The gospel of grace

I realised something this weekend. Something shocking, saddening and profound. So many Christians are living in bondage, trapped under an ideal that has them achieving less than they were created to achieve and becoming less than they were created to be. You see, Christians are failing to realise the essence of their salvation. They don’t struggle with the aspect that is faith (or so we are lead to believe). You need faith in God, faith in the holy spirit and faith in Jesus the son of God. You need faith to believe that God sent Jesus to die for your sins, faith that the holy spirit was with Jesus and he sent the holy spirit to abide with his followers and finally, faith that Jesus actually died for your sins.

Some people will be thinking “well, isn’t that enough?” The answer is no, it isn’t. The truth is that faith is the beginning of the story.

The other part of the story is that wonderful thing called grace. You see at least 10 times in the new testament we are reminded that we were saved by God’s grace. So what is grace?

Grace is defined as favor or goodwill; the manifestation of favor, especially by a superior; mercy; clemency; pardon; an allowance of time after a debt has become payable.

I think a combination of the last two is a perfect definition of what God did for us through Christ. We were given a pardon when the debt of our sin became due.

Grace is undeserved and unmerited favor. It is by grace that we have received salvation meaning we have done nothing to receive our salvation, it is a gift bestowed upon us by God through the selfless act of his son Jesus who knew no sin.

Grace is such an important thing. You see without grace we as new testament believers are no different from those who do not believe in the salvation through Christ. Without grace we are back in the world of rules and regulations. Do not underestimate the importance of grace. The word grace is mentioned 8 times in the old testament compared to 123 times in the new testament (NIV). To me that indicates that grace is a pretty important part on what happened in the new testament. Grace is fundamental to what Jesus did on the cross and grace is fundamental to new testament Christianity.

Under the old testament, the people of Israel were bound by the law, the ten commandments. Now 10 simple rules, which seems pretty easy to follow, right? Wrong!

Romans 7:4 - 6 (NLT)

So, my dear brothers and sisters, this is the point: You died to the power of the law when you died with Christ. And now you are united with the one who was raised from the dead. As a result, we can produce a harvest of good deeds for God. 5 When we were controlled by our old nature,[b] sinful desires were at work within us, and the law aroused these evil desires that produced a harvest of sinful deeds, resulting in death. 6 But now we have been released from the law, for we died to it and are no longer captive to its power. Now we can serve God, not in the old way of obeying the letter of the law, but in the new way of living in the Spirit.

I like to explain it as follows:

You see, because of grace, when God looks at us he sees Jesus. No matter what we do, that undeserved grace steps in and we become a picture of righteousness in the eyes of God as he sees us through the lense of his son Jesus. Isn’t that beautiful?

It’s a very simple analogy but to me that is what truth is, plain and simple.

Now some may think that grace means we can exploit God and continue to live in sin because we will never get what we deserve. It is true that we will not lose our salvation, but what a poor example we would be, what a meaningless life we would live, what an unfulfilled existence that would be. There are consequences to our sin, so we would reap what we sow. If we are habitual liars, we lose the confidence and trust of others. If we are cheats then nobody wants deal with us. If we are aggressive, no one wants to befriend us. These are just examples of us reaping what we sow. The sin does not impact our salvation, but they do damage our relationships and lead to a miserable existence.

As a new testament believer, your foundation should be grace. Without this, you cannot live out the life that God has purposed for you. You won’t become who you are destined to be because you are hell bent on punishing yourself for your mistakes when God doesn’t see them or remember them. Our human nature is based on a rewards system, you get what you deserve but God has a different equation. You get what Christ deserves and Christ got what you deserved. He became sin so that you can gain eternal life. Through the grace of almighty God he was raised from the dead and now sits at the right hand of the father.

Grace is something that I can talk about over and over but I want to leave you with a scripture that drives home the message for me.

Galatians 2 (NLT):

Then fourteen years later I went back to Jerusalem again, this time with Barnabas; and Titus came along, too. 2 I went there because God revealed to me that I should go. While I was there I met privately with those considered to be leaders of the church and shared with them the message I had been preaching to the Gentiles. I wanted to make sure that we were in agreement, for fear that all my efforts had been wasted and I was running the race for nothing. 3 And they supported me and did not even demand that my companion Titus be circumcised, though he was a Gentile.[a]

4 Even that question came up only because of some so-called believers there—false ones, really[b]—who were secretly brought in. They sneaked in to spy on us and take away the freedom we have in Christ Jesus. They wanted to enslave us and force us to follow their Jewish regulations. 5 But we refused to give in to them for a single moment. We wanted to preserve the truth of the gospel message for you.

6 And the leaders of the church had nothing to add to what I was preaching. (By the way, their reputation as great leaders made no difference to me, for God has no favorites.) 7 Instead, they saw that God had given me the responsibility of preaching the gospel to the Gentiles, just as he had given Peter the responsibility of preaching to the Jews.8 For the same God who worked through Peter as the apostle to the Jews also worked through me as the apostle to the Gentiles.

9 In fact, James, Peter,[c] and John, who were known as pillars of the church, recognized the gift God had given me, and they accepted Barnabas and me as their co-workers. They encouraged us to keep preaching to the Gentiles, while they continued their work with the Jews.10 Their only suggestion was that we keep on helping the poor, which I have always been eager to do.

Paul Confronts Peter

11 But when Peter came to Antioch, I had to oppose him to his face, for what he did was very wrong. 12 When he first arrived, he ate with the Gentile believers, who were not circumcised. But afterward, when some friends of James came, Peter wouldn’t eat with the Gentiles anymore. He was afraid of criticism from these people who insisted on the necessity of circumcision. 13 As a result, other Jewish believers followed Peter’s hypocrisy, and even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy.

14 When I saw that they were not following the truth of the gospel message, I said to Peter in front of all the others, “Since you, a Jew by birth, have discarded the Jewish laws and are living like a Gentile, why are you now trying to make these Gentiles follow the Jewish traditions?

15 “You and I are Jews by birth, not ‘sinners’ like the Gentiles. 16 Yet we know that a person is made right with God by faith in Jesus Christ, not by obeying the law. And we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we might be made right with God because of our faith in Christ, not because we have obeyed the law. For no one will ever be made right with God by obeying the law.”[d]

17 But suppose we seek to be made right with God through faith in Christ and then we are found guilty because we have abandoned the law. Would that mean Christ has led us into sin? Absolutely not! 18 Rather, I am a sinner if I rebuild the old system of law I already tore down. 19 For when I tried to keep the law, it condemned me. So I died to the law—I stopped trying to meet all its requirements—so that I might live for God.20 My old self has been crucified with Christ.[e] It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. So I live in this earthly body by trusting in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. 21 I do not treat the grace of God as meaningless. For if keeping the law could make us right with God, then there was no need for Christ to die.