How to Live and Walk in God’s Grace Everyday

This summary, optimized for Google’s SEO standards, is based on Adrian Rogers’ sermon, which profoundly dissects the concept of God’s Amazing Grace as the single, necessary escape from human guilt, standing in stark contrast to human nature’s tendency toward self-effort and pride. The teaching details how Christian life is divided into three parts: Past Guilt, Present Grace, and Future Glory.

Rogers emphasizes that while humanity seeks deliverance through human efforts—materialism, politics, militarism, industry, philosophy, or deception—the grace of God is the only way out.

1. Escaping Past Guilt: The Futility of Self-Righteousness

The Apostle Paul, in Titus 3:3, describes humanity’s condition before salvation as one of past guilt, detailing our failures intellectually, morally, and socially.

Intellectual Guilt: Foolishness and Deception

Before being saved, people were considered foolish. This foolishness is not a lack of intelligence (one can have a big IQ and still be foolish), but rather a rejection of God’s wisdom. The preaching of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, including statesmen, movers, shakers, and philosophers.

• Obstinate Disobedience: Intellectual guilt also manifests as willful, obstinate, stubborn disobedience in the face of truth, rooted not in the mind, but in the heart.
• Deception: Humanity is foolish and disobedient because of the devil, the great deceiver who “deceives the whole world”.

Moral and Social Guilt: Envy and Hatred

Morally, pre-saved individuals were “serving diverse lusts and pleasures”, translating to being “habitual slaves to all sorts of passions,” whether they be the “sins of the back alley” or the “refined pleasures and treasures of the social club”. Living in sin is described as not only a vice but a trap.

Socially, people were “living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another”. The core problem leading to societal hatred is internal sin.

• The Fact of Sin: Condemnation is not based on the amount of sin, but the fact of sin. More people drown in nine feet of water than in ninety feet.
• Egomaniacs: Many people in the world are “egoomaniacs strutting to hell”, believing their own self-righteousness is sufficient. Self-righteousness is described as a “stinking sin”. Salvation is only possible for those who recognize themselves as sinners by birth, nature, choice, and under condemnation.

2. Embracing Present Grace: Rooted in Sovereign Love

The transition from past guilt to present grace begins with the word “But” in verse 4: “But after that the kindness and love of God our Savior toward man appeared”. Present grace is threefold: rooted in the Father’s love, secured by the Spirit’s work, and sealed by the Son’s death.

Sovereign Love of the Father

Grace is rooted in the Father’s sovereign love. God’s love for us is the foundation of salvation.

• Value in Love: God doesn’t love us because we are valuable; we are valuable because God loves us.
• Filthy Rags: Salvation is “not by works of righteousness that we have done”. Isaiah 64:6 states that “all of our righteousness is as filthy rags” in God’s sight, rendering self-effort to reach heaven futile.
• Salvation Spelled Done: Grace spells salvation not as “do” or “don’t,” but as “done”. Salvation is not subtraction (stopping bad habits like drinking), but atonement.
• No Boasting: If salvation were earned by works, we could boast. Ephesians 2:8-9 emphasizes that salvation is a gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast.

Supernatural Work of the Holy Spirit

Present grace is also the supernatural work of the Spirit, who saves us “by the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Ghost”.

• Washing in Blood: Regeneration is a washing, but not in water (which cannot remove sin); it is a washing in the blood of the Lamb. The Bible states that Jesus Christ “loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood”.
• New Creation: Those who were formerly deep in sin (fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, thieves, etc.) are declared: “Such were some of you, but ye are washed, ye are sanctified”. Through Christ, “if any man be in Christ Jesus, he is a new creation; old things are passed away”.
• Continuous Renewing: The Holy Spirit renews the believer, which is described as a continuous action—day by day, moment by moment. His mercies are new every day; He keeps the believer, renews, restores, and refreshes them.

Saving Death of the Son

The grace of God is completed by the saving death of the Son, Jesus Christ, who is our Savior.

• Sacrificial Work: Jesus bore our sins, becoming sin for us—represented graphically in the Old Testament by the brazen serpent lifted on a pole. The brazen serpent, a symbol of sin and judgment, represented Jesus being judged for humanity’s sin.
• The Ultimate Sacrifice: The torment Jesus suffered included being struck, mocked, scourged, and nailed to the cross. However, the greatest suffering was when God the Father had to turn His back on Jesus because He became sin. This sacrificial death is the ultimate demonstration of grace.