Grace Unlimited

Life Unlimited

Allen Snapp

Grace Community Church

Sept. 14, 2025

Grace Unlimited

Turn with me in your bibles to the gospel of John chapter one. We are in a series called Life Unlimited. Jesus came to give us life and life abundantly. Jesus didn’t come to shrink our lives, he came to enlarge our lives. That’s what abundant means. It means over and above, super-added life life. There is no shortage to the life Jesus came to bring us.

We see in John chapter one that there’s also no shortage in the grace Jesus came to bring us!

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth... ¹⁶ For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.¹⁷ For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. ¹⁸ No one has ever seen God; God the only Son, who is at the Father's side, he has made him known. John 1:9-14,15-18

That phrase grace upon grace always reminds me of ocean waves relentlessly pounding the beach. Think about it: all day and all night one after the other the waves keep coming. The ocean never runs out – sorry, there’s just no water left to make a wave. The waves never run out because the fullness of the ocean generates an endless supply.

From his fullness (Jesus is an ocean of grace!) we have all received grace upon grace. Abundant grace. Grace unlimited.

Now the doctrinal purist in me needs to say that just like life unlimited doesn’t mean we can do anything and get everything we want, grace unlimited doesn’t mean grace is this blob of goodness just floating around that everyone can tap into. It says “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Grace has the clear edges of truth. With Jesus, grace comes with truth and truth comes with grace.

So one vitally important truth to know is that when it says we have all received grace upon grace, it’s referring back to verse 12 that says as to all who received Jesus he gave the right to become children of God. The grace of God is bound up in Jesus – grace came with Jesus and Jesus came full of grace.

In Christ we experience endless waves of grace in our lives but this morning I want us to consider three very specific waves of grace that Jesus from his fullness brings every believer.

1. Saving grace

Eph 2 tells us that when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, God in his great mercy and love made us alive together with Jesus Christ. Life unlimited! Paul then sums up the motivation of God’s heart in verse 5: by grace you have been saved! A couple verses later he adds, for by grace you have been saved through faith.

We aren’t saved by keeping the law of Moses, or any other set of rules. We are saved by putting all our

faith and trust in Jesus and his saving work on the cross. Christianity isn’t “do, do, do!” it’s “done, done, done!” Our faith is in the finished work of Christ.

What does saved mean? It’s a massive word that encompasses every part of our lives from eternal salvation to our physical and mental well-being, but mainly it means we who were dead have been raised to newness of life through Jesus Christ and spiritually we are right now seated with Christ in the heavenlies.

Every true believer in Jesus Christ is saved. You will never be more or less saved than you are right now because your salvation depends completely and totally on what Jesus did, not on what you do.

If you’ve ever been to a circus you’ve seen those trapeze artists. What I didn’t know is that among trapeze performers there are “flyers” and there are catchers. The flyer – as you might suppose – is the one that let’s go of the rings and goes sailing through the air doing rotations until they are caught by the catcher. If you or I were flying through the air a hundred feet up and we saw someone we could grab a hold of, you better believe we’d grabbing on for dear life! But in the world of acrobatics the flyer is trained never to attempt to catch the catcher. To do so would mess the routine up and put both of them at risk. The flyer let’s go and the catcher catches.

That’s us and Jesus. We aren’t saved because we gripped him, we’re saved because he gripped us and he’s never letting go. We are saved by grace! That’s one wave of grace.

2. Training grace

¹¹ For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, ¹² training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age, ¹³ waiting for our blessed hope, the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, ¹⁴ who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and to purify for himself a people for his own possession who are zealous for good works. Titus 2:11-14

The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation for all people – not speaking ofuniversalism but that people from all tribes and nations around the world will receive Jesus and put their faith in him and be saved.

Too many Christians stop there. I’m saved and that’s good enough for me. I want to live like the world, do what I want, sin it up, and count on grace to make it all right. After all, I’m not under the law, I’m under grace.

For the grace of God has appeared… training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age.

Grace trains us to say no to ungodliness and yes to godliness. That word means instructs us. It teaches

us. Paul tells Timothy to train to be godly and the word for train in the Greek is gymnazo. We get the word gymnasium from it. Everyone in this room is working out one set of muscles or another, guaranteed! Some of you are in training to be more godly. You’re pumping kindness irons, doing forgiveness chin ups, doing sets of purity pushups. It’s not easy, it’s not instant, but God’s grace is training you to renounce evil and embrace living a self-controlled, godly life.

Others are, I hate to say it, training in the opposite direction. Remember grace comes with truth. We need to hear the truth even when it hurts. If you’re looking at things online that you shouldn’t be, you’re training your soul to lust. If you’re replaying in your head how that person hurt you and you’d love to hurt them back, you’re building bitterness muscles.

Grace trains us to renounce as well as embrace. When God moves in a heart to say “no more” to hatred or immorality or greed, that’s God’s grace at work just as much as when someone says yes to forgiveness or love or purity. That’s why the Bible talks about putting off sin as well as putting on the new life of Christ. Grace doesn’t just cover sin with a veneer of godliness – it works in and through us making very real, very deep changes that are heart-deep.

Sometimes it’s lack of self-control that messing up our lives. It may not be some big, terrible sin, but just letting our life go to pot. We don’t have self-control to do that job when it needs to be done, or say no to that extra slice of pie, or clean the house or make that repair. The Bible says the person who lacks self-control is like a city without walls. All kinds of enemies can creep in to our lives if we don’t have self-control.

Thankfully God’s grace has appeared training us to live self-controlled lives. But training grace takes effort on our part. Saving grace requires no effort on our part. In fact if we add our effort to Christ’s work we nullify the cross. But training grace takes effort. It takes going to the gym of life and working out both the muscles that say yes to godly living and the muscles that say not to ungodliness and worldly passions.

3. Enabling grace

⁷ So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. ⁸ Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. ⁹ But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. ¹⁰ For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong. 2 Cor. 12:7-10

Paul had a thorn in the flesh he desperately wanted God to take away. He begged God three times to take it away but God said, no, My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness. God didn’t take away the trial, His grace enabled Paul to go on and actually bring more glory to God because of the trial than he could have without the trial.

Is there something going on in your life that you are asking God to change? I know there is in my life. And it’s ok to ask God to meet a need in our life, to give us that job we want, to help things work out between us and that person where there is tension or conflict or heal that sickness. Sometimes God in His grace grants us the answer we want but sometimes God says I’m going to give you enabling grace to glorify Me in and through this situation.

There will be times when God calls us to step out and do something that isn’t in our comfort zone. That ever happen to you? I want to encourage you not to automatically say no to anything not in your comfort zone because some of God’s biggest blessings are outside of our comfort zone. If God is leading you to teach the Bible, God’s grace will enable you to teach the Bible. If God is leading you to offer counsel to a friend, God’s grace will enable you to give the counsel they need. If God is leading you to invest more time and effort into old friendships or developing new friendships, God’s grace will enable you to see those friendships grow and deepen.

God’s grace saves us, trains us, and enables us to do whatever God calls us to do.

Application: Is there a specific way this message is speaking to you right now?

1. Maybe you’re aware of ways that worldliness has crept in and you know it’s taking you in the wrong direction. It’s wearing at your soul, cooling your love for God, hurting relationships in your life. God has training grace for you. His grace is ready to train you to renounce worldliness and sin and embrace self-control.
2. Maybe you need enabling grace to get through what you’re going through. To come out on the other side victorious! God’s grace is ready to enable you to glorify His power through your weakness. Let weakness be your superpower.
3. Maybe you don’t know Jesus as your Savior at all. You say I’m not good enough for God. I don’t deserve His love. Yeah, that’s what grace is – all undeserved. Jesus isn’t telling you to “do! Do! Do!” he’s saying “done! Done! Done!” It’s all been done for you at the cross. Let God’s kindness, mercy, and love wash over you.