Turn again to 1 Corinthians 15. I think by now you know the verse. I hope you have memorized it: verse 10. This is Paul speaking:
But by the grace of God I am what I am:
and His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain;
but I laboured more abundantly than they all:
yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
Let us have a word of prayer.
Lord, we are thankful for the Word of God. Where would we be without Your living Word? We would be lost. But we are so thankful that You make Your Word alive, and we tell You again and again: we need You to speak to us this morning, not man. We are not interested in man’s thoughts; we are interested in what the living Word of God has to say.
So we pray that the Holy Spirit would quicken us in our hearing, and the Holy Spirit would quicken us in our speaking. You alone have the words of eternal life; speak again. Your words are spirit and life. We need Your Word. We ask You to speak to us a very clear word, that we could comprehend in our spirit something of what the apostle Paul meant by this single, full verse. We ask this for Your glory, for Your sake, and above all, in Your name. Amen.
Well, good morning. We are continuing—or concluding—today on this one verse, 1 Corinthians 15:10. Jerry was praying for the meeting, and he said, “You never conclude mercy. You never finish with mercy.” So I will conclude, but I hope the grace of God continues to be a living thing to us daily, to bring us unto the Lord in a fuller way and to conform us to the image of Christ.
I have titled this verse, which seems to me so comprehensive and so full, “The Complete Work of Grace.” Today we will share on the secret of grace. This verse seems to me—and I have said it before, but please let me say it again—to have a universe of meaning.
It is as if Paul did the same thing here that he did in Ephesians 3:18, where he spoke of the love of God and of its breadth, length, depth, and height, that the saints might comprehend it. I think, in the same way, this verse on grace—which the apostle Paul shared as his own testimony—would do the same for us, that we would see grace in that measure.
We have looked at a few things before, and I do not want to give much of a review, but I will say a few things.
First, we looked at the phrase, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” That ought to be all of our testimony. That was Paul’s testimony. He gave all the credit to grace.
We also see in this verse that he started with grace and ended with grace. If you look at every one of his epistles, he starts with grace and ends with grace. Here was one who knew grace from the beginning to the end. When we look at Paul’s life and the deep things he went through, we see somebody who knew grace for everything in between. He knew all-sufficient grace. He knew a life history engineered by God so that, in every circumstance of life, we might discover the grace of God.
Grace for everything in between.
We then looked at the complete work of grace in the second phrase: “His grace which was toward me was not in vain.” What a beautiful phrase. With all the things that are against us—the complications of life, the enemy, ourselves, and the world—thank God, we can say, “His grace is toward me.”
I encourage you to do a Bible study. Look up the phrase “toward me,” or better yet, “toward us,” and you will discover some amazing promises in the Word of God. This is what the apostle knew: “His grace which was toward me was not in vain.”
Brothers and sisters, do you not think that at the end of life this needs to be our testimony? We read some sobering verses, and we will not reread them, but it can be that grace—which is abundant, overabundant, and exceeds any superlative we can give it—could be in vain. The Word has some very sobering verses.
But we need to be like Paul in the end and say, “His grace which was toward me was not in vain.” He spoke of an abundant and inexhaustible grace of God. That is what the hymn we just sang speaks about.
Then, in the third message last week, we talked about cooperating with the grace of God. I think this is a problem. Paul said, “I laboured more abundantly than they all.” On a first reading, that seems totally out of context and out of place. But if you read Paul’s life carefully, you discover what it means.
It means that here is one who, throughout his lifetime, cooperated with the grace of God and allowed the grace of God to do its work, conforming us to the image of Christ. Often, we do not cooperate with that abundant, superabundant, inexhaustible grace that is given, and the work never gets complete.
Today we want to look at the secret of grace. This is the last message. I believe there is a great secret in grace, and if we do not see what that secret is, we will struggle for the rest of our Christian life.
Paul shares the secret of grace in this final phrase:
Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
Just remember that phrase: “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
I am going to cut right to the chase, and then I will try to fill it out as we go. This is the secret of grace: yet not I.
Those three words, so full of meaning, reveal what Paul learned progressively throughout his life. They are the total and absolute secret of grace: yet not I.
If you do not know that secret, if you do not know in the depth of your being that secret, you will continue to struggle as a Christian. This was the secret Paul saved until the end of this tremendous verse.
I would like to share a little from my own experience. I hope it does not bore you too much. I was saved on February 4, 1972. That just shows how old I am getting. That is forty-four years I have been saved—and wonderfully saved.
Shortly after I was saved, the Lord began to open to me what I feel was the secret of the Christian life. When I was saved, I was deeply touched by the Lord. I loved the Lord. I knew I loved the Lord. I knew I was the Lord’s. It was night and day.
I was delivered instantly from things you cannot imagine. I have said this before, and I do not mean it in bragging; it is an embarrassment. I had a terribly foul mouth. I almost got kicked out of college. I will never forget going to the dean. I was number one in my class, yet I was almost kicked out of college because of that terribly foul mouth.
But when I met the Savior that night, I could not curse again. Every time this mouth would open and that temptation would come, there was a sense of how I would grieve the Lord. I remember that night of salvation as clearly as if it were yesterday.
After I was saved, as I read His Word, the Lord began to open things to me. I began reading His Word in my little Good News for Modern Man, and I read it again and again. I discovered what John the Baptist said, and it overwhelmed me, brothers and sisters. It was like divine light came out of heaven. I cannot tell you the impact.
John the Baptist said:
He must increase, but I must decrease.
That is John 3:30.
I cannot tell you the impact that had on me. As a young believer, even though I loved the Lord and knew His meeting me in such a tremendous way, there was a continual struggle over how to live the Christian life.
People come to me and say, “The Christian life is difficult.” You have heard me say it again and again: the Christian life for you is not difficult; the Christian life for you is impossible. You have to know the secret.
John the Baptist shared one of the most tremendous things when he said, “I must decrease; He must increase.” If you think that is merely a historical saying, you are wrong. It is the secret of the Christian life.
Brothers and sisters, the Christian life is not you living. I do not know if you knew that. Many people think the Christian life is us living. The Christian life is Christ living.
That is what Paul meant with these three simple words: “Yet not I.” That was the first experience I had when the Lord began to open my eyes to what I believe was the secret of the Christian life.
I will tell you another experience. I began reading through the Word regularly, and every time I got through the Word, I marked it at the end of my Bible. I graduated, by the way, from Good News for Modern Man—the little stick-figure Bible that some of you remember—to the King James Version.
Most of the verses I memorized in my early years are still King James. For almost all of my Christian life, these forty-four years, I read Darby. Yet when I quote from memory, King James still comes out.
Young people, let me tell you a secret: that is the power of the Word of God. If you memorize just a few verses—maybe one verse a day, or one verse a week—the power of the Holy Spirit can bring that Word back to you for the rest of your life in a living way, when you get into one of those circumstances where you think, “How will I ever make it through?” The living Word of God comes back to you.
I remember reading through and coming to Philippians 1:21. It said this powerful thing. I will never forget it:
For to me to live is Christ.
I saw it, brothers and sisters. It was a flash of light. It was divine light to me. It must have been as great as what the apostle Paul saw on the road to Damascus.
I remember going to an elderly brother who had led me to the Lord, and I said, “Brother, have you read this verse?” He said, “You are dealing with the deeper things of the Christian life.”
I said, “No, no, no, no. These are the normal things of the Christian life. This is the secret of the Christian life: yet not I. That is why Paul saved the secret to the end: ‘For to me to live is Christ.’”
Then there was a third experience. Jerry shared many of our tales of woe together and how the Lord led us. One of the things he shared was about the impact of The Normal Christian Life, a brother’s book.
After the Lord began to open these secrets to me, I saw, “Lord, this is the secret of the Christian life. This is what I need to lay hold of.” I remember opening the cover of that book when we first got it. It said, “But it is no longer I, but Christ.”
I saw it in a flash. Brothers and sisters, it was true. I remember telling so many people, “It is Christ. Brothers and sisters, it is Christ.”
Paul shared his greatest secret at the end: “Yet not I.” If you look at it in the King James Version—which I have already confessed is the one I memorized more than others—you find the phrase, “I have laboured more abundantly than they all.” We dealt with that last week.
But if you leave out that middle part and begin with the beginning of the phrase and go to the last phrase, it reads: “I, yet not I.” Do you see it? That is what the apostle Paul was trying to communicate to the Corinthian church and to the church throughout the ages.
This is the one and only secret, the greatest secret of the whole Christian life: I, yet not I.
These three experiences in the Word of God were like flashes of divine lightning to me, and I have never forgotten them. Then I came to Galatians 2:20:
I have been crucified with Christ;
and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me:
and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith,
the faith which is in the Son of God,
who loved me, and gave Himself up for me.
I thought that was a strange thing. I did not know I was crucified. I did not know I had to be crucified.
Brothers and sisters, this is the secret that Brother Nee tried to communicate in the book called The Normal Christian Life. It is not the super-Christian life. It is the Christian life that you are to experience, and it is the Christian life that I am to experience. It was the Christian life that the apostle Paul experienced: I, yet not I.
One put it this way when speaking about divine grace: “This principle of divine grace, when really implanted in the heart, will uniformly influence and amend the life.”
That is what changed my life as a Christian: the implanted Word.
Do you remember James 1:21? It speaks of receiving with meekness the implanted Word, which is able to save your souls. Brothers and sisters, what we need when it comes to the grace of God is the implanted Word.
Many times, we know something of the Word. We have some understanding of the Word, and do not ever discount that. You need to know the Word objectively. But brothers and sisters, you need to know the Word of God subjectively. It needs to be implanted in your being.
If James was right—and I believe he was right—it has the power to save your soul, meaning the deep work of the salvation of the soul. This grace is the power that makes man.
Listen to 1 John 4:9:
Herein was the love of God manifested in us,
that God hath sent His only begotten Son into the world
that we might live through Him.
Notice that phrase: “That we might live through Him.”
What a powerful revelation of what the Christian life is. The Christian life is not that we are to live for Him. In a sense, that is true; I will not argue with you. But the bigger secret—the secret the apostle Paul shared, and the secret the apostle John shared—is that we might live through Him.
It opened to me a universe of meaning in the Christian life that I had never seen before. I was just a young believer, but I saw it in a flash. I said to the Lord, “You mean all the resources that are in the Lord Jesus—the unlimited resources—are available to me to live the Christian life?”
I felt the Holy Spirit assure me that this was the great secret the apostle shared.
There are two things about the Lord:
Write that down. Remember that.
He did not just die for you, pardon your sins, forgive your debts, and say, “Have at it. I will see you in heaven. Do your best.”
He said, “I have forgiven your sins. I have even taken you to the cross. You have been crucified in Christ. You have been buried, and you have been raised in newness of life. Now the resource made available to you—the secret of grace—is that I will come and live through you by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
Now that is good news. I do not know if you are an amen crowd, but you should say amen to that. I mean, wake up. What has He made available to us? It almost goes beyond our understanding.
I like what A. B. Simpson said. He said, “Herein lies the great difference between the world’s gospel and the Lord’s gospel.”
The world’s gospel is: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, be saved, live for Him, and go to heaven.”
The Lord’s gospel says: “Believe in the Lord Jesus, be saved, and let Me live through you with all the resources of heaven.”
What a difference.
This is what the apostle Paul meant: “Yet not I,” as he closed out his thoughts on grace. This is the secret, the great secret. This is the essence of the cross: not I, but Christ.
This is what the Lord meant when He said to His disciples in Matthew 16:24 that if you are going to be His disciple, you must take up your cross and follow Him. He that loves his life will lose it. What a paradox. He who loses his life for My name’s sake shall find it unto life eternal.
That is the secret the apostle Paul saw, and I think it is the secret we need to see. This is the secret of the Christian life.
There is another thing Paul saw. It is closely related, but it gives an even fuller picture: grace is not a thing; grace is a Person.
This is very important. I think we think of the things the Lord gives us as things. We think He gives us patience, love, endurance, hope, steadfastness, or faithfulness. You could go on and on and list a plethora of things.
But if you read Paul’s letters carefully, he discovered the main thing: the thing was not a thing at all. The thing was a Person who was all.
What a world of difference when the Lord begins to show us that we do not need to come to Him in the morning and say, “Just give me enough grace for today. Just give me enough love to love that unlovable person.”
No, I was not talking about you, John. I am sorry I looked at you. I did not mean that, brother. No offense given; I hope none taken.
It is never a thing. It is always a Person.
We need to understand that, or we will not understand the depth of the grace of God. The apostle Paul knew grace greater than any man, yet he understood this vital secret: grace was not a thing, but above all, grace was a Person who is all.
Paul met the Person of grace on the road to Damascus. When the light shone from heaven and he was knocked down, he said in Acts 9, “Who art thou, Lord?”
He did not say, “What is this light from heaven?”
Brothers and sisters, we often talk about experience. I am not opposed to experience. I believe you must have real, living experience of the Lord Jesus every day. I believe you must know the Holy Spirit conforming us to the image of the Lord Jesus and doing the work that only He can do.
But the greater secret is that it is not experience. It is a Person.
When that light came from heaven and Paul fell to the ground, he said those famous words, “Who art thou, Lord?” The Lord said, “I am Jesus.”
He met the Person of grace that day. It was not merely an experience. He met grace in a Person. From that day on, the secret is for us to make a progressive discovery of the grace that is the Person of the Lord Jesus.
It is such a difference. It will revolutionize your life if you understand what I am trying to say.
Paul saw what John the apostle saw. John saw something and put it in his Gospel that none of the other three Synoptic Gospels contain. John began his Gospel in a way that none of the others did.
Listen to John 1:14:
And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us
(and we beheld His glory, glory as of the only begotten from the Father),
full of grace and truth.
When John saw the Lord Jesus, he saw something tremendous. When he contemplated the glory of the only begotten Son of God, he saw something incredible. When he saw the Person of the Lord Jesus, he saw that He is full of grace and truth.
Listen to John 1:16:
For of His fulness we all received,
and grace upon grace.
I believe that is what 1 Corinthians 15:10 is about: grace upon grace. But never disassociate grace from the Person of the Lord Jesus.
John’s revelation was this: “Of His fullness we all received.” He did not say, “I received.” John could have said that, but he said, “We received grace upon grace.”
May the Lord open our eyes to this complete work of grace. This is the great secret of grace.
Let me say it again. I have to be clear about this: grace is not just a provision you receive. It is a Person who makes available His endless and unlimited grace. Of His fullness we have received, and it is grace upon grace.
If you look at the apostle Paul’s writings, you will see a revolutionary thing. When he concluded his letters, he did not just say, “Grace be with you.” He could have said that, and it would make sense. Surely that was in his thoughts.
But listen to this Pauline phrase.
Romans 16:20 says:
The grace of our Lord Jesus be with you.
Romans 16:24 says:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
And 2 Corinthians 13:14 says:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ,
and the love of God,
and the communion of the Holy Spirit,
be with you all.
Again and again, Paul made this point: grace is never apart from the Lord Jesus. It was not merely grace. That was the great secret he shared in the Christian life.
Look at 1 Timothy 1:14:
And the grace of our Lord abounded exceedingly
with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus.
That is the difference. It is not merely grace from the Lord Jesus. It is the grace of the Lord Jesus. There is a huge difference—yes, huge. Get that.
The apostle Paul knew something of a great secret. He knew a depository in Christ Jesus that exceeded everything that could be imagined. He knew a wealth in the Lord Jesus greater than anything that could be contemplated, and he knew that resource was made available to us.
I remember reading a story about Fort Knox. You may know that Fort Knox is the depository for United States gold bullion. The United States has more gold than any other country in the world. As a matter of fact, it has 2.3 percent of all the gold that has ever been in the world.
You engineers love facts. We love numbers.
Fort Knox is in Kentucky. I have never been there. It is impregnable and inaccessible. They have a twenty-five-ton blastproof door, minefields, fences, security cameras, attack helicopters, and troops protecting it.
Normal human beings like you and me are not even allowed to go inside Fort Knox. A rumor once began that there was no gold in Fort Knox, that people in government had taken it away. The rumor gained traction because it was printed in many papers.
To quell the rumor, they took reporters and members of Congress into Fort Knox so they could see for themselves the abundance that was there. Then they were scooted out.
Here is the point: the bullion, the depository that is in Christ Jesus, is accessible to you and to me.
It exceeds the wealth of Fort Knox. It exceeds the wealth of the world. It exceeds the wealth of the universe. It is the secret that has been made available to us, so that there never has to be a lack for any one of us, no matter what our circumstance in life.
To me, that is an encouraging thing.
There is another thing Paul said. In the phrase, “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me,” the word was was added in my version to help you understand it. It could read, “The grace of God which with me.”
Now, this is a Person.
You can take your golf clubs with you on vacation and say, “The golf clubs were with me.” You can take a book to read and say, “This was with me.” Those are inanimate objects—things you carry along.
But what the apostle is talking about is not a thing that was with him, but a Person who was with him and never left him.
That is what the whole Bible is built on. That is why the Lord Jesus said at the end of the Great Commission, in Matthew 28:20:
And lo, I am with you always,
even unto the end of the world.
That is the good news. Oh, Lord Jesus, this One who is the bullion of God, the depository of all the riches of God, is with us. Not only is He with us; He will never leave us or forsake us.
That is the beauty of Psalm 23. We talked about the Shepherd this morning. When you read verse 4, it says:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
for Thou art with me.
Why does he say, “I will fear no evil”? Because Thou art with me.
That is the secret. That is the secret the apostle Paul knew: “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.” It never left him.
Everything was in Christ Jesus, and everything is made available to us in Christ Jesus.
One person said this, and I love the thought:
All things come to us through Christ Jesus.
He is the golden pipe of the conduit of eternal love.
He is the window through which grace shines.
He is the door through which grace opens.
This is the secret. Do not think Paul was using trite words. Consider the depth of what he was sharing.
One more thing I will share with you: grace leads to glory. They are inseparable.
There is something that follows grace, and that is glory. Listen to 1 Peter 5:10:
And the God of all grace,
who called you unto His eternal glory in Christ,
after that ye have suffered a little while,
shall Himself perfect, establish, strengthen you.
Brothers and sisters, that is the good news. It is the God of all grace. It is the Person of grace. He is determined that He will bring us to glory in the end.
Grace is not your end. Glory is your end.
You need to write these words upon your heart: “Himself shall perfect.” Is that not a good word? “Himself shall establish.” Is that not a good word? “Himself shall strengthen.” Is that not a good word? “Himself shall ground.”
That is the grace that leads to glory. Glory follows grace.
When you look at grace in the Old Testament, it often does not mean exactly what it means in the New Testament. In the Old Testament, it usually means that you found favor with a person. It is true that we have found favor with God, but the phrase occurs again and again: “He found grace in the eyes of”—sometimes the Lord, sometimes a king, and sometimes another person.
But the complete work of grace does not come until we see the New Testament.
There is one Old Testament verse that is so encouraging. I remember stumbling on it several years ago and never realizing it was there: Psalm 84:11.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield:
the Lord will give grace and glory:
no good thing will He withhold
from them that walk uprightly.
The Lord God is a sun and shield. The Lord will give grace and glory. No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly.
Brothers and sisters, this is the good news. When we have this grace of God, in the end we will experience the glory of God for eternity. He gives grace and glory.
I like what Spurgeon said. He made it very clear. He said there are just two things he would like to share on: the first gift and the last gift.
“The Lord will give grace.” That is the first gift.
“The Lord will give glory.” That is the last gift.
Glory never comes without grace coming first, but grace never comes without glory coming last. That is the good news.
Brothers and sisters, it is unlimited what God has done for us. He has poured down His grace, which is so complete and so beyond imagination. It is in the Person of His Son. It is through His Son. It is in His Son. In the end, because of that grace in His Son, He will bring us to glory.
Listen to Romans 8:30:
And whom He foreordained, them He also called:
and whom He called, them He also justified:
and whom He justified, them He also glorified.
The end—our end—is glory. The complete work of grace, in the end, will result in glory.
Listen to Colossians 1:27:
To whom God was pleased to make known
what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles,
which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.
That is you and me, by the way, in case you are wondering. Christ in you: the hope of glory. It all comes back to the Lord Jesus.
Another brother said this, and I like it very much: “There is not so much difference between grace and glory after all. Grace is the bud, and glory is the flower. Grace is glory begun, and glory is grace perfected.”
Brothers and sisters, this is the secret of grace. May the Lord open our eyes.
I think sometimes we do not understand the abundance, the superabundance, the overflowing gift we have been given in the Lord Jesus.
Do we know something of the complete work of grace the way the apostle knew the complete work of grace? Can we say, “By the grace of God I am what I am”? We should be able to say it. It should be your testimony, and it should be my testimony.
Then he said, “His grace which was toward me was not in vain.” Thank God that resource is given to us.
Then Paul developed the secret more and more. The secret is that we need to cooperate with the grace of God in this life that we now live. It does not do any good, in a sense, to wait and think you will cooperate with the grace of God in eternity. You need to allow grace to do its work where you live right now.
It is not place; it is grace. You need to learn it where you are.
Finally, we need to know the ultimate secret, the greatest secret, the most revealed secret in the whole Bible: this grace is the Person of the Lord Jesus.
He did not just come to save us; He came to live through us. He did not just come to forgive you from your past; He came to make you into what you should be. He has brought not merely some resources to that end. He has brought all the resources of heaven for that end.
To me, that is the secret the apostle Paul shares. That is great grace, brothers and sisters.
Do you remember the book of Acts, where it speaks of the early church? It says that wonderful phrase: “Great grace was upon them.”
This is great grace. May great grace be upon us all.
May we say, like the apostle Paul, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” But let us be quick to say, like the apostle Paul who knew the secret, “Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”
That is the secret.
Lord, we commit these thoughts to You. They may not be fully developed, but we are so thankful for the great secret shown to us in Scripture. We pray that the Holy Spirit would so enlighten us that we would see Christ in a different way than we have ever seen Christ.
Lord, forgive us where we talk about techniques and methods. Show us the Lord Jesus in all of His resources. Show us, like the apostle Paul, that we can say, “His grace was toward me,” and know that grace for every circumstance in life, no matter how blessed and no matter how difficult.
Lord, we pray that You would open our eyes to the very secret of grace: to see the Lord Jesus in the way that we must see the Lord Jesus, to know the complete work of grace.
Lord, we ask this for Your sake and in Your name. Amen.