On the subject of Grace
God has been directing my conversations with other believers recently to the subject of grace, the vital element of our faith this website emphasizes in its title. Only with sensitivity the Holy Spirit gives us can we see how grace envelops so many aspects of our lives. God’s grace protects us from danger, strengthens us to work and enjoy life on this planet and preserves our souls from judgement. To me, is concept of grace is that essentially, He loves me in spite of my weaknesses and longs to help me become more like Him. Grace also implies that I cannot earn His favor by any act to make myself holy; I already have God’s favor because of Christ. The efforts I make to please Him are not required for my salvation but offered to Him as love gifts.
Paul was the most Jewish of Jews, and it took a physical confrontation from the Master to get his attention. (See Acts 9). Ultimately after years of intense spiritual searching, Paul had to admit that Jewish inheritance or ritual wasn’t enough. Paul discusses in Romans the differences between Jews living under the law of rituals and disciplines, and Christians living under grace, the unmerited favor of God. God chooses to look at us with love not because of our efforts to live righteously, but because Jesus came and paid for our sins in the ultimate sacrifice of Calvary. God sees us made right or justified by accepting that payment as our own. He sees us with the same love that he views the Jewish nation, his precious children. In Ephesians it says “For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgement and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through your faith. And this (salvation) is not of yourselves (of your own doing, it came not through your own striving), but it is the gift of God” (2:8 Amplified).
Paul speaks of us—non-Jews– in Romans 11 as part of the grafted in olive branches, part of the same organism. “His (God’s) choice is based on his grace, not on what they (men) have done. For if God’s choice were based on what people do, then his grace would not be real grace” (Romans 11:6 GNT). Early in her life, my mother rejected the Christian legalism of her parents’ upbringing although she knew their hearts were sincere. She saw the legalism (the do’s and the don’ts) as an impossible task to live, as so it was. A decade and hundreds of miles later, God sent a coffee-drinking neighbor to bring Mama to salvation by grace through Christ at the age of 28. The lady became our beloved aunt, Aunt Grace. What irony that the seeds of the Word my grandparents had planted and their nightly prayers came to fruition through the life and example of a redeemed bar maid! And my own testimony stems from that legacy!
A deeper understanding of Aunt Grace’s grace is an understanding that makes me want to please Him more, to seek Him for the new direction this year will take, to love Him in a fresh authentic way.
Oh Lord, I accept your grace. I don’t want to abuse it. I need your continuing favor to live pleasing to you. Amen.
Some days it is hard for my to wrap my mind around God’s amazing grace. I am very thankful that He loves me despite myself and my doings.