As we established in last week’s article, we can do nothing to earn or deserve our salvation from God. That is why his grace is absolutely essential. As Paul wrote, it is by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ that we have been saved. It has nothing to do with our performance. That should make our hearts leap with joy because it is not up to us; it is a gift from God (Ephesians 2:8-9).
But that is not the only reason why his grace is essential to us. We also need it for everyday life here on earth. Many of us carry around a weight we were never meant to carry – a weight called guilt and shame. It’s a weight that can definitely load us down and prevent us from growing and drawing near to our Father.
Take Adam and Eve for example. At the very moment that they ate the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they felt guilt for doing what God warned them not to do and shame over their nakedness. As a result, they hid from God. They suddenly went from an intimate relationship with their Creator to now hiding in fear from him.
That’s one reason why God warned them not to eat from that tree. He knew what the result would be and the loss of intimacy between humanity and God has been an extremely heavy weight to carry. God did not create us to carry that weight.
And yet we continue to carry it to this very day. Even some Christians do. We sometimes struggle to believe that God accepts and loves us unconditionally, particularly when we live with a religious, legalistic mindset. When we live with the expectation that God will only love and accept us if we are good enough or obedient enough, the irony is that it will never be enough. Living a life based on performance, which is what a religious, legalistic life is, always results in us feeling like we don’t measure up. No matter how hard we try, we can never be good enough to earn God’s approval. That’s why we feel guilt and shame whenever we mess up, break one of his commandments, and come up short. Like Adam and Eve, we are convinced that a perfect, holy God is surely angry with us when we do mess up.
Again, as Paul wrote, we have all sinned and fallen short of God’s glory (Romans 3:23). We often stop reading right there, but that’s not the end of the story. Paul continued by stating, “and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24). When we place our faith in Jesus, we are given the gift of complete forgiveness of all our sins – past, present, and future. That is God’s grace in action. Once we take firm hold of that truth, we find that the guilt and shame that we carry around with us begins to fade away and we can begin to live in that intimate relationship with our Father that he so much desires.
Because God has completely forgiven his children of their sins, we can now live in the knowledge that there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). That removes the weight of guilt and shame, frees us from the fear of judgement, and assures us of his incredible, unlimited love for us. That’s what makes God’s grace essential for our everyday life here and now. Live in that freedom and the joy of God’s essential grace.
