The grace of God maximizes His glory by minimizing our ability to take credit for anything.

God has generously lavished His unmerited favor on a desperately broken and sinful people. In Ephesians chapter 2 Paul details the record of our sin and the consequential effects it had on our standing before God, “…you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked…and were by nature children of wrath” (2:1-3). Before we can understand the extravagant nature of God’s grace we must first understand the devastating situation of our sin that makes His grace necessary. We were by nature rightly condemned in our sin under the pressing and inevitable weight of God’s holy justice. The debilitating effects of sin left us incapacitated to achieve anything on our own and insufficient to claim anything as our own. All was lost in sin, and in desperate need of grace.

At the heart of the Gospel is God’s radical intervention into a lost world through Jesus for the radical redemption of that world. The beauty of the Gospel is magnified in light of man’s helpless need for a savior. Man, utterly broken by sin, is incapable of producing for himself what is necessary for His own salvation. And so the story continues, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved…this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God” (2:4-8). Driven by His love, God freely pardons the guilty sinner by grace alone. He has achieved for us through Jesus what we could never achieve on our own.

God grants with full immunity the gift of grace for our redemption – bringing to life what once was dead and removing forever the looming fate of condemnation (Romans 3:23-24). His work on our behalf is magnified in light of our powerlessness to accomplish anything; His glory is put on display in light of our inability to take credit for what only He could do for us.

The grace of God is not only the substantive agent of our salvation, but the catalyzing means by which our lives are continually sustained in righteousness. We were not saved by grace and then sent out to live a life rooted in our own ability to produce righteous living. No! The grace by which we are saved is the same grace by which we are continually sustained. The power of God which mightily worked on our behalf for our redemption continues to be the source of provision for all things pertaining to life.

God’s grace grants us the assurance of knowing that at all times He is working on our behalf and will provide for our every need. Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare His own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” Paul says that in light of the Gospel, God making provision for our salvation through the giving of Jesus, we can know God by His grace will continually make provision for us in all things. God’s grace guarantees that we will always have what we need when we need it, because He is unceasingly working on our behalf through Jesus.

The essence and beauty of grace is lost if even a portion of it is earned or deserved, and the power of God to fully and sufficiently rescue a destitute people is deemed deficient. It is by grace we have been saved, and it is by grace we are continually sustained. God alone gets all the credit because God alone has freely provided for us what we could have never accomplished on our own.

The grace of God maximizes His glory in the work He has done to accomplish our salvation and the work He is continually doing in sustaining us by His provision. His grace alone demands we claim no credit for what He has done and no ownership over what only He can provide. It calls us to the humble recognition that nothing is deserved and all of life is a gift, and catalyzes within us a passionate heart of worship for the One who has graciously given us all good things in Jesus!

Join Woodlands Point throughout the month of May as we continue our “Sola” Series. This Sunday we will celebrate the truth that the grace of God alone is sufficient for all matters of life and salvation! Location and direction information is HERE.

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Tags: Acts 29, church in the woodlands tx, gospel centered church, grace alone, sola gratia, sola series, the woodlands tx, woodlands point community church

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 11th, 2011 at 11:03 am and is filed under Pastor's Blog.