When we think of giving someone grace, it usually refers to us letting something slide, like allowing that person to walk away from whatever they owe us with a clean slate. One of the biggest things God does for us is offers us his grace for our entire lives.
When we accepted Jesus as our Savior, we were washed clean of all our sins. Jesus took every sin we would ever commit to the cross with him. He traded his righteousness for our unrighteousness. God extended us his grace by sending Jesus to take that on for us. From the moment we put our trust in Jesus, our slate is wiped clean.
However, we can’t talk about grace without also talking about mercy, because the two go hand in hand. Grace is God giving us what we don’t deserve, and mercy is God not giving us what we do deserve. By God’s grace we no longer have our sins count against us because of what Christ did, and by God’s mercy we now have eternal life through Christ and we have our clean slate. God did this for us out of his great love for us, and it is one of his greatest gifts. It is not something we could have ever earned ourselves. “God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God” (Ephesians 2:8).
Grace is what saves us. We would never be able to do anything to earn or deserve that grace. “And since it is through God’s kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God’s grace would not be what it really is - free and undeserved” (Romans 11:6). We were supposed to suffer the penalty of our sin. We were supposed to pay for all the things we have done, and suffer the consequences of our actions. “Yet God, in his grace, freely makes us right in his sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when he freed us from the penalty of our sins” (Romans 3:24).
God didn’t want us to have to suffer for the things we have done. He knew that we were helpless to save ourselves, and he knew that he wanted to do something to save us and to restore his relationship with us. Grace flows from the cross of Christ. It is so beautiful that God, in his goodness and mercy, extended us a gift so great, that we could never adequately thank him for it. However, he tells us that the best way to thank him is to completely surrender our lives to him and live the way he has called us to live. In light of what grace does for you, how could you not live in response to that?
Have you accepted his gift of grace today? If you have, are you living in light of this grace everyday? If not, what are you waiting for?
“So let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it most” (Hebrews 4:16)
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