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Sep 14, 2025

The Grace We Need

Passage: 1 Corinthians 1:3-9

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: 1 Corinthians

Keywords: grace, guilt, merit, uniqueness of christianity, god of grace

Summary:

Before Paul launches into instructing the church about how to live together he wants God's people to be firmly planted in their grace relationship with Him. This passage and message seeks to clarify what grace is and isn't as well as how grace sets our God and Christianity apart from any other gods or religions.

Detail:

The Grace We Need

1 Corinthians 1:3-9

September 14, 2025

Fellowship Question:  Simply stated, grace is undeserved favor and blessing.  Share about a time someone gave you grace.

INTRO:  Illustration

It was 1945, World War II had drawn to a close, and a young man sat broken inside a POW camp. He had been a reluctant soldier in Hitler’s army and here, inside a prison in Scotland, he had months to contemplate what had been and what was to come. The cities of his homeland had been reduced to rubble and the people impoverished. His sleep was filled with repeating nightmares in which the terrors of warfare were lived over and over.  But here are his own words.

“And then came what was for me the worst of all. In September 1945, in camp 22 in Scotland, we were confronted with pictures of Belsen and Auschwitz. They were pinned up in one of the huts, without comment… Slowly and inexorably the truth filtered into our awareness, and we saw ourselves mirrored in the eyes of the Nazi victims. Was this what we had fought for? Had my generation, as the last, been driven to our deaths so that the concentration camp murderers could go on killing, and Hitler could live a few months longer?  The depression over the wartime destruction and a captivity without any apparent end was exacerbated by feelings of profound shame and having to share in this disgrace. That was undoubtedly the hardest thing, a stranglehold that choked us.”

The only future this soldier could see stretching out before him was one that filled him with despair and shame. Yet it was in the midst of this darkness that God found him. A visiting chaplain gave the soldier a Bible and, with little else to do, he began reading it. In the lament Psalms he heard resonant voices, the agony of people who felt God had abandoned them. In the story of Christ crucified he encountered a God who knew what it was to experience suffering, abandonment, and shame. Feeling utterly forsaken himself, this German soldier found a friend in Jesus

In 1947 he was given permission to attend a Christian conference that brought together young people from across the world. The Dutch participants had asked to meet with the German POWs who had fought in the Netherlands. This young soldier was one of them. He went to the meeting full of fear, guilt and shame, feelings that intensified as the Dutch Christians spoke of the pain Hitler and his troops had inflicted, of the dread the Gestapo bred in their hearts, of the family and friends they had lost, of the disruption and damage to their communities.

Yet the Dutch Christians didn’t speak out of a spirit of vindictiveness.  They came to offer forgiveness. It was completely unexpected. These Dutch Christians embodied the love the German soldier had read about in the story of Christ and it turned his life upside down. He discovered despite all that had passed “God looked on us with ‘the shining eyes’ of his eternal joy”, that there was hope for the future.

That German soldier was Juergen Moltmann, who would go on to become one of the most significant theologians of the twentieth century. All that from the grace of some Dutch Christians toward a Nazi soldier. 

Source: Moltmann’s writings. Quotes from The Source of Life.The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life. Fortress Press 1977

            Today’s passage we are studying is all about GRACE.  Even as I say that, some of you just checked out!  Grace seems to be such an ethereal, nebulous concept.  It’s one of those words that feels like you are trying to nail Jello to the wall. 

  • We’re asked to “say grace” at meals.
  • We talk about someone being very “grace-ful”.
  • We’re told by pastors that “Grace is God’s unmerited favor”…whatever that means.
  • We read verses like 2 Corinthians 12:9: ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Or 1 Corinthians 15:10: ‘But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.’

On the one hand, grace sounds like something that has already moved God to do amazing things for us.  On the other hand, it sounds like a present force that is somehow dependent upon what we do with it. 

            In 1 Corinthians 1:3-9, the biblical understanding of grace—past, present and future—runs through this small paragraph.  But in reality, it is running through the life and experience of every believer, every church and every saint in every chapter and part of their life.  That is because GRACE is what we need—yesterday, today and forever. 

            So, let’s read today’s passage in our series in the book of 1 Corinthians.

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

4 I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus. 5 For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— 6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.

            Let me first just talk about God’s grace in general terms. 

#1.  Biblical grace is, from start to finish, about our God.  Not just any god; exclusively the God of the Bible, God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  All religions have a god or gods.  Many of them have a vague concept of grace.  But none of them have a “God of grace” like that of Christianity.  And none of them have a concept, experience or outworking of grace like our Triune God.  None of them have a God who, before, during and after we tortured and crucified the 2nd Person of the Trinity, offered to us not only forgiveness but a place as sons and daughters in His forever family. 

ILL:  It would have been like one of those Dutch WWII citizens whose whole family had been tortured and murdered by Juergen Moltmann himself, being not only forgiven but asked to become a Dutch citizen and a member of the very lone-survivor’s family and household, with all the rights, privileges and roles of a full family member. 

That is wilder and deeper grace than you will ever find anywhere in the universe of other gods.  And it ONLY comes to us “from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”  The grace we are talking about today and in the church every day must be a grace that is only found in God.  While we may experience it through other Christians, that is only possible because those people have first experienced it from God.  The kind of deep grace the Bible presents is not possible apart from God and God working in us. 

            The more we experience God, the more we will experience grace and become people of grace.  If we are lacking in God’s grace in our own lives or towards others, it is a symptom that we are lacking in Christ.

 

#2.  Biblical grace has two sides to the same coin:  a.) undeserved favor from God & b.) powerful, practical helpfulness from God.  What do I mean.

            It is clear from even a causal reading of the N.T. that there is a whole realm of blessings we receive from God simply because God is a God who loves to give blessings to people who don’t deserve any blessings.  Not only do we deserve judgment for our sins and don’t get it (which is mercy), but we get blessings from God that we don’t deserve (which is grace). 

            Here are a few examples of this aspect of grace—completely undeserved favor from God.

  • Ephesians 2:4-9--“But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.”
  • Acts 15:10-11 (Paul & Barnabas defending their Gospel to the Gentiles at the Jerusalem Council)--Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear? 11 No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.”
  • Romans 3:23-24—“For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

This side of the coin—the undeserved favor and blessings from God—is something that was given to us in Christ in the PAST. 

Vs. 4 talks about this when it says, “I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Christ Jesus.” 

None of this would have ever happened or been possible outside of Jesus—who He is and what He has done for us in this miracle of salvation.  This is why, apart from Jesus, there is no salvation, no redemption, no reconciliation with God, no canceling of our sin-debt, no forgiveness, no righteousness of God applied to us, nothing.  There is NO other name, person or being given to mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12).

NOTE:  it is clear from these passages and by definition that this grace of/from God cannot be earned, bought, merited, or generated by us in the least way.  If the slightest component of us doing something to merit grace is required, it is no longer grace at all.  Grace and human effort/works are like two things that cannot coexist at the same time in the same place:

  • Gravity and weightlessness
  • Life sustaining oxygen/air and a vacuum

Equally, God’s grace cannot coexist with…

  • Human merit—nothing you or I can do earns any component of God’s grace. Grace is utterly a gift from God. As soon as we try to receive that gift by works on our part, it would cease to be a gift and become, in some way, an obligation for God to give…and grace is never an obligation from God to us.  Just read Romans 3-4.
  • Human obligation—there is no obligation or requirement on our part in order to have the grace of God. Receiving God’s grace doesn’t now obligate you to “pay God back” in any way.  God’s past grace doesn’t earn His present grace.   ILL: thinking that God’s grace now obligates me to begin working to make God happy is like believing the lose change in my pocket will assist in paying off the national debt when that debt is increasing at almost $4 million per minute!   
  • Human guilt—Guilt has its place in a Christian’s life—to convict us of sin and lead us to repentance. But guilt goes to seed when we think we must do something as a form of penance to show God how guilty we feel or sorry we are whether that might be feeling worse about my sin or getting depressed about it or not letting myself enjoy and really be happy with the unconditional love of God for me.  Feeling super guilty about past sin doesn’t make God’s grace more powerful; it robs it of power.  The power of grace is that it  is meant to erase guilt, not increase it. This is what Paul also refers to in Romans 7 when he bemoans the wretchedness of his sinful flesh and cries out, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rm. 7:24).  He points to Jesus alone and the following chapter, Romans 8, which is all about the grace of God.  

ILL: too many of us live like pardoned criminals.  A pardon releases someone from jail who is serving time for a crime.  But it does not necessarily clear their record.  That is called “expungement” where your record is either sealed or completely wiped out as if you never were convicted of a crime. 

Too often we live like someone who is no longer “in prison” for a sin, i.e. isolated from God.  But we carry with us and keep reading over and over the criminal conviction for which we were guilty in the past, i.e. our past sins.  We allow it to continue to affect our friendships with people and relationship with God.  We give it power it doesn’t have before God when we allow it to continue to negatively affect our mental, emotional and spiritual state.  The criminal whose record has been expunged can honestly and legally say when asked if they have a criminal record, “No, I have no criminal history.”  That is what the grace of God does to our past. 

APP:  are we laboring under any of these false understandings of God’s grace?  Are we trying to earn God’s approval and blessing?  Are we under a sense of obligation to God rather than love for Jesus?  Do we allow guilt to be more dominant than grace in our view of our past?  Maybe it’s time we really embraced the grace of God and started thanking God for his undeserved and constant favor over us whenever we’re tempted to slip back into denying divine grace? 

Now let’s move on to the grace we need in the present and for the future that Paul talks about here.  1 Cor. 1:5-7

“For in him you have been enriched in every way—with all kinds of speech and with all knowledge— 6 God thus confirming our testimony about Christ among you. 7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift...9God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”

You’ll notice that most of these statements are in the past tense (aorist passive indicative; both “have been enriched” in vs. 5 and “has called you” in vs. 9) meaning something already completed but continuing to have impact on the present. 

            Paul is saying that, in Christ…in the grace of God that comes to us by being in a saving-faith relationship with Jesus…we’ve been given some amazing gifts that can be dramatically impacting us right now.  Grace is meant to change everything NOW. 

What does Paul point to as being changed NOW?

First, anyone who is “in Christ” by faith in Jesus has been “made rich.” 

            What do you think of when I say, “That person is really wealthy?”  Financial wealth, right?  That reflects the values of our contemporary American culture.  But there are a host of other types of riches in life, most of them far more important than being wealthy physically, right? 

  • Rich in kindness.
  • Rich in friendships.
  • Rich in family—offspring.
  • Rich in wisdom…leading to a blessed life.
  • Rich in positive impact on others.

When we joined God’s family by faith in Jesus, we won the trillion-dollar lottery!  We got written into Jesus’ will and became heirs of all the riches of God in Christ.  (Some of us need to ‘read the will’ more often.  All the promises of God are the ‘will’ or ‘last testament’ that now falls to us because of the death of Jesus.  We are RICH!!!  Welcome to the “Eternal Billionaire’s/ Trillionaire’s Club”!  it comes with a personal copy of the written will enumerating all the things God has now made available to you. 

APP:  When we’re feeling poor, we need to “read the will”, i.e. the Word, more.  We need to “pull out the family trust papers and checkbook” and start ‘writing checks’ on the promises of God, i.e. stepping out in faith on His promises to do things that wouldn’t have been possible earlier.

            God has written us into the most amazing, grandiose drama of human history imaginable.  He has given us riches beyond our wildest dreams.  He has given us authority to do things “in Christ” that are absolutely impossible in merely human strength and resources.  God’s grace has made us crazy-rich.  Let’s stop living like destitute orphans!

            Paul points to just a couple of the riches God has given us:  “…all kinds of speech and…all kinds of knowledge…confirming our testimony about Christ [i.e. the Gospel] among you.”

            To a culture that over-valued oratory ability and ‘knowledge’ or philosophical acumen, Paul assures them that God has gifted them what they need to operate in their culture in living out this grand drama of the Kingdom.  He points to spiritual gifts (charisma from the root word for grace—charis).

            As we will see in several chapters, this might be alluding also to the speaking gifts and gifts of knowledge given by the Holy Spirit to the church.  But in this particular context, where the reference is also made about the Gospel or “our testimony about Christ among you” (vs. 6), I think Paul is assuring the Corinthians that God has gifted each of them with the capacity to speak the Gospel and experience the Gospel.  As immature as many of them were in the faith, Paul still saw God “confirming” the genuine presence of the Gospel of Christ among them.  God had gifted each of the genuine believers in Jesus with the ability to speak about Jesus and share truth about the Gospel that had gripped them and could transform the most educated or philosophical of neighbors around them. 

APP:  I think this is an invitation to every one of us to step out more by faith into sharing the “power of God to salvation”, the Gospel of Jesus.  God will give us the words in the moment, the wisdom that can pierce any heart, if we will just open our mouths and speak of Jesus.  We who have trusted Jesus Christ by faith and been born again spiritually by the Holy Spirit have been enriched in the speech and knowledge necessary to bring the grace of God to any human being.  It’s not about persuasive words or intricate theology; it’s about the power of the Gospel. 

            Verse 9 reminds us of another component of the “wealth” God has given us in the grace-gifts of the Holy Spirit:  “God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.”  The term for “fellowship” here is the Greek word koinonia—“having in-common.” 

            The Apostle John said in 1 John 1:3--We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 

APP:   God’s grace has called us 1st into fellowship with God himself.  When we are truly in fellowship…sharing life ‘in-common’ with God…we will also be experiencing the deepest of relationship, love and connectedness to other believers.  The problems in the Corinthian church that were dividing them into competing house-churches or class divisions were a ‘fellowship’ issue with Jesus.  God had “called” them into transformative fellowship with Jesus.  But too many of them were answering a different call—a call of their flesh to make dividing lines and living according to their culture’s values rather than their ‘Kingdom script.’ 

            Honestly, that’s our problem whenever there is distance or divisions in our spiritual family.  Someone…or numbers of us… are not living out of the grace of God given to us.  We are living out of our past, our fleshly weakness, our culture’s misplaced values, or our own egos.  Fellowship with our God and with one another are twin graces God is seeking to bless us with every day.  And the rest of this book will help us unpack that two-way fellowship (with God and with God’s people). 

APP:  Parents, I wish I had thought to model this grace to my children, giving them at least occasionally pure grace/undeserved blessings precisely when they deserved punishment. 

Lastly, there is a future aspect of God’s grace to us. 

7 Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed. 8 He will also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

            It is the grace of God at work presently in us that causes us to “eagerly await” the final revelation of Jesus to the world at his second coming. 

ILL:  eagerly awaiting my Dad’s return from work so that we could go to Natatorium Park, Spokane’s once-upon-a-time amusement park.  As a boy, I remember it as a place of amusement rides like a massive wooden roller-coaster and the Looff Carousel  that is still in Spokane at Riverfront Park. 

            I would wait on the street corner for Dad to come home only if I hadn’t sassed my Mother that day…or been mean to my sisters.  Had I been a naughty Johnny, there was no great anticipation about Dad’s coming home, rather a sense of dread. 

            I think that is how it is with our heavenly Father.  If we’re loving Him, we’re living in obedience to him and treating people with His love and grace.  But if I’m disconnected from Him and not really sharing fellowship with Jesus, I’ll probably be mistreating or neglecting those he has called me to love.  And I probably won’t be that excited to see him show up as Judge and Sovereign of this rebellious world. 

            This is the “other side of the coin” we talked about with grace—the “powerful, practical, unmerited work of God in us” to experience fruitfulness in the fruit of the Spirit and the work of the kingdom.  This is what Paul will speak of in chapter 15 when he talks about his ministry as an Apostle of Jesus--10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

            This is the “sustaining” and “persevering” grace of God that does what vs. 8 says Jesus is doing right now—“keep[ing] you firm to the end.”  God gifts every true child of his with grace that carries and motivates and sustains us to follow Jesus to the end of our days.  It is at that point that we will actually “be blameless” (vs. 8)—when we are resurrected in final redemption of our bodies and share in eternal holiness with our Lord Jesus Christ in His Kingdom.  That will be a measure of grace that only the God of grace could plan for imperfect humans like us. 

            This IS “The Grace We Need”, past, present and future grace.  This is the grace we’ve been given, are receiving and will receive.  Grace—what truly sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the world. 

ILL:  During a British conference on comparative religions, experts from around the world debated what, if any, belief was unique to the Christian faith. They began eliminating possibilities. Incarnation? Other religions had different versions of gods’ appearing in human form. Resurrection? Again, other religions had accounts of return from death. The debate went on for some time until C. S. Lewis wandered into the room. “What’s the rumpus about?” he asked, and heard in reply that his colleagues were discussing Christianity’s unique contribution among world religions. Lewis responded, “Oh, that’s easy. It’s grace.”  [Phillip Yancey in his book What’s So Amazing About Grace?]

CLOSE:

  • Have you received the grace of God in the person of Jesus Christ. (Call to faith.)
  • Are you experiencing that grace in deep fellowship with Jesus today and fellowship with your spiritual family, the church?
  • Are you eagerly awaiting the completion of God’s grace in the return of Jesus…or does something need to change in your fellowship with God so that this will become the longing of your soul?

Benediction:  May, “He [Jesus]…also keep you firm to the end, so that you will be blameless on the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. 9 God is faithful, who has called you into fellowship with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.