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Understanding Grace: The Key to Spiritual Fruitfulness

This past weekend it was special having mission partners worship with us, hearing about how God is moving in their lives. We were also privileged to have Bob Santos teach on the tranforming power of God's grace which is one of his main areas of focus in Search for Me Ministries. Grace is one of the most discussed yet least understood concepts in Christianity. While many believers grasp grace as God's unmerited favor, this understanding often stops short of its full transformational power. True spiritual growth requires a deeper comprehension of grace's multifaceted nature and its role in producing genuine spiritual fruit.

What Does Success Look Like in God's Eyes?

Before diving into grace, we must first understand what constitutes success from a biblical perspective. The world defines success through money, popularity, status, and size. However, God's definition traces back to His very first words to humanity in Genesis 1:28: "Be fruitful and multiply."

While this command has physical implications, it carries profound spiritual meaning. God's idea of success involves becoming spiritually fruitful and multiplying the fruit of the Spirit throughout the world. Instead, we traded God's empowering for our own power to do good. This led to a peverted seeking of good apart from God. This concept appears throughout Scripture, including Isaiah 5, where God expected good grapes from His vineyard but received only bad fruit -rotten and sour berries [the Hebrew term used describes the stench of rotting flesh].

Isaiah 5:2b

He hoped for it to produce good grapes,
But it produced only worthless ones.

Defining Spiritual Fruitfulness

Spiritual fruitfulness involves two key components: being conformed to the image of Jesus and multiplying that fruit in the lives of others. The fruit of the Spirit - love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control - represents the character qualities God desires to develop  and see cultivated in every believer (Galatian 5:22-23)

We all have the same capacity for quality fruitfulness because the Holy Spirit dwells within us. However, our multiplication differs based on our unique gifts, abilities, resources, and opportunities. Success means reaching our God-given potential for fruitfulness, not comparing ourselves to others.

How Do We Bear Spiritual Fruit?

The answer is surprisingly straightforward: we bear fruit by abiding in Christ.

John 15:4-5 makes this clear:

Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without me you can do nothing.

Fruitfulness never comes through self-effort but through relationship with God. It's not about numbers or outward achievements but about walking with God in obedience and touching others' lives.

The Connection Between Abiding and Obedience

Jesus explained how abiding works:

John 15:10

"If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love" 

This raises a crucial question: How do we obey God? The answer is by abiding in His grace.

A Breakdown Of God's Grace

Grace is like a multifaceted diamond, with each facet providing a different reflection of God's character. While unmerited favor forms grace's foundation, limiting our understanding to this single facet prevents us from experiencing grace's full power.

Grace as Unmerited Favor

Ephesians 2:8-9 establishes this fundamental truth:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast."

This aspect of grace circumvents human pride and separates Christianity from every other religion. Understanding unmerited favor is transformational because it reveals that God calls us to labor from a place of rest, not striving. We respond to what He has already done rather than trying to earn His acceptance.

Grace as Empowerment Over Sin

However, grace extends beyond acceptance to empowerment.

Romans 6:14 declares,

"For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace."

This indicates that grace provides power to live victoriously over sin.The problem many believers face is that living by grace doesn't come naturally. Our default mode is living under law - constantly trying to measure up to standards of good and evil.

Understanding the Power of Sin and Law

Paul makes a startling statement in 1 Corinthians 15:56: "The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law." This concept can be confusing, but understanding it unlocks spiritual freedom.

How Law Empowers Sin

When Paul speaks negatively about law in the New Testament, he's referring to seeking righteousness through law - trying to find goodness within ourselves by measuring up to moral and religious standards. This compulsion to establish self-righteousness gives sin its power to dominate our lives.

This pattern began in the Garden of Eden when Adam and Eve ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, dosobeying God and breaking fellowship with Him. This act gave humanity an awareness of standards and a compulsion to measure up to them while losing the active relationship they had with God and His empowering presence that led them until that point. Since the standard  for 'good' is nothing short of perfection (being "like God"), we inevitably fail, leading to either pride when we think we've succeeded or self-condemnation when we recognize our failure.

The Cycle of Law and Sin

Bob used an excellent analogy to help us under this dynamic seen in the Bible. He explained that sin is like a bullet that causes  the sting of death to be felt- the seperation from life, from God. But a bullet thrown at someone might hurt a bit but not cause any serious damage. However, when a bullet is loaded into a gun that propels this bullet with great power, we see the full effect of the bullet to kill. Law is the gun that pulls the trigger on sin. It has the power to condemn and call guilty anyone who doesn't reach perfection. This results in the sin trapping people on the hamster-wheel of trying harder and harder, drawing them away rather towards grace that can set them free from sin. 

Living under law creates a destructive cycle:

- We arouse and empower sin because of a "law" of goodness we set ourselves or feel is expected of us
- We become enslaved to sin as a compulsion because we cannot attain to perfection
- We are alienated from abiding in Christ because of the law we seek to fulfill
- We fall from grace's empowerment for living - we get stuck in guilt and condemnation 

The harder we try to be good Christians through self-effort, the worse we perform. This explains why many believers struggle with persistent sin patterns despite their best intentions.

Living by Faith vs. Living by Law

The alternative to living under law is living by faith. Galatians 5:6 explains: "For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but faith working through love."

The Benefits of Living by Faith

When we live by faith and receive God's grace:

- The power of sin is disarmed ( the bullet still deadly, but lost its power)
- Sin becomes a choice rather than a compulsion
- We abide in Christ and bear fruit
- We are empowered by grace to reign in victory over sin

This doesn't eliminate the possibility of sin but transforms it from an overwhelming compulsion to a conscious choice to sin or yield to God's grace in weakness and receive power to unload that bullet(sin) from being an agent of death. Grace produces mature love that motivates us to choose what honors God. This is an every day thing. We will never be done needing grace to bear good fruit!

Understanding grace transforms how we handle sin and failure. When we beat ourselves up over mistakes, we're actually living under law, trying to establish self-goodness through self-condemnation. This perpetuates the cycle of sin rather than breaking it.

A Redemptive Process for Handling Failure

Here's a five-step process for walking through failure in a grace-centered way:

  1. Own your actions - Don't hide, justify, or minimize your sin
  2. Confess to God - Come honestly before the Lord with your failures
  3. Ask for forgiveness - Request God's cleansing and mercy
  4. Believe you are forgiven - Trust in the power of Jesus' blood to cleanse completely
  5. Leave guilt and shame at the cross - Refuse to carry burdens Jesus died to remove

Life Application

This week, examine your relationship with grace. Are you living primarily under law, constantly trying to measure up to standards and earn God's approval? Or are you abiding in grace, allowing God's love and acceptance to empower you for fruitfulness?

Pay attention to how you handle mistakes and failures. Do you beat yourself up, trying to establish self-righteousness through self-condemnation? Or do you walk through the redemptive process outlined above?

Consider these questions:

- In what areas of your life are you still trying to earn God's favor rather than responding from His love?
- How might understanding grace as empowerment change your approach to persistent struggles with sin?
- What would it look like for you to truly abide in Christ this week, allowing His grace to produce fruit through you rather than striving in your own strength?

The goal isn't perfect performance but growing in mature love that naturally chooses what honors God. As you understand and experience the multifaceted nature of grace, you'll discover the freedom and power to live the fruitful Christian life God desires for you and us as a church. We can only be a resource church for our wider community if we come to grips with these things in our everyday lives. So let's deliberately choose to come under the powerful work of His grace this week and going forward.