“But
God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by
grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in
the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show
the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ
Jesus. For by grace you have been saved
through faith. And this not your own
doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
“
(Ephesians
2:4-9 ESV)
What is Grace? We talk about it in the church, we sing about
it, we are grateful for it, but how much do we really understand it? I get the sense that all too often, we think
of the position we have been given through faith in Christ as something we’ve
achieved on our own somehow, because we were smart enough to figure it out, or
we chose wisely in regard to our salvation. This couldn’t be further from the reality of
what grace truly is. Grace is getting a
benefit, some degree of favor that we in no way deserve. We didn’t have it coming because of our
association with a church, or being raised in a Christian home, or because of
any “good behavior” we might think we’ve achieved. Not only did we not deserve it, but we
deserved the opposite of grace, we deserved judgment, leading to eternal
punishment. All of us deserved that
fate. That’s what Paul wrote in the
verses preceding the passage above.
We were dead, headed down a dead-end
road, on the path to our own destruction, without a real awareness of our
dreadful fate when God shows up and grants us this incredible gift—the gift of
our heart and mind being opened to His great love for us, and His desire to set
us free from the path we were on. He
made us alive in Him. Alive like we have
never been before, awakened to our dreadful selves, and the beauty of His
holiness, and putting on us a stamp of “forgiven” without one single effort on
our part to grant us that status. In
fact there is nothing we could do to
cause us to be forgiven. It’s a gift
from God.
He has taken away any ability on our
part to be able to boast about our salvation.
Just like the children of Israel, having crossed the Red Sea, and seeing
Pharaoh’s army drowned in the sea behind them could not boast and say, “Look
what we did!” Nor can we look back at
the forgiveness of God, and the promise of a home in heaven, and lay any claim
to that accomplishment. “It is the gift
of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”
That is Grace. God gives us something we in no way deserve
in order to express His love for us, and to establish us as His beloved
children with full rights of inheritance, being made part of His household
forever. Why us? It was only because He loved us. John the apostle writes it this way in John
1:12-13: “But to all who did receive
him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who
were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man,
but of God.”
Grace is much more than just the
kindness of God, but it is the kindness and love of God at a time when we were
still his enemies, rebelling against Him, still serving ourselves, and headed
for eternal destruction. It is love when
we were unlovely; it is love when we deserved judgment, and death. “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that
saved a wretch like me, I once was lost but now am found; was blind but now I see.” John Newton understood grace.
By
His Grace Alone,
Pastor
Bruce Jacobsen
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