A People Saved by Grace
An Overwhelming assurance of God's exceeding grace
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Ephesians 2:8
God reigns in abundance.
He acts according to his immeasurable capacity. As someone noted, “I find the holy scripture filled with such superfluous terms”. It’s not strange if you can’t relate to what seems like ‘exaggerated’ provisions. It is what it is. God is big.
An unjust system and a just God
It’s on record, that Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany murdered six million Jews during the Holocaust. The world can’t forget it, one of the earth’s unjust, gruesome, inhuman acts (genocide). Has the world forgiven Hitler and Nazi Germany? What has the world done about this injustice? Did Hitler and Nazi Germany get the punishment they deserve? Who is going to punish their evil? Good if you have the answers, but I don’t. It seems to me that the scale of human justice is not fair here. Why so? It’s inadequate. We don’t have such a scale of justice that can justly appease the wronged. The offender does not always receive the full compensation for their offences. Sometimes it’s the other way around. Our justice system is broken, and it can’t be fixed.
God is the righteous judge. Everyone gets a fair share, both the offender and the offended. Under God, everyone has sinned, including Hitler. I’m sure you do agree that evil looms under our skirts. But there is hope: because all have sinned, God made provision for all. If we come to Him, we’ll find mercy and receive grace.
A God that wants you
It’s human to want good things. We have a duty to protect ourselves, and our interests. It’ll be strange to not love yourself. No one is more charged with the responsibility of doing that than you. You owe that to you. You have to place value on yourself, and that’s how the world gets to see it.
We all see how you love and cherish who you are. You’re proud of it! God wants the same.
But that’s not the whole story. You have your troubles, not with a neighbour or friend but with yourself. You wish it wasn’t there but it is. So you work on yourself and work on yourself. More work. More effort. More resolution. More self-help books. Then there is frustration. You wouldn’t let others see the rotten part (at any cost). With all your effort much has not changed. You’re still you. You can’t kill yourself, you can’t hate yourself either. You have to love yourself. And you want people to love you for who you are. And if they don’t you withdraw.
So, wouldn’t it be a rare gift, for someone to know you so well, and still love you regardless, unreserved? Here the Bible says “God demonstrated his love towards us that why we were yet sinners Christ died for us” - Romans 5:8.
God’s exceeding grace
There is no sinner better than the other. No sin is great enough to overturn God’s provision. You can’t sin more than your imagination. Your best sin can not deplete God’s grace. There is no depth of wrongdoing that grace can not reach. You can’t do worse than a sinner.
You can loathe, and cut yourself but it can’t atone for your sins, and neither can your best work or effort. You can restrain, and imprison yourself away from sight, never killing even an ant but you’re still a sinner as a murderer.
No cathedral, practice, pronouncement, discipline or association can hide you away from sin. Even if you have never altered a word or set your eyes on anything and have never stepped out of the room from the day you were born, you’re still a sinner without Christ’s salvation.
Sin is thicker than grease, stronger than diamond, and odious than a corpse. But much more is God’s grace; available even to the vilest sinner.
Save by grace
You may not appreciate God’s grace until you can’t keep count of your failings.
"…and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. It was to show his righteousness at the present time so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus". Roman 3:24 - 26.
How much more can we try? How long until we get it right? We cannot do without the grace of God. We’re what we’re by the grace of God. Not resolutions, or schemes. It’s God’s grace at work in the life of the believer. And we walk and grow in that grace one day at a time.
The grace of God is not a measure of our standard of living, nor is it for amassing worldly and material gains. The grace of God is a gift for living a victorious Christian life. Except some have abused the grace of God, we wouldn’t have anything to fear.
For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; Titus 2:11, 12.
So what is the way to go? Hebrew 4:16 has it. Let us, therefore, come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. We have to spread our hearts before God in prayers to find grace in our toughest struggles and needs. May the grace of God be with us, Amen.