Since the start of the new year, we have explored different ways in which God has demonstrated His great love for us. In the seven articles I’ve posted since then, we have seen how…
- He showed us how much He loves us on the cross.
- He has forgiven all our debt.
- He has chosen not to remember our sins anymore.
- He has replaced our old, dead spirit with a new heart and a new spirit.
- He has filled our new spirit with Christ through the indwelling of his Holy Spirit.
- He helps us grow and mature through the Holy Spirit’s leading.
- He guarantees that we will be His children forever.
What amazing love! And this is only scratching the surface. God’s love for us is inexhaustible and is closely linked to His grace. In fact, I would say that God’s love and grace are inseparable; you can’t have one without the other. When you see how important it is to be loved by Him, you can also see how essential His grace is. And that is what this blog is dedicated to – revealing God’s essential grace.
So what makes God’s grace so essential for life? That’s sort of like asking what makes breathing so vital. Love is to grace what air is to breathing. Without the first, there is no point to the second. Without the first, there would be no life at all.
As I described a couple months ago, grace is God’s willingness to give us something indescribably valuable that we did not earn or deserve. We did nothing to earn or deserve His love, but He loves us anyway. And as we will see, we would have no life at all apart from His love.
That was exactly Paul’s point as he wrote to the Ephesians about God’s grace. Notice how essential God’s grace is. “As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” (Ephesians 2:1-5)
There is a lot to absorb in that passage, so let’s start where Paul started. The first thing to notice was our spiritual condition without Christ. We “were dead in our transgressions and sins.” That’s right – dead! Obviously, our bodies were alive and so were our souls (that part of us that is described as our mind, will, and emotions). What was dead was our spirit. Without a living spirit, we were people with no eternal hope.
Because of the way we lived, which was in a state of unbelief, Paul further stated that “we were by nature deserving of wrath.” If you’ve ever wondered what we had earned or deserved, this was it. We deserved wrath.
But that’s where God’s grace came in. We didn’t get what we deserved. Instead, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ.” As Paul points out just a few verses later (v. 8-9), this occurred at the moment in which when we believed in Jesus.
If we were such rotten sinners deserving of wrath, why would God make us alive with Christ? Why wouldn’t He just let us lie in the bed we ourselves had made? The answer shines brilliantly in Paul’s words. It is the first light in a passage that is otherwise filled with darkness up to this point. The reason God made us alive is “because of His great love for us.” That’s it. Plain and simple. No other reason beyond that.
Now this is where God’s love and grace acted in concert. Because He loved us, because He longed for us to know His love, He offered us an eternal hope through His grace. In fact, it is a hope that He has offered to all mankind. That hope is the gift of life through Jesus Christ. All that there was for us was to accept that gift in faith. So in the final analysis, when it came to our salvation, it was God’s grace and only His grace that made it possible. As Paul so succinctly stated, “it is by grace you have been saved.”
That’s how essential His grace is. If God were not full of love and grace, we would still be spiritually dead. There was not a single thing we could have done to change our circumstances. God knew that, so He made it all possible through Christ. Not only did He make it possible, He even offered it to us freely and easily. It’s not something we can work for. It’s not something we can earn. It’s something that God, because He is love and because His grace flows from that love, offers to all willingly. So like the father declared of his prodigal son in Jesus’ famous parable, our Father also declares of those who believe – “For this son of mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” (Luke 15:24)
Essential Grace 