“God is gracious.”
Let me begin by stating this up front: There is too much to say about how God is gracious. The amount of things that I could write about, explain, and expose are going to be limited and not the entirety of God’s graciousness. He is infinitely gracious and immeasurably gracious to all of us, so I have chosen to look at a couple amazing truths about God’s grace.
Grace is undeserved.
Seriously stop and think about this. I mean it. Stop and think about it.
The pure, huge, and infinite God of all creation chooses to be gracious to men and women who consistently disregard His rule and reign. We constantly seek after things that kill us, but the worst part of it is that we want to sin against God. We openly, blatantly and emphatically sin because we think it leads to a free life when in reality it leads to death (Genesis 6:5, Romans 1:18-32, Romans 6:23).
If we have sinned against God, and we openly acknowledge that we have, we must realize that there is nothing that could make us earn His favor. By grace’s very definition it means that God gives us unmerited favor and blessing.
Karis Church, the church I am an intern and have been a member at for two years, sums up God’s grace like this:
Our God is a God of grace. He welcomes undeserving people to His table even though He is not obligated to do so. As frail, finite sinners we can do nothing on our own. We deserve nothing at all - that is, except judgment.
The good news is that even though all we are owed is to be separated from His presence, He gives us Jesus to reconcile the relationship that we damaged.
Grace is found in Jesus.
Jesus lived the life we could never lived, died the death that we deserve, and ascended into heaven to give us new life.
God is gracious to forgive us from all of our sins. God is gracious to forgive us for our sinful motives behind our “good” deeds. God is gracious to come to the help of needy sinners who need His grace for salvation. God is gracious to choose us when we would never choose Him. God is gracious to sustain our faith in His grace until we die, and God is gracious to come back to take His children from all over the world to heaven.
Grace frees us from proving ourselves.
Let’s be honest with one another… We all feel like we have something to prove to someone, to some group, to ourselves, to our family, to our professors, to our children, to our spouse, or to our boss. We all feel like that to some extent, but God flips all of that on its head!
Since we know that we can do nothing in our own strength to reconcile ourselves to God, we have to trust that His works are enough to save us. When we place our trust in Jesus’s works and not our own we are free from feeling like we need to prove ourselves to God. God knows that we are finite and frail human beings, and when we see that we are to respond by faith and trust that He is enough for us.
Grace enables us to fight and kill sin in our lives.
After we place our trust in God’s grace for salvation we aren’t done with God’s grace. God’s grace is what enables us to stop pursuing and committing sins. Romans 8 tells us that is we have the Holy Spirit within us, then we will, not might at times, kill sins in our lives (Romans 8:12-17). Clearly we will never have a sinless day, but God is making us more like Jesus moment by moment if we lean on His grace.
John Piper also says that God’s grace is “not simply leniency when we have sinned. Grace is the enabling gift of God not to sin. Grace is power, not just pardon” (emphasis added).
Grace is not simply just the access point of faith in Jesus, but grace is interwoven in all facets of the Christian faith that it is impossible to fully depict God’s perfect, holy, and beautiful grace in our lives.
Grace is available for you.
Do you trust in Jesus Christ? Have you placed your life in God’s hands? Are you in need of a Savior?
God’s perfect, loving, and forgiving grace is only found in Jesus and His perfect life, His brutal crucifixion, and His power to rise from the dead and defeat Satan, sin and death!
Jesus died so that the world would place their lives, their hopes, their dreams, and their desires in His gracious hands.
If you have not placed your trust in His hands, I would plead that you would. He is gracious to forgive if you whole-heartedly ask Him to forgive you. Pray and ask for Jesus’s grace to change your heart to love and pursue Him.
If you have already trusted in Him for salvation, please pray and ask God to continue to change your heart, your desires, and your mind so that He will be what you seek for joy and fulfillment. He loves you and He wants you to keep pursuing Him.
God is good and gracious.
Jacob Luis Gonzales
