Learning how to access and administer grace is a key part of being a believer, and enhances every aspect of the faith life.
Grace is unique to God and comes from Him. It changes everything for us when it is poured into our lives. We are saved by grace through faith. It is His favour towards us. It is His gift of eternal life towards us.
Grace is unmerited favour. We don’t deserve His grace. It is simply offered regardless of our present or past. That is the marvellous thing about grace. It is free, and it is offered. Our part is to accept the offer.
Faith and grace
We accept grace from God through faith, and even faith is a gift from God. It comes to us through the preached Word of the gospel. There is a dynamic and quality to the Word of God that has the power to cause faith to rise to the occasion when grace is offered.
It’s this faith that comes through the preached Word of God that causes grace to be activated in our lives. We can be saved no other way.
Faith is believing something. We are asked “Have you believed the report?” What is the report? See Isaiah 53:1. The report is that Jesus has paid the price of our sin and has offered forgiveness to all people. The report is the good news that we have been set free from the punishment for sin.
The grace of God was to send His only begotten Son to take our place at the death tree, the cursed tree of punishment for sin (Gal.3:13). The cross was that tree.
To the Hebrew, being nailed to a tree was most cursed place for any man. We all deserved to be there. We all sinned against God. We all fell short. We all faced eternal separation from God.
Jesus was the propitiation. That means He took our place. He was hung on that tree for us, on our behalf.
He was our substitute on that tree and He had the curse laid on Him. He took our punishment. God’s grace made this possible, and Jesus willingly accepted the assignment, “for the joy that was set before Him Heb.12:2)”
What was that joy, that would mean so much pain and suffering on our behalf? It was the joy that many would be saved. That He would have many brethren, and many sisters who would receive His offer of salvation through grace.
And that grace is completely free. We can’t earn it, or pay for it, or even warrant it through our own righteousness or human good deeds (Eph.2:8). They will not cut it, nor do they need to. The offer is given regardless of our present, or our past. It is offered because God’s love is toward us all even as we are sinners.
But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Ephesians 2:4-7
And that same grace that is given by God can be in our own lives. We can offer that grace towards others that provides forgiveness even for the most awful of crimes against us. After all, God forgave us even when we were yet sinners, did He not?
Spreading the grace through the gospel
Grace is the power to forgive and forget. You see, God has cast our sins as far as the east is from the west. He has not only forgiven us, He has forgotten why we needed forgiveness in the first place. He has ended the wall of enmity that was between us.
His grace becomes our grace. There is such healing in grace. God has forgiven, so should we. Forget. Let go. End. Only faith, love and grace can accomplish this, but it is present. We can do it because He did it for us.
As God’s grace abounds toward us, so we can allow that same grace in us abound towards everyone we meet, even those who may be antagonistic towards the gospel, because, as He is, so are we in the world (1Jo.4:17). His love is perfected in us, and it is present in our lives to pour out on others.
