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Lesson Four: Compelled by Love

Lesson Four: Compelled by Love

LESSON FOUR

COMPELLED BY LOVE

(Chapter 6)

CENTRAL IDEA

When we understand God’s magnificent and boundless grace, we become motivated by gratitude and love to respond with a life devoted to Him.

Warm-up

Think about some of the people you come in contact with regularly (neighbors, coworkers, family, friends, acquaintances). What appear to be the basic motives behind why they live the way they live and why they make the decisions they make? (There is no need to be overly personal or specific about exactly whose life you are drawing conclusions from.)

Compelled by Love

We are not only justified by grace through faith, we stand every day in this same grace. And just as the preaching of justification by grace is open to misunderstanding, so is the teaching of living by grace.

The solution to this problem is not to add legalism to grace. The solution is to be so gripped by the magnificence and boundless generosity of God’s grace that we respond out of gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty.

We have loaded down the gospel of grace in Christ with a lot of “oughts.” “I ought to do this” and “I ought to do that.” “I ought to be more committed, more disciplined, more obedient.” When we think or teach this way, we are substituting duty and obligation for a loving response to God’s grace.

I firmly believe in and seek to practice commitment, discipline, and obedience. I am thoroughly committed to submission to the lordship of Jesus Christ in every area of my life. And I believe in and seek to practice other commitments that flow out of that basic commitment. I am committed to my wife “until death do us part.” I am committed to integrity and fairness in business relationships. I am committed to seek to act in love toward everyone. But I am committed in these areas out of a grateful response to the grace of God, not to try to earn God’s blessings.

Even our Christian terminology betrays the way we dichotomize the Christian life into “grace” and “works” compartments. We speak of the gift of salvation and the cost of discipleship. The “cost of discipleship” is not necessarily an unbiblical expression, but the connotation we build into it is. We often convey the idea that God’s grace barely gets us inside the door of the Kingdom, and after that, it’s all our own blood, sweat, and tears.

Our motivation for commitment, discipline, and obedience is as important to God, perhaps even more so, than our performance. God searches the heart and understands every motive. To be acceptable to Him, our motives must spring from a love for Him and a desire to glorify Him. Obedience to God performed from a legalistic motive —that is, a fear of the consequences or to gain favor with God —is not pleasing to God.

Living under the grace of God instead of under a sense of duty frees us from the self-serving motivation of trying to earn God’s favor. It frees us to obey God and serve Him as a loving and thankful response to Him for our salvation and for blessings already guaranteed to us by His grace. Consequently, a heartfelt grasp of God’s grace —far from creating an indifferent or careless attitude in us —will actually provide us the only motivation that is pleasing to Him. Only when we are thoroughly convinced that the Christian life is entirely of grace are we able to serve Him out of a grateful and loving heart.

When I stress a God-ward motivation for our discipline and obedience, I am not talking about inclination or feeling. We are not to wait until we “feel like” having a quiet time to have one. And we certainly are not to wait until we are so inclined to obey God’s commands. Motive has nothing to do with feelings or inclination; rather, it refers to the reason why we do, or don’t do, something. For the person living by grace, that reason should be a loving response to the abundant grace of God already manifested in Christ.

As we grow in grace, we will grow in our motivation to obey God out of a sense of gratitude and reverence to Him. Our obedience will always be imperfect in performance in this life. We will never perfectly obey Him until we are made perfect by Him. In the same way, our motives will never be consistently pure; there will frequently be some “merit points” mentality mixed in with our genuine love and reverence for God.

So don’t be discouraged if you realize your motives have been largely merit-oriented. Just begin now to move toward grace motives. Begin to think daily about the implications of the grace of God in your life. Ask God to motivate you by His mercy and love. When you recognize merit-oriented motives at work in you, renounce them and cast yourself completely on the grace of God and the merit of Jesus Christ. As you grow in grace in this way, you will indeed discover that His love compels you to live, not for yourself, but for Him who died for you and was raised again. (Taken from chapter 6 of Transforming Grace.)

Exploring Grace

  • a. Read 1 Chronicles 28:9, Proverbs 16:2, and 1 Corinthians 4:5. Why do you think our motives are so important to God?
    1. b. Do you believe that the people you come in contact with think much about the motives behind their actions? Explain.
  • How does an understanding of God’s grace help give us the right motives for the way we live?
  • a. How do our motives affect the outcome of what we do?
    1. b. Give an example of how the wrong motives can completely undermine a good action.
  • a. Read the following verses and list some of the wrong motives people can have for trying to live a “good” life.
    • John 12:42-43
    • Galatians 6:12-13
    • Ephesians 2:8-9
    • Colossians 2:16-23
    1. b. What other wrong motives can drive people’s actions?
  • a. Look at the following verses and list some of the pure or godly motives that should be behind our actions.
    • Romans 12:1
    • 2 Corinthians 5:14-15
    • 2 Corinthians 7:1
    • Colossians 3:12-14, 23-24
    • Revelation 4:11
    1. b. What other good motives can people have?
  • Do you think it is possible to keep your motives pure at all times? Explain.
  • Examine for a moment the motivations behind some of your actions. For each of the following areas of your life, determine how often you think you are motivated by impure motives instead of pure or godly motives. Rate your motives on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 = impure motives, 5 = godly motives). Do this individually. Then a few people can share their thoughts after doing this exercise.
    •        Time spent in prayer
    •        Time spent in praise and worship
    •        Bible study
    •        Bible reading
    •        Memorizing Scripture
    •        Building relationships with non-Christians
    •        Helping young Christians grow
    •        Fellowship with other believers
    •        Serving others
    •        Giving financially to God
  • In the previous question you may have become aware of some less-than-pure motives in your life. What do you think a person can do to help purify his or her motives in an area?
  • Take a minute to choose one of the following ways to work on having the right motives this week, or to come up with your own plan.
    1. a. Write in a journal every day for a week. Try to be especially aware of your motives, during the day. When you recognize poor motives, confess this to the Lord. Ask Him to help you sort out whether you need to change some of your actions or change the way you think about these activities.
    2. b. Memorize one of the following verses. Remind yourself of the vastness of God’s grace when you fall into doing things to try to earn His love.
      • Jeremiah 31:3
      • Romans 8:38-39 (For a bigger challenge, memorize a larger portion or all of Romans 8.)
      • Romans 12:1-2
      • 2 Corinthians 5:14-15
      • Ephesians 2:8-10
    3. c. Spend an extra hour in prayer and meditation. Make a list of all the things you do on a weekly basis to serve God and to enhance your relationship with Him. Ask the Lord to help you evaluate your commitments and the motives behind them. Use the following questions to help you think through what He is doing in your life.
      • Are there “good” things you are doing that you do primarily to please other people? Is it possible that God may want you to give up any of these?
      • Have you failed to make commitments that you know the Lord has asked you to make?

    • Closing Prayer

    Romans 12:1-2 gives us a beautiful picture of how we should respond to the grace of God. Read this passage and then write your thoughts in the form of a prayer. Let those who feel comfortable pray their prayers out loud.

    Going Deeper (Extra questions for further study)

  • a. Share a time when you felt pressured by a sense of duty and obligation in your Christian life instead of a sense of joy, peace, and love.
    1. b. What was the source of this sense of drudgery in your life?
    2. c. What helped you put things back in the right perspective?
  • a. If a person does something even though he doesn’t feel like doing it, does that mean his motives are wrong? Explain.
    1. b. How are our feelings and motivations related?

    • PONDERING GRACE (FOR PERSONAL REFLECTION)

    The biggest gap in the world is the gap between the justice of a cause and the motives of the people pushing it.

    John P. Grier

    A lawdriver insists with threats and penalties; a preacher of grace lures and incites with divine goodness and compassion shown to us; for he wants no unwilling works and reluctant services, he wants joyful and delightful services of God.

    Martin Luther

    The Law’s demands are inward, touching motive and desire, and are not concerned solely with outward action.

    Ernest F. Kevan, The Grace of Law

    Our only business is to love God, and delight ourselves in Him. All kinds of disciplines, no matter how rugged, are quite useless if not motivated by love for God.

    Brother Lawrence, The Practice of the Presence of God

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