We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.

 

Thursday, July 6, 2023


Psalm 18:1-31

1 Samuel 23:19-24:7

Acts 15:1-11


Observance: John Fisher, bishop, and Thomas More, martyrs (d. 1535)


We believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus.


When I was first given a scrap of leadership working in the fast food industry, the store manager would take photos of all the places I had neglected to clean during the previous night’s closing shift. He would sit me down and go through them all with me, ramming home the lesson that the standard for management class is on a level never imagined as an entry-level fry cook. From a cut-throat industry viewpoint, it worked, because despite our unenviable store location, we were consistently the highest-performing store in the state.


Imagine if God worked like that. Imagine if every time we sinned we had to painstakingly go over every single little offence as a matter of necessity; that the only way we could be made spiritually pure would be through endless criticism.


Thank God that Peter stood up in that council in Jerusalem and reminded everyone that God does not, in fact, beat us over the head with the Law every time we want to go to Him and say hello. He was not the first in the Bible to understand this, and his argument in favour of the grace of the Lord Jesus runs throughout the rest of inspired scripture.


Grace is something we can think about forever and never fully comprehend. Perhaps the popular idiom that “there is no such thing as a free lunch” has damaged our spiritual mind in this regard. But even so, the fact that God loves us so much that we would be given perfection in Jesus through grace – by definition a free gift – is the crown jewel of God’s glory. God giving away the perfect love of God for free, to those who would take it. Even better is that grace has power. God’s grace in saving us is the resurrection power of Jesus, the power of His miracles, the power that speaks creation into existence. Now you and I have that grace, too: through us, God’s kingdom is inevitable.

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