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The Gift of Grace

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8
The Gift of Grace Book Cover

the good, the bad, the ugly

The ugly news: On Day One of this week, we talked about how there is no fairest of them all. Sin has infected and affected all of humankind—no one is exempt from its ugliness. Even “good” people. Just as we said that we are incapable of saving ourselves, we are also incapable of being genuinely good by ourselves. This is the way sin works.

The bad news: our actions do not define who we are. Rather, who we are defines the things we do. If we do good, if we are not in Christ, we are incapable of being good. So even if we perform acts that seem righteous to us, apart from Christ, all our righteous acts are like a polluted garment (Isaiah 64:5).

The good news: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

Christ came to earth to live a human life, and he was sinless, but took on our sin for our sake so that through his life, death, and resurrection we might become the righteousness of God. That is the good news.

Our sin, the sin that all humankind has—no matter how good we believe ourselves to be—has made us guilty before God. But God refused to leave us guilty and has provided us a way, in Christ, by which we may be proclaimed innocent.

what is grace?

Grace is like Christmas. None of us deserves a gift at Christmas. No cosmic rules dictate that loved ones must bestow upon us presents wrapped and tied with bows. We aren’t entitled to gifts. Just as we don’t deserve gifts, we also don’t deserve righteousness.

All the good acts we perform do not entitle us to God’s gift of salvation, redemption, and reconciliation. Remember, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). What we deserve is death and separation from the creator and the sustainer of the universe. But instead, God has gone out on his own initiative, and provided a way for all people to become righteous before him. Christ gave his life freely so that we may escape the ugly news of sin. And the Lord didn’t do it all because he had to, but because he wanted to.

That is grace. “For it is by grace that we have been saved through faith. And this is not our own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).

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What would it mean if God had not given grace to us?

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Comments (10)

God’s GRACE is what forgives me and makes me enough to be reunited with God. I would be destined to hell without God’s Grace…

We would suffer wholly and fully, and forever remain in a sinful state. No matter how much good we did, we could never be reunited with him.

Definition of grace-the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it". It is not a created substance of any kind. … It is an attribute of God that is most manifest in the salvation of sinners.

It means that no matter how hard I worked at being good or doing good acts it would never be enough. I would forever be separated from my maker. Thank you God for your grace that you have showered upon me.

No matter how “good” we act, we would never be good enough in Gods eyes and would parted from Him for eternity.

Eternal Death, permanent separation. It would mean no hope. It would be like a tree falling in the woods that no one hears… we could philosophically hypothesis the concept of righteousness but none of it would matter. Life and creation would ultimately be utterly pointless beyond some kind of empty entertainment for God. Like a really awfully raunchy reality show lacking in any substance or depth. If it were the reality we were facing, if we did not have grace, life the way we know it here separated from God would feel truly cruel and the only real question to God I would have is, "when are you going to put us out of our misery?" It would be complete and utter despair. Thank You Lord for the way back to you.

We would have no hope. On our own we cannot save ourselves. We would be digging in the pit in futility – never able to get out of the darkness. Praise God for hope in Christ!!

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