What is grace?

Grace is God giving to me what He requires from me.

Holiness, righteousness, perfection - God requires these from us. We don’t have any of these! So in His love, He gives them to us in Jesus Christ!

The Gospel is truly about God’s grace. Jesus died for our sins. That was what we discussed in the last blog. Jesus’ death for our sins is only half of the Gospel. The other half has to do with Jesus’ resurrection!

Volumes can be said on the subject, but here are a few morsels for you to meditate on…

WHAT GOD’S GRACE HAS DONE TO ME

1. Dead to alive (Ephesians 2:5) - Jesus doesn’t turn bad people into good people, He turns dead people into alive people. The Bible makes it clear that by nature we may look alive, but spiritually we are separated from God, dead in our sins. Jesus died and rose again so we may die and raise again in Him! (Romans 6:10-11)
    
2. Adopted (John 1:12) - Imagine you have a teen aged son who goes to a party, gets into a fight, and is murdered by another teenage boy. If you track that boy down and murder him, that is called vengeance. If the boy is arrested, and you help get him prosecuted and incarcerated through the legal system, that is called justice. If you manage to get to the trial and ask the judge to let the boy go free, that is mercy. But if you ask the boy to be let free, and you take him into your home, adopting and raising him as your own son, that is called grace. This is what God has done to us through Christ - adoption!
    
3. Freed (John 8:36) - Here is an assignment for you: every time you come across the phrase “I am the LORD your God who brought you out of Egypt…” in the Old Testament, put some kind of special mark beside it in your Bible. I have been doing that and have been stunned at how often that comes up! So why does the Lord constantly remind Israel of this fact? It isn’t that they forgot their national history - the issue is they had a tendency to forget God and what He did! He is saying, “You were slaves in Egypt, and by my power, I delivered you.” In other words, they were hopeless in bondage until God stepped in and brought freedom. The same can be said to Christians today. We were in bondage to sin, and by God’s power in Christ, we were delivered!
    
4. Heirs with Christ (Romans 8:17) - To say we are fellow heirs with Christ may not strike you, until you realize what you inherit with Christ. And what is that? The answer is: everything. Everything! You will inherit with Christ everything that belongs to Christ, which is, again, everything. Colossians 1:16 says everything was created through Him and for Him!
    
5. Heaven bound (John 14:1-3) - If this life is all there is, we are in sad shape because we can exit this life at any moment. Often, when people greet me, I hear the often repeated, “How are you doing?” My answer is always, “Not as good as I am going to be.” This response many times is met with a surprised reaction, “What do you mean by that?” Then I explain for the Christian, the promise is, no matter how rough things seem right now, God promises that someday everything is going to be perfect - when we realize the consummation of our salvation in heaven.

So grace did more than just eliminate my sin and the penalty of that sin - it comes with it promises beyond compare!

Let’s live as forgiven, but let’s also live as alive, adopted, freed, co-heirs of Christ heading for heaven!

p.s. - not doing as good as he’s going to be