We are saved by God’s Grace

     Paul says in Romans, chapter five, that we are justified by faith (v. 1). Faith means trusting God to love us, because of what he did in Jesus Christ, and entrusting ourselves wholeheartedly to that divine love. Salvation is by grace — we do not deserve God’s favor toward us and we can never earn it. We access this grace by faith, which means that we must always look outside ourselves for our salvation (2 Tim. 1:12).

     We cannot perform the work which results in our salvation, for Jesus has already done that, once for all time. We cannot add to that finished work, or improve on it. We can only trust God to be gracious to us as he promises in Christ. If we picture grace as the room of God’s favor, we may think of faith as the door into that room (Rom. 5:1-2).

     God accepts us because of Christ’s work on our behalf. We enjoy that grace by accepting it as fact, trusting it as sufficient, and throwing ourselves on it in total and eternal abandon, to become servants of righteousness and true holiness in Christ. We do not earn God’s favor. We can not ever please Him enough to be given His blessings. We certainly could never pay for our own sins and be saved. But in Christ God has brought together the justice that is his nature and the weakness that is ours: Christ became a man and took our place.

     God’s grace deals with the weakness of our flesh because salvation does not depend on our weak flesh — Jesus has earned it for us already! It also takes into account God’s holiness, because sin is punished — by the death of God’s sinless Son! And so Paul can say to the Ephesians’ Christians:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast (Eph. 2:8-9).

 

 

 

Can We Overcome Race Hatred And Do What’s Right?

 

 

We truly have come a very long ways in America.  Today we have one party who has chosen for the very first time in history, a Black Man for their Presidential Nominee, and another who has chosen the first woman for it’s vice presidential nominee. Great leaps for mankind as we have reached for a new dimension in governing the free world.

 

What an opportunity there is for the Churches of the World to prove the power of God’s love to change race-hatred into brotherly love?  The question now is, will they do it?  Will the leaders that God has chosen to lead His people begin to preach brotherly love to their followers to show that we all are truly created equally in the kingdom of God, or will they continue to allow the color of a person skin and gender to divide us? 

 

Titus 3:3 reminds us that, “we ourselves were also once foolish, disobedient, deceived, serving various lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful and hating one another.”  We all have fallen short of God’s glory, but as believers we are suppose to treat others the way God in His grace has treated us.  A born again Christian is supposed to be able to put away his hatred, envy and evil thinking of his brother or sister, and love each other as God has loved all of us. 

 

Let’s examine this text for a minute, because it paints a dark picture of the state of our human nature.  What causes such a sad condition?  The answer is “Adam’s fall.”  Think for a moment just how Cain, the first child born of the man God created, shed the blood of his brother Abel.  The first child born on earth came under the power of the devil, who “was a murderer from the beginning, a liar and the father of lies.  (John 8:44)  Because of the evil Satan perpetrated upon Adam and Eve we have allowed that evil to continue to be a part of our lives today. 

 

Humanity’s love of their own people, implanted in their hearts by nature, soon changed to hatred of other peoples.  Love of country became the source of race-hatred and bloodshed.  Note how God has placed the races side by side to see if our Christianity will enable us to overcome race-hatred.  Will we, in the power of Christ’s love, prove that “In this new life, it doesn’t matter if you are a Jew or a Gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised, black or white, barbaric, uncivilized, slave, or free.  Christ is all that matters, and he lives in all of us” (Colossians 3:11)?

 

How wonderful it would be if at this moment in history, we could put away our race hatred and gender bias and do what’s right, love one another as Christ has so loved us, and if our Churches and Church leaders could be an example of Christ’s love for all mankind.