“Grace to Change” John 7:53-8:11

John’s gospel is written differently than Mathew, Mark or Luke’s. Those three, called the synoptic gospels, told the story of Jesus the man and then culminated in the revelation that He was the Messiah. John tells us from the very beginning that Jesus is divine, He is the Word that was with God and that was God, He is the One by whom and through whom all things were created, He is God in the flesh. In John 1:16, it is written, “From Jesus’ fullness we have all received grace upon grace.” Grace builds, it grows, it increases, it continues. We are not only saved by grace, we are kept by grace, held by grace but ultimately, we must be changed by grace. Salvation is our starting line with Christ, not the finish line of God’s work in our lives. The Holy Spirit is convicting the world of sin, righteousness and judgment to lead us to salvation so that He can then begin the work of conforming us into the image of Jesus. The work of salvation is not finished when our names are written in the book, but it will be finished when we see Jesus and we have been made like Him. This morning I hope to urge all of us to move forward in our salvation, to move on from changed behavior to changed character, to let God change not only what we do but who we are, to allow grace to not only take punishment off us but to put Christ on us. In this text Jesus met a woman caught in the act of adultery. He gave her grace upon grace, not just the grace of forgiveness but the grace for transformation. My prayer today is that we won’t stop with the grace that lightens our load, but we will push forward and take the grace that changes our lives, that exposes our hearts and that takes us from being sinners saved by grace to being new creations conformed to the image of the Son. That we will begin to work with the grace that is already at work, that we will not just celebrate being redeemed but we will join the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit in the work of redemption. I pray that we will let grace much more abound.