Amazing Grace

Even after years of hearing the Gospel which tells us that salvation is a free gift from God, (Ephesians 2:8-9 “For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” KJV) it’s still easy for Christians to fall into the temptation of co-mingling grace with works. Why is that?  I think because it’s difficult to completely weed out worldly thinking with regard to spiritual things.

The world system says we must prove our worth.  Thus we are judged by who we know, how well we perform, what we do, and how successful we are. But the trouble occurs when we transfer this same standard of measurement to our spiritual life by trying to prove our worth to God.

The truth is we are valuable to God not because of anything we’ve done, but because He has bought us with a great price—the very blood of Jesus.  And nothing we ever do, no matter how great, will make us more valuable to God, or more loved by Him. The world will never understand this truth, because it is alien, heavenly, and spiritually discerned.

So does that mean we just sit around and eat chocolate covered raisins all day? No, we do good works to please God, because we love Him, and they are the works He has ordained for us to do (Ephesians 2:10). And we love God because He first loved us (1 John 4:19). And His love for us can’t be earned and it’s certainly not deserved.  On the cross, Jesus said “it is finished”. He paid the price so that we could have peace with God. We don’t need to prove anything to Him. All we need do is rest in what Jesus has already done. It’s that simple.

Oh, how amazing His grace is!

Until next week,

Sylvia