Over two months ago I started a meditation on what grace is with my grace 0.5 post and this is what I have come to understand through my journey. I am a failure! How often do I find my self stuck in the muck and mire of daily life and I each time I think that I can help myself. My desire for independence clouds the reality of my hopelessness. I stand so long thinking that I am able to anything I want. I am conceded and confident because I can gain the favor of men. Since I can gain the favor of men there is no reason why I can’t gain God’s favor. This thinking is why I so often feel adrift and hopeless because I am relying and centered on what I perceive I can do.
When God before time began planned to save humanity from its own failure I did not have any sway in His decision. When God sparked creation my own actions could not prompt His decisions in creation. When Jesus died on the cross for humanities sin there was nothing that I could do to change His mind. When the time for Christ’s return to earth comes there will be nothing I can do to win favor. I have been designed with an inadequacy inherent in my inability to bridge the gap to God. In the garden of Eden man was created to have intimate and personal fellowship with God. When Adam and Eve sinned it was the beginning of a separation from God that we cannot overcome.
The stage of my inadequacy was set long ago before I was ever born but grace existing in the very nature of God was prepared to make a way for me to become more than adequate. There is no qualification placed upon the grace that God extends. Throughout the gospels grace is extended equally to everyone who seeks it no matter who they are or what they have done. Now when I think about the people who ‘seek’ God I find myself staring into a deep mystery which is this: do we choose God or did he choose us. I think when we get caught up in thinking about how we came to faith in Jesus Christ we lose sight of what really matters. God gives us everything with no qualification to change our current life because He meets us where we are. In thinking about grace I have come to see that it is all about God and not about me and because of this understanding I believe that my salvation is all about God and not about me. Why should I feel that I am able to choose to believe that Jesus died on the cross for me if there is no way for me to obtain God’s grace through my own means? Grace is so amazing because it meets us where we are with out us needing to change. The woman caught in adultery, the lame, the tax collectors, the blind, the fishermen all were caught up by a grace right in the midst of their lives.
The truth of grace means that I do not need to get caught up in the bondage that I so often press upon myself when I feel that I have failed. it is not within my ability to live a life as perfectly as Jesus Christ. When I say that I need to stop sinning before God will do something I am walking a slippery slope that will only lead to me never finding what God’s grace is. Whenever I judge my life by what I think my standard for life would be if I were god I have lost sight of the acceptance that has been mine by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. I am accepted by God no matter where I am in my journey through life. I will never find myself in a place where God’s grace will not trump the bondage I find myself in.
How does this grace affect my daily life? I can boldly read or not read my Bible because who I am is not what I do. My prayer life can be vibrant or struggling because no matter what state I find my prayer life that does not define me. I can get up and work my job no matter what it is whether I find joy in it or not because my joy is found not in what I do. The beauty of my meditation on grace had been my deeper understanding of what Paul said in Romans 6: “What shall we say then? Are we to continue to sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” How true Paul is! The grace of God is not a license to live a life doing whatever I please. If I were to live a life of sin thinking I am under grace I would be deceiving myself and there would be no freedom or joy in my life. Grace compels me to live my life for God and even if I did stray from God I would be compelled to return to Him just as the prodigal son was compelled to return home. In moments where I have seen my life as the prodigal son did and seeing how I had nothing of worth and I turned to God it is in that moment that grace is known. I am just a lost child quivering under the anticipation of judgement but God extends grace and embraces me passionately as his precious child.
Grace is beautifully summed up in this: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life”. The reality of grace is that it is all God and not us. What a freedom is found in this truth. May you find peace in knowing the grace of God. Please feel free to contact me with any comments: @toesSHORTten on Twitter or email_me@aaroneberline.com
I really have enjoyed looking at what grace truly is. I know that even with growing up in a church, christian family, and knowing a lot about God there is a lot to learn about grace. I look forward to continued reflections on what God’s grace is.