by grace.”
MEMORIZE
See what kind of love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! - 1 John 3:1
Tim Chester 41
PRACTICE SPREADING HUMILITY AND GRACE—MAKE THIS PART OF YOUR REPUTATION.
Because our identity is securely based on grace, we get to enjoy the freedom
of humility. We don’t have it all together, we sin, we need help. Therefore we can practice humility by confessing our sin to God and others, asking for forgiveness, and asking for help. We can be honest. As God sanctifies us we ought to increasingly become the most humble people in our neighborhoods and in our workplaces. This is a happy, freeing humility of a person who doesn’t think less of herself, but thinks of herself less because she knows she’s loved and is occupied with sharing God’s love with others. There’s 1 thing that the Bible says God exalts, and that’s humility. Discuss as a group what it looks like to be a people who practice spreading humility and grace in our church and in our city. What is your reputation right now, what do you sometimes spread instead of humility and grace? Imagine how God can use you as you begin to spread humility and grace.
MEMORIZE
At that time the disciples came to Jesus, saying, “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?” And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. - Matthew 18:1-4
REPENT DAILY! “REPENT, BELIEVE THE GOSPEL, AND FOLLOW JESUS” (REPEAT THIS DAILY).
Repent, believe the gospel, and follow Jesus is what starts the Christian life
and what grows the Christian life. Start a habit of repenting daily. Each day there’s probably at least 1 way you could repent before God, and likely 1 way you can repent and ask forgiveness from someone in your life. A grace-based identity gives us the safety and freedom to practice daily repentance and enjoy the freedom and fruitfulness that comes with it. Discuss as a group what excites, scares, or confuses you about repenting daily. Discuss how cultivating this habit could be Life-giving for both you and people in your life.
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“If you should ask me what are the ways of God, I would tell you that the first is humility, the second is humility, and the third is humility. Not that there are no other precepts to give, but if humility does not preceed all that we do, our efforts are fruitless.”
MEMORIZE
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted. - Luke 18:10-4
SAINT Augustine
“A person with a strong and true sense of identity will experience peace with self, others, and God. This person will have a certain self-forgetfulness, a lack of self absorption and self consciousness. By contrast, the person with a weak sense of identity is painfully concerned with him or herself.”
Dick Keyes
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MAIN TAKEAWAY: We’re a church of disciples who practice the habit of enjoying a grace-based identity, freeing us to be a humble people who give grace to others.
What is God saying to you?
What’s your next step?
RECOMMENDED RESOURCES FOR HABIT 4: Sonship Manual: 3rd edition, World Harvest Mission/Serge Transforming Grace, Jerry Bridges Because He Loves Me, Elyse Fitzpatrick The Crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge The Cross of Christ, John Stott Grace in Practice, Paul Zahl Repentance, Jack Miller Beyond Identity, Dick Keyes The Freedom of Self Forgetfulness, Tim Keller
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