Daily Java: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9).
One of the hardest things to understand in the Christian faith is the knowledge of grace. God gives us grace.
Grace is a gift, not a wage. He gives it to us. It does not depend on you to be holy, God makes you holy. We do what we do because we love him, not to make him love us. That is the beauty of God’s system: he makes failures perfect.
Of course, what we want to do is tie grace somehow to something we have to do. it is hard to understand that grace is free. It is a gift.
We live under the law of grace, someone says. (actually I said that the other day without meaning to) But there is no law of grace. Grace is a system, a gift, a bestowal.
Love is a law. That is true. James calls it the perfect law (James 1:25) and the royal law (James 2:8: If you really keep the royal law found in Scripture, "Love your neighbor as yourself," you are doing right.). but grace is a gift.
Grace is a thing. You cannot serve a thing. Whereas love is an action. You can serve an action. Love, God says. We can love. But we cannot grace. We can only accept grace.
And the idea of grace is so amazing, so beautiful. The idea of grace says that it does not matter how much we have failed, how much we have sinned, no badly we have done – God makes us perfect. We cannot do it, but he can. And, to those who believe in him, he does.
Grace says that we cannot do what God wants of us, but he decides we are fine anyway. Grace says we have failed but God looks at us as perfect. Grace says that we are sinful pieces of junk, but God looks at us as sinless works of his art.
Grace and law are mutually exclusive. Law demands, grace gives. Law says, do this or die. Graces says do this because.
Under grace, the works we do are because we love God, not in order to make God love us. He loves us already. And when we believe in him and accept him, he gives us perfection. He makes us perfect. He gives us grace.
No way we can get it ourselves. It can only come from God. That is the whole point. You had your life under your control and you screwed it up. God takes it and makes it perfect.
He gives us grace.
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