Integrity- People of God

24       GOD’S GRACE

Grace is giving when it is not deserved. God is gracious and God is kind. God is gracious to the underserving and the unthankful he is gracious to us. To be gracious is to show kindness and favor to someone who has not earned it. Grace is having unmerited favor with God for Him to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Grace was displayed when God paid the debt we owed, was bankrupt to pay and was given eternal life.

Mankind was created to live forever in this world and man’s spirit, which came from God, will live for eternity. Mankind has a soul, a mind and will and his body was formed from the earth. Therefore, Man is spirit, soul and has a body this is the tri-being God created. It was God desire that man was to replenish the world with God’s splendor, wonder, magnificence that is glory. God’s glory is our created, continued purpose on earth, to multiply and create people who look like God and an earth that looks like heaven.

Exodus 34: 6-7 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

God will show compassion and be gracious to those who receive God’s provision and yet the guilty will not go unpunished. This sounds like an oxymoron, a seemingly self-contradiction in this statement. God has given us the ability to choose, a will to decide to accept the provision of Jesus as our way of escape from the penalty of rebellion or to reject Him. The word has been given as the light of God to a dark world. Man can again choose life or death. Those who choose Jesus accepts God’s provision and payment for their sin and in this God shows mercy and loving kindness. Those who reject and rebel against His provision, they will be required to stand before God in judgement for themselves and their guilt will not go unpunished.

Those who accept the Blood of Jesus for their payment of sin are no longer under the curse of the law. The generational curse flows from generation to generation for those who continue in disobedience. Those who refuse Jesus rebel against God, by denying Jesus as their Lord and Saviour, their sins tend to escalate through the future generations.

God not only loves us as His creation but He adopted us into His family through Jesus. There have been many children conceived naturally by “accident” but an adoption is always deliberate and intentional. Sometimes society labels adoption as a lesser thing, another lie from Satan. In God’s eyes and the eyes of the parents who seek an adoption, it is a wonderful thing to be chosen. Many times adoption can be a long drawn out process but it speaks to the love and commitment the adoptive parents have for the child. Jesus went through a long painful process of being born and the death of the cross, so that we can become sons of God. God is kind to His children and His creation. He is gracious to us and His love is seen because He gave us His Son so we, through faith in Jesus, may be called children of the Most High King.

 Romans 6:23For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

God made provision again, in that He gave His Word for us to again obey. As in the beginning God gave mankind His word, to not eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, God sent The Word in the body of Jesus for us to obey. A new commandment Jesus gave us was to love one another as have loved you.” Man had only one thing to do in the beginning and man has only one thing to do today. To become love in the earth and to show that love is the fulfillment of all the law. If we love God, we will obey Him by loving others as Christ loved us and put others before ourselves. Jesus is the same, the Word in flesh, the truth and the light of God.

John 1:1-5 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.  He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.  The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.

John 1:16 Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given.  For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

The old covenant and law given through Moses was performance based, thou shalt not or thou shalt! God knew man, in his fallen nature, would be unable to live up to law. God gave the law so man would see his need for a Saviour. God provided Jesus as that Saviour and the payment for our sin. Jesus was the only one who could live a life perfectly and He chose to die for our sins. Jesus took our sin; He took the death and wrath of God that we deserved. He took our place as sin so we could have a place as sons’ of God. God the Righteous Judge must execute judgement against sin and the penalty for sin is death. Jesus paid our sin debt of death on the cross. We each have a choice to stand before God for ourselves or accept Jesus as our Lord and sin payment, our Saviour to stand before God for us. That is Grace, giving us mercy and abundance we did not deserve and could not earn.

 2 Corinthians 5:17-19 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!  All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them.

Salvation is free for us to receive but it was at a costly price for God and Jesus. The death of God’s Son on the cross and the total separation of Jesus from His Father was a high price to pay for our salvation. Yet the love of God compelled Him to lay down His life for humanity. We cannot earn our salvation; it is a gift from God. To think that with our works we can satisfy God’s wrath or judgement is nothing but pride and self-righteousness trying to prevail, but it will fall short.

A Righteous Judge must judge justly; sin must be punished. God must keep His word. “The wages of sin is death.” At the cross, God’s Justice, God’s Grace and His mercy came together in the person of Jesus. He who knew no sin, who never sinned, became sin so we could become the righteousness of God through Christ Jesus. We are made righteous through faith in the completed work of Christ. That is all God asks, that we honor His Son and accept His completed work on our behalf. Many have refused this priceless gift and stood in pride to their own destruction.

Ephesians 1: 4-8a For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us for adoption to son ship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace ⁸ that he lavished on us.

Ephesians 2: 3-9 All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast

It is by God’s grace we are saved; it is a gift from God. We can choose to accept it or reject this awesome gift. God made provisions for us before the foundation of the world to provide redemption and forgiveness of sin through the blood of Jesus. We all deserve the wrath of God for the rebellion and sin we have committed but because of God’s great love and grace toward us, He offers eternal life and salvation through faith and obedience to Jesus.

No sin will go unpunished someone will pay! God’s Word is true the penalty of sin is death. The choice is ours, to accept Jesus as our Savior and let His death represent us before God or to stand before God on our own. It is only our pride that prohibits us from humbling ourselves before God and accepting Jesus.