The Grace of God

The Grace of God

Grace is an undeserved free gift, undeserved favor, and undeserved love

 But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. To him be glory both now and for ever. Amen. (2 Peter 3:18 KJV)

All of the other religions of the world offer salvation by works. They say if you become good enough you can work your way to God, you must go through procedures and sufferings and rituals to get to God. Some religions say that you can become a god, this appeals to man’s pride. Just as when pride entered into Satan and he said, “I will be like the Most High God”, and he became God’s enemy. The new age religions all pickup on this theme, that you can become a god. It is not new; even in the Garden of Eden Satan tempted Eve by telling her if she ate the fruit that she would become like God.

Only through Jesus Christ we are offered grace, a free gift. This is contrary to human nature, which in pride says I can do it myself. Our attitude is, “my life is my own and I will do with it as I please.” Jesus says yes I gave you life and I gave you power to choose, it is your choice. So we choose love and give our life to Jesus, and rest in Him, or we choose pride becoming God’s enemy, trying to work and climb up to heaven another way besides through Jesus. (John 14:6 NKJV) Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.

The deeper I get into knowing and experiencing God one thing becomes more and more clear. That is, all that I am, all that I ever have been, and all that I ever will be is totally one hundred percent a result of God’s awesome grace. Every failure I experience causes me to humbly become more dependent upon God’s grace, causing me to decrease and Jesus to increase in my life. All and every success I have is not mine but rather a result of God’s grace at work in me. Spiritual success has nothing to do with me or the things that I do or don’t do; except for the choice to both accept and live in grace, or reject the free gift by rejecting God and His Love. I can’t add anything to grace and I can’t take anything away from it.

(Ephesians 2:1-10 NKJV) And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, {2} in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, {3} among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others. {4} But God, who is rich in mercy (compassion), because of His great love with which He loved us, {5} even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), {6} and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, {7} that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. {8} For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, {9} not of works, lest anyone should boast. {10} For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.

The works that we do for God are the works that He has prepared in advance that we should walk in them; they are not a result of our efforts. They are God’s works that we move in being guided by His Holy Spirit of Love. This is your destiny on earth.

If you are thinking that, “I am unworthy to do works for God”, then you are the perfect candidate, and you are the one He is calling. You are the one God desires to give grace to. The first step toward accepting God’s grace is to understand that you don’t deserve it. (Proverbs 18:12 NIV) Before his downfall a man’s heart is proud, but humility comes before honor. People that try to work their way toward God are an insult to Him and His grace; they are working in pride, which is the opposite of Love. (1 Peter 5:5-7 NIV)…”God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.” {6} Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. {7} Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. God does not love you because you are good, God loves you because He is good.

(Ephesians 2:8-9 NKJV) For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, {9} not of works, lest anyone should boast. Everything about our relationship with God depends upon us trusting Him in faith, by resting in His grace. We are to come to Him as a little child saying, “Daddy pick me up”, and He does, Then He caries us. (Isaiah 46:4 NIV) Even to your old age and gray hairs I am he, I am he who will sustain you. I have made you and I will carry you; I will sustain you and I will rescue you.

Sometimes our tendency is to do things on our own to get out of His arms and run. We want to do the work instead of letting God do it. Then the Lord will chastise us and cause situations that are too big for us to handle alone, which sends us running back into His arms where once again we rest in His grace, trusting Him to rescue us. (Isaiah 30:15 NKJV) For thus says the Lord GOD, the Holy One of Israel: “In returning and rest you shall be saved; In quietness and confidence shall be your strength.”

What we need to know and understand about God is that He has created the world and you so that He can have compassion and grace on the world and you. God is love and He is full of compassion, this is who He is and what He longs to do. Thus He has allowed a world of suffering and bondage so that He can pour out His compassion and heal and rescue us, He loves to do it, and He needs to do it. (Isaiah 30:18 NLT) But the LORD still waits for you to come to him so he can show you his love and compassion. For the LORD is a faithful God. Blessed are those who wait for him to help them. With out suffering and bondage there would be no one to rescue, no one to receive God’s compassion. (Romans 11:32 NIV) For God has bound all men over to disobedience so that he may have mercy (compassion) on them all.

God has set up the world and set us up as an opportunity of His grace (Romans 5:20-21 NIV) The law was added so that the trespass might increase. But where sin increased, grace increased all the more, {21} so that, just as sin reigned in death, so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So God set up our failure so that He could demonstrate His love for us. (1 John 4:9-10 NIV) This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. {10} This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. The scene of the cross was the ultimate demonstration of love. God was willing to suffer in agony and pain to demonstrate the love that He has for you and me. Every time we sin we must remember the cross and thank God for His grace and compassion for us because that is where each sin was paid for, even the ones that we commit today.

After we accept the free gift of grace given to us through Jesus paying the price of our salvation we then begin a new life in Christ. When we accept Jesus into our heart He sends the Holy Spirit into us to begin our spiritual life in Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:21-22 NIV) Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, {22} set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come. The Holy Spirit is given to us to be with us forever, the Holy Spirit is God in us. (John 14:16-17 NKJV) “And I will pray the Father, and He will give you another Helper, that He may abide with you forever; {17} “the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees Him nor knows Him; but you know Him, for He dwells with you and will be in you.

The Holy Spirit teaches us truth from God, and directs us toward obeying God. Obedience to God is summed up by being in Love, Loving God and Loving people through the Spirit of Love. (1 Peter 1:22 NKJV) Since you have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit in sincere love of the brethren, love one another fervently with a pure heart. It is the work of the Holy Spirit that is transforming us and changing our will and our desires to walk in love and obedience to God. (Philippians 2:13 NLT) For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him. We can not walk in obedience by our own efforts, it is the work of the Holy Spirit in us that gives us the ability and the desire to love and obey.

What God requires of us is that we abide in Him. (John 15:4-5 NIV) Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. {5} “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. Without God we can do nothing, thus the fruits of being a Christian are a result of God’s work of grace in our lives, not by our efforts. What we are required to do is abide in Christ as a branch in a tree. The only work that a branch does is remain in the tree, then life giving sap and nutrients come up through the tree giving it life and producing fruit. This represents the work of the Holy Spirit of Love, flowing from God and through us, producing fruits in our life. (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV) But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, {23} gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Love is the first fruit of the Spirit; all of the other fruits are a result of love. When you have love you have all of the other fruits also. When people see the fruits of love in your life and they feel and experience the love of God coming through you then they also want to taste and see that God is good, this is how people are drawn into the kingdom.

(1 John 5:2-4 NKJV) By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and keep His commandments. {3} For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments. And His commandments are not burdensome. There is a point at which our knowledge of God and His love reaches critical mass and we breakthrough into the rest dimension, the realm of trust and faith that comes from love. No longer do we struggle to obey God’s commandments, it is easy, and we enjoy them because there are only two, love God and love your neighbor; when we keep these two all the others are kept also.

Trying to Love by our own efforts is impossible without the help of the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Love because it is God’s Spirit; it is the presence of God in our life. (Exodus 33:14 NKJV) And He said, “My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest.” All that we are required to do is abide in God, (Hebrews 4:10 NKJV) For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works as God did from His.

God’s grace does not depend on our efforts or works it totally depends upon God. (Romans 9:15-16 NIV) For he says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” {16} It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. If we are willing to allow the Holy Spirit to work in us then God does the work of changing our heart to love Him and love others, so that we can be obedient to His Word. (2 Thessalonians 3:5 NKJV) Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience (endurance) of Christ. (Deuteronomy 30:6 NKJV) “And the LORD your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your descendants, to love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul, that you may live.

We must always understand that our failures and weakness are no match for God’s grace and love that He has for us. (2 Corinthians 12:9-10 NIV) But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. {10} That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong. Our works always end in failure and suffering, demonstrating our weakness, then we come to the end of our self and call out to our Father of Compassion. Then God gives us His strength and ability to overcome, causing us to love Him and trust Him more and more. (Galatians 3:11 KJV) But that no man is justified by the law in the sight of God, it is evident: for, The just shall live by faith. In rescuing us God is glorified, if it was by our efforts we could claim the glory.

Many of the New Testament epistles begin and end with a salutation such as this: Grace, compassion, mercy, and peace, from God our Father and Jesus Christ our Lord be upon you, and abound in you, and be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. This should be our prayer for ourselves and for those we love. Probably the best thing we can ask God for is His grace and compassion in us and upon us. We can ask God for every need, including more of His love in our heart, a desire to serve Him, a desire to read His word, a desire to know Him in an intimate way.

Ask God to experience His presence in a super natural way, and that His Love will flow through your heart and reach out to touch others. If you are willing to allow God to answer these prayers, and allow the Holy Spirit to change you from the inside, He will, He is anxious to answer such prayers from His children. (Hebrews 4:15-16 NIV) For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are–yet was without sin. {16} Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy (compassion) and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Always remember that the voice of God is the sound of Love

2 Peter 3:18 ; John 14:6 ; Ephesians 2:1-10 ; Proverbs 18:12 ; 1 Peter 5:5-7 ; Ephesians 2:8-9 ; Isaiah 46:4 ; Isaiah 30:15 ; Isaiah 30:18; Romans 11:32 ;  Romans 5:20-21 ; 1 John 4:9-10 ; 2 Corinthians 1:21-22 ; John 14:16-17 ; 1 Peter 1:22 ; Philippians 2:13; John 15:4-5 ; Galatians 5:22-23 ; 1 John 5:2-4 ; Exodus 33:14 ; Hebrews 4:10 ; Romans 9:15-16 ; 2 Thessalonians 3:5 ;  Deuteronomy 30:6 ; 2 Corinthians 12:9-10 ; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 4:15-16