Have You Unwrapped Your Gift Of Grace?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.
Ephesians 2:8.

“Grace” forms the crux of the bible. It is, thus, critical we understand grace as it is the foundation of faith and can radically change our lives.

Grace is the opposite of karma. Karma is getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve, and not getting what you deserve.

In short, grace is God’s gift package of unearned, and undeserved blessings. This includes healing, provision, and protection for life along with redemption from eternal death, just by us believing that Jesus sacrificed Himself at the cross for us.

Yes. It’s that simple.

But Isn’t The Bible Full of Demanding Laws?

Yes. But the Bible isn’t about laws and what we should be doing to keep them. It’s about God and what He has done. God gave us the law to show us right from wrong. So we could see our sins, our weaknesses, and our need for a Savior.

Adam brought sin into the world, making him incapable of passing on to his descendants a holy human nature. Thus, he ended up ensnaring us in his sin. But God being merciful had a plan to save us from the eternal suffering that sin brought upon us.

Without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins
Hebrews 9:22

Sin is violating God’s law. It demands a penalty be paid because the bible says, “The wages of sin is death.” Without the price paid, people would face everlasting hellfire through death.

Who Brought Death? God or Satan?

It’s important to recognize that it was the devil who brought death to earth, not God. It was God’s plan for us to forever live with Him from the beginning. But because of Adam’s sin, not only spiritual death but also physical death came upon us.

God is too pure to look at sin. So, we had to have our sins washed away and forgiven, to be reconciled to God. This act is called ‘atonement’.

The Hebrew word for “atonement” is kaphar, which means “to cover.” This indicates that through the atonement, sin is covered and God no longer sees it.

The First Atonement in History!

The first example of atonement in the Old Testament is when God covered Adam and Eve’s nakedness with animal skin. This act required the shedding of the blood of an innocent creature (Gen 3:21).

In the Old Testament, God gave humans an opportunity: by sacrificing a blemish-free animal, people’s sins could be forgiven. The people would take an animal to the priest and through laying on hands, the individual’s sins would be transferred to the animal.

But, the blood of animals couldn’t get rid of the root of the problem, the sin in human nature. This was just a short-term solution. There had to be an everlasting answer for the forgiveness of sins.

Dual Problem, Dual Solution

We, humans, suffer from a dual sin problem :

1)The sins we commit and

2) Our inborn sin nature.

All the sins we commit emerge from our inherent sin nature.

Preachers who keep urging people to be holy and righteous by their own strength do not realize that we can try and be good for a short while but we will eventually fail because our inherent nature is sin.

Of course by Christ’s shed blood, all the sins we commit are washed away. But our sinful hearts from which sin gets birthed had to be dealt with. The root of the sin problem had to be dealt with.

Watchman Nee in his insightful book The Normal Christian Life states that God has provided a dual remedy for our dual sin problem- the Blood and the Cross. The Blood deals with what we have done, whereas the Cross deals with what we are. The Blood disposes of our sins, while the Cross strikes at the root of our capacity for sin.

We got our sinful nature because of being born through Adam. What comes in by birth, goes out by death. When Jesus died on the cross, we died along with Him. This is not biblical theory, it is a FACT.

God placed us in Christ and we died with Christ on the cross. Our old sin nature was crucified along with Him. And with His resurrection, we are made a new creation.

When we choose to be baptized, it is us attesting in the physical realm to the fact that we died and were buried in Christ. Baptism is our way of telling God we believe that we died and are risen with His son. It is why we immerse into the water to show that we understand that in God’s sight we have already died in Jesus and been buried.

For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience, the many will be made righteous.
Romans 5:19

What does the above passage say? Are we made righteous by our obedience or by Christ’s obedience?

If through Adam we received Adam’s sinfulness; in Christ, we receive Christ’s righteousness. While being born of Adam, we didn’t need to make up our minds to lose our temper. We would lose our temper easily. Similarly, while under Christ through grace, righteousness becomes ours without our efforts just by an act of faith.

The resurrection of Christ not only gave us a new life but also brought about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, who is our helper, teacher, and guide. Now note, just like God made us righteous because of Christ’s death on the cross, similarly the Holy Spirit was poured out because the Lord Jesus was resurrected. We receive the Holy Spirit, not because of any of our works, but only because Lord Jesus died for us and has been resurrected.

A lot of people worry if they are worthy enough or are doing things right to please God, so He might outpour His Spirit on them. Let me reassert this, we are given the Holy Spirit not by our doing anything, but by placing our trust in what the Lord has already accomplished for us on the cross.

Unwrap Your Gift

Just like during the Passover in Egypt, the angel of death passed over the houses of Israelites just by seeing their doors marked by the blood of the lamb, God no longer sees our sins but Christ’s Holy blood when he looks at us. The angel of death didn’t pass over the Israelites based on their good or bad deeds. It simply looked at the blood of the lamb. The same is true for us today where God is satisfied by looking at the blood of His Son covering us. The blood of Jesus protects.

God sent His own Son to be the permanent solution to all our problems.

When Jesus died at the cross, all our past, present, and future sins, along with its repercussions like sickness, poverty, etc were transferred to Him and He paid the price for our wrongdoings. That’s why Jesus proclaimed “It is finished” at the cross before giving up His spirit.

Satan uses the law to showcase God as a demanding taskmaster, eager to punish anyone who dares to violate His commands. The consequence of this is that many dread God and are driven away from Him. Another outcome is that many are struggling to keep the law to win God’s approval and are failing miserably.

Friends, salvation is not found in a barter or business transaction between humans and God, where we do something for God and He in return, fulfills our desires. Salvation is found in a personal relationship with God which we enter into by placing our trust in Jesus.

Jesus fulfilled the law for us. He washed and covered us with His sinless blood so we can enjoy the benefits of grace.

When we start believing that we can receive God’s grace by our good deeds, it’s our pride at work, blinding us from our weaknesses and need for Christ. When we boast in our works, we nullify Christ’s sacrifice because if we can be perfect on our own, then Christ died in vain.

Abide in me, and I in you
John 15:4

God wants us to abide in Him. We abide in Christ by relying on Him. Resting in Him is the only ‘work’ we need to do. Yes, even resting is a task for us because we humans are often over-anxious about what we can do to better ourselves and please God. God wants us to rely on Him and completely surrender so He can bring to fruition His promise that “sin shall not have dominion over you” (Rom. 6:14).

Friends, put your minds to rest and dwell in Christ’s perfect love. Don’t let wrong teachings fool you into thinking that God’s grace is a performance-based gift. Unwrap the present He died to give you without guilt. Enjoy His gift of unconditional love and drawing from it, you will rise in every area of your life. Amen.