ON GRACE- A Revelation
03.29.2023
Mark 15:39-47
Women, Pagans and Pharisees.
Timothy Keller sermon.
There are 2 ways to be your own savior and your own Lord.Â
Right here in the next.Â
To be the center and to make everything else revolve around you.Â
2 ways to express the evil self-centeredness of the human heart and make a mess of the world- as a pagan and as a Pharisee.Â
The Roman centurion- a pagan. How does a pagan become his own savior and lord? By breaking all the rules.Â
Sex, drugs, violence,Â
The Pharisee- how does a Pharisee, a Bible-teacher, God-believing man become his own savior and lord? By keeping all the rules. And being so good that he says to God, you have to bless me and take me to heaven and everyone else has to bow before me because I am so good.Â
Both- very different but both very radical self-centered lives. They both are ways of being self-centered and making everything else center on you and orbit around you. They are different ways of making the world a miserable place to live in.
The pagan is saying- I donât want anything to do with God. Thatâs the paganâs way.Â
The other, the Pharisee, is saying, oh I believe in God, I obey God. And yet, in spite of the fact that heâs obeying God, the Pharisee is making himself his own savior, because heâs saying- if I live a good enough life, God has to save me.Â
Jesus says- Pagan, Pharisee, prostitute, King, you must be born again. All the same. The minister and the prostitute. The process is the same.Â
THE PROCESS IS THIS-
Take my body- said Jesus. What does that mean? It doesnât just mean believe that Jesus died for you. Thatâs a very important prerequisite. But to say take his body means grasp his death.
Think about it. Understand it. Go deep into the meaning of it and then take it in, digest it, like bread. Make it part of you.Â
Like what happened to Joseph and Nicodemus in front of the cross and in front of Jesusâs body. The death of Jesus Christ on the cross begins to change them, to transform them. Something else became more important to them than themselves and their honor and their status, so much so that they could reach out to people of other races and classes and they could do stuff (like cleansing the body of Christ after he died, which was traditionally womenâs work in that culture at that time) that wasnât appropriate to people of their class, so that they could risk their power and their status.. Therefore becoming agents of justice because they were becoming the recipients of grace.Â
Q: What does it mean to take the body, to grasp the death?Â
A: Well we donât know.Â
What we know in our bones is this-Â Weâre all pagans and Pharisees. Some of us have been both.Â
Jesus is in the ultimate ring of power, itâs called the Trinity. From all eternity, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have been honoring each other, glorifying each other. John 17- Jesus says that everyone in the Trinity, Father, Son and the Holy Spirit, glorify each other.Â
What does it mean to glorify each other?Â
It means instead of saying âyou center on meâ, it means âI center on you, I revolve around you, I defer to you, I harbor you at the center of my being, I love you, I give myself to you.â The Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit have been doing that for all eternity.Â
No wonder God hates the way things are going in the world. Because down here, weâre all committed to saying âeveryone has to revolve around meâ âMy needs firstâ, âMe, me, me, what about me?â
But at the very heart of reality, at the very heart of the Godhead, of who God is, God in his very essence is other-oriented.
Each person is seeking to revolve around the other two. And when you have three persons all trying to dance around the other two, youâve got a beautiful dance.Â
THE TRINITY -Â
C.S. Lewis puts it like this- in Christianity, God is not an impersonal thing or a static thing. Not even one person. But a dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, a kind of drama, almost- if you will not think me irreverent- a kind of dance in constant movement of overture and acceptance. Each person of the Trinity encircles the others.Â
And thatâs the reason that Jesus Christ left the inner ring to come here. To our reality. To the middle of our history. But when He went to the cross, he was centering on us.Â
I came not to be served but to serve. The primary thing he came to do was not to be circled, but to circle, to show you how itâs done. To so radically empty himself of all of his interests, of all of his needs, to serve us- that we would see that and realize- youâre paying the penalty for my sin. That changes everything. Thatâs whatâs happening to the Pagan and the Pharisee.Â
C.S. Lewis- when we touch self-giving, the heart of all reality, when Jesus Christ was crucified, listen carefully here, when Jesus was crucified, he did here in the wild weather of his outlying provinces that which he had done at home in glory and gladness.Â
Because from the foundation of the world, the Son had been glorifying the Father and the Father glorifying the Son. Therefore, when he showed up here and he gave up his life to pay the penalty for our sins and Jospeh and Nicodemus saw what he was doing-
All their lives they had been lusting after the inner ring of power, of demanding that the world revolve around them, He changed them.Â
From the highest to the lowest, self, therefore, exists to be abdicated. To get out of the center. And by that abdication it becomes more truly itself. To be thereupon yet the more abdicated and so on forever.Â
This is not a principal we can escape. The only thing outside the system of self-giving is hell. Hell with all its fierce imprisonment of self-absorption. Self-giving is absolute reality.Â
3 OBSERVATIONS ON OUR REALITY-Â
# 1 Now do you see why the gospel doesnât just make you happy and take you to heaven- but it makes you an agent for justice in the world. It makes you a person who shares the power and privilege of God, who reaches out to people of other races and classes who otherwise you wouldnât. Because the gospel says youâre so bad, Jesus had to die for you. That humbles you out of your pride. Any pride. All pride. Any personâs pride, no matter their identity, no matter their privileges of rank, birth, giftedness. He loved you so much he was glad to die for you. And that affirms you up to a place where power just becomes power. And money just becomes money, not your identity any more, and you can use it. Instead of being abused by it and used by it and defined by it and measured and found wanting by it (power and money).Â
# 2 The Church is filled with people who, otherwise, apart from the gospel, would never give each other the time of day.Â
And the more you understand the gospel, the more we corporately understand the gospel, the more weâre going to be bringing people together who would otherwise never even.. We wouldnât like each other. We wouldnât have anything to do with each other. And itâs still tough.Â
Itâs hard. Other races, other classes, other vocations, other politics, other walks of life. Itâs tough. Itâs still tough. Yet- what binds Christians together is not our common education, our common race, our common income or common politics or common nationality or common accents or common jobs or anything else of that sort. Christians come together not because they form a natural collection but because they have all been saved by Jesus Christ. We are a band of natural enemies turned into friends who love one another for Jesusâs sake.Â
We are a band of natural enemies turned into friends who love one another for Jesusâs sake. Christian love is mutual love among social incompatibles.Â
The gospel will create the most unique community of people in the world.Â
Women, Pagans and Pharisees.. Thatâs everybody.Â
# 3 However, when do you really change in life? When does your identify change? When does the boldness and the humility coming from the gospel hit you the way it hit Joseph? I donât believe it happens sort of naturally, it usually happens through a trauma. Godâs grace, your need for grace, the beauty and radical nature of Godâs grace, almost always happens through a trauma. Why did Joseph, who had always been scared that anybody would know that he was a disciple, come out when it was even more dangerous? I believe it was the trauma of seeing the Sanhedrin that he was a member of, putting Jesus to death, basically.Â
Revelation by Flannery OâConnor
Mary Grace- the young woman who listens to Mrs. Turner in the waiting room. Â
Mrs. Turner: How could I be saved and from Hell too?Â
It makes sense when you understand the gospel. The gospel is youâre saved by grace, not by works, which means that when you receive Jesus Christ, you are accepted and yet still sinful. Youâre saved and youâre a warthog from Hell.Â
When youâre a Christian, as Martin Luther said in latin, youâre simultaneously accepted but sinful.Â
Youâre simultaneously just, loved, accepted and a warthog from Hell. Pharisees donât believe that. âExactly how am I like them?â asks Mrs. Turner. God, who do you think you are?Â
REVELATIONâS REVELATION (By FLANNERY OâCONNOR)Â
A final surge of fury shook her and she cried out to God, âwho do you think you are?â And at that moment the sun set and she saw a purple streak in the sky. A visionary light settled in her eyes and she saw a vast, swinging bridge extending upward from the earth through a field of living fire. Upon it was this vast horde of souls marching toward Heaven.Â
There were whole companies of people she thought of as trash, battalions of freaks and lunatics shouting and clapping and leaping like frogs. Then she saw to her surprise, coming at the end of the parade, a tribe of people whom she recognized as those who like herself always had a little bit of everything and the God-given wit to use it right. But they were marching behind the others. With great dignity, accountable as they always had been for good order and common sense and respectable behavior, they alone were singing on key. Yet she could see by their shocked and altered faces that even their virtues were being burned away.Â
And in a moment the vision faded. And in the woods around her the invisible cricket choruses had struck up but what she heard were the voices of the souls climbing upwards into the starry fields and shouting âHallelujahâ.Â
ON THE NATURE OF GRACE-Â
Grace will always be traumatic. It will hit you in the face. Itâll make you snarl. Itâll show you who you are. It always happens traumatically, but itâs worth it. Letâs pray.Â












