In Touch Ministries

Guest (Male): And here's this man who was a blasphemer, who said, "I am chief among the sinners." He said, "If you line them all up, put them in a row, and put the worst up front, you're going to find me right up at the front."

Dr. Charles Stanley: Who can God save? Anybody. Who does He want to save? Anybody. The transforming grace of God. Listen, the only thing within us that is worthy of boasting of is Jesus Christ. He and He alone.

Guest (Male): The Bible says that if you've received Christ as your Savior, though you were dead, now you're alive in Him. Today's edition of In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley, reminds us of the dramatic power of the transforming grace of God. Stay with us now for more encouragement from our series, Grace for Today. Let's join Dr. Stanley for his message.

Dr. Charles Stanley: The Apostle Paul says the grace of God was not given to him in vain, that is, it did not remain barren. Something happened as a result of the grace of God in the life of the Apostle Paul. And what happened to him, God intends to happen to everyone. And so I want us to look at his life as an illustration of this whole principle of the transforming grace of God, which has happened in your life already, if you are a believer.

And the first thing I want you to notice here is the transforming grace of God transformed the Apostle Paul from a sinner into a saint. When this transformation took place, what happened was he says, "I moved from darkness into light. I moved from death into life. I moved from the course of this world into the course of the kingdom." He says something radically changed in my life. It was so radical, he said now I realize that I have become a new creation in Christ Jesus.

Anyone who has experienced the grace of God in salvation is a brand new creation. He says in First Peter, we have become partakers of His divine nature. And you see, the idea of transformation means a change in nature, a change in condition, a change in character, and can be, of course, a change in appearance.

And so Paul is describing what his life used to be like. In fact, he says in Philippians chapter three, he describes what he used to be involved in, what he used to live like. And he talks about how he used to depend upon his own good works and his own nature and his own conduct and behavior to get him acceptance in the eyes of God.

Now listen carefully. The only way any of us are made acceptable in the eyes of God is that we accept by faith the death of His son at Calvary as the full payment for our sins. And when we receive His son, we have Him. And to do otherwise is to base our acceptance on something within us. It cannot happen. It will not happen. It has never happened. It won't happen. It absolutely is impossible to happen.

Now here's a terrible mistake people make. Listen to me very carefully. Many people say, "Well, I would be saved, but there's some things in my life I need to straighten up. God wouldn't accept me the way I am. When I look back in my past and see how much sin and disobedience and transgressing the law of God and I've violated everything in the Bible, you mean to tell me that all I have to do is to come to Jesus and be accepted by God? Listen, when I get some things straightened out and I clean up my life, then I'm going to be a christian."

Let me ask a question. What did the Apostle Paul clean up in his life? Not one thing. You know why? Listen, think about this. A person who is spiritually dead can't clean up anything. There's no power within them to clean it up. Now they can say, "Well, I'm not going to do this and do the other," but they can't clean it up. There's no such thing as self-cleaning.

Here's a man who was the most avowed enemy of the church. One moment he's on his way as a persecutor. The next moment, this man has been converted by the grace of God. And so what did God do? Not only did He transform him from a sinner to a saint, He transformed him from a servant of sin to a servant of the living God.

Go to Romans chapter six. Verse sixteen, he says here's the principle: Do you not know that when you present yourself to someone as a slave for obedience, you're a slave of the one whom you obey, either of sin resulting in death or of obedience resulting in righteousness? That is, if you choose to live in sin, you become a slave of sin. Verse twenty: When you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. That is, you can't live a righteous life if you're living in sin and become a slave to sin.

Well, Paul says that's what he was. He was a slave to sin, and he was expressing his sinfulness in his slavery as a persecutor. Now I want us to look at two or three passages here because I want you to listen to his words, what he says. And let's go back to Acts 26 and then let's turn to First Timothy.

Acts 26, remember what he says in this passage. Now here again, he's defending himself before King Agrippa and he says, verse nine: "So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth."

I want to say this again, friend. It may be that you're one of those persons that something has happened back yonder in your life and it's turned you angry toward God and hostile toward God and you are spewing that hostility and that anger on the people of God. Listen to this passage.

"So then, I thought to myself that I had to do many things hostile to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. And this is just what I did in Jerusalem. Not only did I lock up many of the saints in prisons, having received authority from the chief priests, but also when they were being put to death, I cast my vote against them. And as I punished them often and in all the synagogues, I tried to force them to blaspheme even as he had, and being furiously enraged at them, I kept pursuing them even to foreign cities."

Here's a man who hated the Lord Jesus Christ, totally in deception about what was true and what was untrue. Go to First Timothy. First Timothy, Paul here again, speaking of this arrogant hostility, this anger, this bitterness, this resentment, this determination to destroy everything that was Christlike. You say, "Well, why do you tell us that?" I'm coming to it. Listen.

Verse twelve of First Timothy chapter one: I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me because He considered me faithful, putting me into His service, even though I was formerly a blasphemer and a persecutor. Listen to this phrase: "And a violent aggressor, a violent aggressor." And yet I was shown mercy because I acted ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was more than abundant with the faith and love which are found in Christ Jesus.

It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners among whom I am foremost of all. Now look at this. I love this. And yet for this reason, even though he was so wicked, and yet for this reason I found mercy in order that in me as the foremost of sinners, Jesus Christ might demonstrate His perfect patience. Look at that.

He says God saved him as a demonstration of God's perfect patience. As an example for those who would believe in Him for eternal life. Paul said one of the reasons he was convinced that God saved him was this. Watch this now. Be careful. Watch this. Because he was saying, "I want the world to know, if I can save that, if I can save him, if I can come out of nowhere, so to speak, knock him down, blind him, and transform him, who is alive, who cannot be transformed with the grace of God, cannot be forgiven of their sin, cannot be redeemed and reconciled and justified?" Who among us cannot have his life or her life absolutely, totally changed with the grace of God?

Paul said, "Here is the patience of God in perfection." What does that mean? That means it's complete. He waited and he waited and he waited and he waited. And he waited and he waited and he waited and he waited. And here he was on his way after murdering and imprisoning and beating and trying to get these christians to blaspheme. There came a moment when the patience of God was complete and bang, that was it.

Salvation is the grace of God poured out in the heart. That is, the awareness of God, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, the love of God poured out in your heart. You don't have to see any lights, get knocked down by any bolts of lightning, or hit over the head with anything. That's not the way God operates. The way God operated in the life of the Apostle Paul was a unique experience for a particular man for a particular purpose.

When I was 12 years of age, I walked out, knelt down, began to weep. The only thing I remember is that I knew that I was a sinner and I felt terribly guilty. If you asked me what, as a 12-year-old kid, I couldn't tell you what it was. I just knew that I needed to be forgiven of my sins and I needed to receive Christ as my Savior. That's all.

Now the difference between the Apostle Paul and me is here it was a man who was already an adult, aggressively, vengefully, hostilely, angrily trying to destroy the church. And I grew up in a home where at least saw my mom read the Bible, she read it with me, and I knew early in life that I needed to be saved. And getting saved at the age of 12 years was just sort of natural, normal.

But I want to tell you something and don't forget this. It took just as much grace to save me at 12 as it did the Apostle Paul at his age. Because listen, how much life does it take to bring a dead man to life? It just takes life, that's all.

If a dead man is dead at 70 or if it's a child dead at six, life is life. How much grace does it take to save a man or woman? Just grace. Just the love of God and His forgiveness through the shed blood of Jesus Christ. You can't get so evil that God cannot save you. Listen, you cannot out-sin the grace of a loving Father. That's the power of the cross.

That's not a license to sin. That's the power of the work of Jesus Christ at the cross that when He died, He opened the door of salvation and forgiveness and cleansing and a brand new life to every single creature on the face of this earth. It's open to all.

And here's this man who was a blasphemer, who said, "I am chief among the sinners." He said, "If you line them all up, put them in a row, and put the worst up front, you're going to find me right up at the front."

Who can God save? Anybody. Who does He want to save? Anybody. The transforming grace of God. Listen, there's not a single thing within you. It doesn't make any difference what you've done, how many sermons you may have preached, or how many wonderful things you may have done for God or whatever it might be. It's still the only thing within us that is worthy of boasting of is Jesus Christ. He and He alone.

Grace is God's graciousness and kindness toward us without regard to our merit, without regard to our worthiness, and in spite of everything we deserve. And what I want you to see is this: Don't look back and say, "Well, I would give my life to Christ, but you don't know the kind of life I've lived." I want to ask a question. You ever murdered christians, thrown them in jail, made them blaspheme?

My friend, you may say, "Yes, I've done all that." Well, I want to tell you something. You just joined the ranks of a great apostle. And if He saved him, He'll save you. You can't do anything to keep God from saving you but refuse Him. You can't do anything to squelch the grace of God but choose to refuse Him. Because the grace of God is poured out upon everyone, and you can be saved. You can be forgiven. He will clean up your past.

You see, what He does, He just wipes it away. He doesn't try to make the past better. He just wipes it. The blood of Jesus Christ wipes away the past. It's gone and forgotten as far as the east is from the west. It doesn't make any difference. And you see, we believers ought to be shouting and praising and thanking God. Not trying to live in the past and listen, do enough good to cover up the past. The blood of Jesus covered it once and for all.

We are saints. That doesn't mean we don't sin. And we make mistakes and we do sin against them, but the blood of Jesus Christ, he says, is continually cleansing us. We are products and fruits of the grace of God. The grace of God was not poured out in your heart and my heart in vain, but fruitfully and productively to the grace of God and the power of God.

Now what's the proper attitude for a saint who's been transformed from sinner to saint? Well, there're four things. And you can check yourself out with these. First of all, humility. Listen to what the Apostle Paul said. He said in this tenth verse of First Corinthians 15, back to our original text, First Corinthians 15 says verse nine: He said, "For I am the least of the apostles and not even fit to be called an apostle."

Here's a man who is preeminent in the world of his day as a missionary and as the preacher of the gospel. What does he say? He says, "Oh, let me tell you, I'm the least of the apostles. I'm the least of the saints." But go back to First Timothy chapter one. Remember what he said here? First Timothy chapter one, he said, "You want me to tell you something that's the truth? The gospel truth? Nothing but the truth, so help me God." He said, "Here it is."

It is a trustworthy statement deserving full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I am foremost of all. When you line them up, Paul says, "I'm in front." And you know what? Listen, you're not going to find pride in the heart of a man or woman who understands the grace of God. You're not going to find it. Because that person is always going to be pointing people to Christ, to God. It is all of God and none of us, all of Christ and none of us.

There's not going to be any arrogance and pride in the person who understands the grace of God. So first of all, the spirit of humility. The second attitude I want you to notice here is this sense of obligation. Listen to what Paul says back to First Corinthians 15 now. Notice what he says in this passage. He says the grace of God was not poured out in vain upon him.

And he says, "But by the grace of God I am what I am." So he's giving God the credit, spirit of humility. "And His grace toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them." You know what he was saying? He was so grateful to God. He was so overwhelmed by the grace of God and the goodness of God to him. He knew that he was heading in the wrong direction, and this is why all of his testimonies, he gives testimony of how awful he'd been. Persecuting the church, he says, but look, here's what God did.

And now here's what I'm doing. God called him to preach. He said in Galatians chapter one, he said from my mother's womb, he said, "I was separated from my mother's womb to preach the unsearchable riches of the grace of God." And so he gave his life traveling all over the place. And if you read the mission, if you look in the back of your bible in those maps and look at all of his missionary journeys, read the book of Acts and all the turmoil and the heartache and the bloodshed and the different difficulties and things that Paul had to go through.

And what is he doing? He's just praising God for the privilege. Let me ask you a question. In what practical, explainable, definable ways are you expressing gratitude and thanksgiving to Almighty God for saving you by His grace? Don't tell me you come to church. That's not good enough. Don't say, "Well, I tithe." That's not good enough.

You see, listen. The Apostle Paul was saved by the grace of God to do what? To tell other people what had happened to him. That's what Ananias said. He said, "God wants you to tell them what's happened to you." If you'll think about what God has done in your life and you may be going through a difficult time, but think what you'd be like without Him. Think, listen, if you think it's bad, think what it'd be like without God.

We should be so grateful, so overwhelmingly grateful to God. We have to tell it. We have to share it. We've got to tell somebody that God is a God of love and goodness and mercy and kindness. You have a message to share. You can't keep the love of God to yourself. When there's a whole world of people hurting, dying in agony, sorrow, frustration, anger, hostility, bitterness, resentment, disappointment, disillusionment, depression, despair, and you've got the answer.

You see, if I understand the grace of God, there's going to be a sense of humility about me. Secondly, there's going to be a sense of obligation. And thirdly, there's going to be a sense of dependence. Look at this. Back to the 15th chapter, he says, "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain, but I labored even more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God with me."

Paul said, "It was not I." And how many times Paul says, "Not I, but Christ Jesus living within me." He said, "I didn't labor in my own efforts." He said, "Listen, watch this. The same grace, goodness, and love and power of God that brought about the transformation of our experience from sinner to saint is the same gracious, loving power of God that is at work in your life and my life every day."

And that is we don't have to depend upon ourselves, our own wisdom, our own abilities and talents and strength. It is Christ, listen, the resurrected Christ. This is why Paul said, "Listen, he said above all else, what do I want to know? Here's what I want to know. I want to experience the resurrection power of Jesus." He said, "I want to experience in my daily life the same power that raised Jesus from the dead." And he said, "That power is the grace of God laboring in me and laboring through me."

The spirit of humility, the spirit of obligation motivated by love and motivated by thanksgiving and gratitude to God. The spirit of absolute and total dependence upon God. And the last is a spirit of absolute confidence. Look at this. Coming to the end of his life, death's nearby, and here's what he says.

Verse six and seven of Second Timothy chapter four: I am already being poured out as a drink offering, and the time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the course, I have kept the faith. In the future, somewhere, sometime, there is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will award to me on that day; and not only to me, but also to all who have loved His appearing.

What an awesome example of the transforming power of the grace of God that He could take a man who was hostilely, angrily, bitterly, murderously opposed to Christ and transform him into the greatest missionary the world has ever known. And a man who understood the grace of God as no man understood it and who gave of himself absolutely without any reservation to the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

I want to ask you one last question. As you think about all the good things God's done for you and all that He is in you today, and then think about what you are doing for His kingdom, apart from salvation, has the grace of God been poured out in your life in vain?

Have you kept it to yourself or is there something burning inside of you that will not let you be quiet about the universal offer of the grace of God?

Guest (Male): God transformed the Apostle Paul from a hostile opponent of the gospel to his greatest missionary. As you heard today on In Touch, if you're a believer, your transformation from darkness to light is no less dramatic. So the question is, can others tell that you're walking in the light? If you want to hear these important truths again, head to our website at intouch.org and click on the link to "Today on Radio."

And if you go to the bookstore page, you can order a copy of today's complete message, "The Transforming Grace of God," or order the whole teaching set, Grace for Today. Again, you'll find these resources at intouch.org. To call or text us, the number is simple: 1-800-INTOUCH. Write to us, address your letter to In Touch, P.O. Box 7900, Atlanta, Georgia 30357, or call 1-800-INTOUCH.

Do you ever feel that God couldn't possibly forgive you? Today's Moment with Charles Stanley reminds us of the relentless love of Christ. It's coming up.

Guest (Female): In our spiritual journey, we often have questions. How do I know God's will for my life? Does God hear my prayers? Why do bad things happen? The answers are found in the word of God, but how do we know where to start?

The free In Touch devotional can help point you in the right direction with biblically based content from Dr. Charles Stanley. You'll get insight and wisdom through daily devotionals, Bible studies, and more. The In Touch devotional, delivered monthly to your mailbox. Subscribe for free at intouch.org/daily.

Dr. Charles Stanley: The cross was not something that God gave us as a form of decoration. The cross is the message of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Guest (Male): But what is it about the message of the cross that can transform you every day of your life? In his book, "The Gift of the Cross," Dr. Charles Stanley walks us through scripture to show us how to see the cross in a new light. "The Gift of the Cross," order yours today at intouch.org/store.

Are you haunted by your past? Let the Holy Spirit encourage you through a simple prayer. Here's a Moment with Charles Stanley.

Dr. Charles Stanley: Father, we love You for doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. Loving us, forgiving us, cleansing us, walking within us moment by moment, day by day. And I pray there might be conviction that will bring about thanksgiving and gratitude and commitment and surrender and service to the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, Jesus.

I pray for those who are troubled about their past sins to such an extent they think that You will not forgive them. Would You remind them, if You can save someone like Saul of Tarsus, You can save them, and that You do it every day?

Father, if we expressed our real true feelings, we would fall upon our face at this very moment. Unworthy to stand here or to sit here, but overwhelmed by love that pursued us until we accepted it, and a love that even until today will not let us go. We praise You in Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): The Heavenly Father adopts anyone who receives His forgiveness by trusting in His son, Jesus Christ. Learn about resting in His grace with our Bible study resources at intouch.org. And if today's program has encouraged your relationship with Jesus, we'd love to hear from you.

Next time on In Touch, we continue the series on the grace of God focusing on God's invitation to us to come to the throne of grace. I hope you'll join us then for In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. This program is a presentation of In Touch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia, and remains on the station through the grace of God and your faithful prayers and gifts.