His Grace is Enough
Ephesians 2:1-7 (The Message - MSG) “It wasn’t so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You let the world, which doesn’t know the first thing about living, tell you how to live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It’s a wonder God didn’t lose his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and with an incredible love, He embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ. He did all this on His own, with no help from us! Then He picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our Messiah. Now God has us where He wants us, with all the time in this world and the next to shower grace and kindness upon us in Christ Jesus.”
When I was 12-yr-old, I had a real heart for God. I wanted to be near Him, feeling some kind of inner draw to Him. I knew about Jesus but had no personal relationship with Him as Savior. It was God the Father I was focused on in those days. The place I felt closest to Him was on a hill near my house where I would go almost every day after school. Climbing the hill and sitting there looking at the clouds always made me feel so close to God. It was a place of peace for me. The funny thing is that it was a hill in a cemetery near my house. All around me were indications of death and yet there, on that hill, I felt life.
I am always grateful for those times of closeness with God as a child. What I didn’t understand then but grasp now is the greater revelation of the Father’s heart….that He “embraced us….took our sin-dead lives and made us alive in Christ.” And God didn’t stop there…..He “picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus.” God seated us with Jesus at the Father’s right hand. We get to experience the kingdom realm through and with Christ right here and now! No more just gazing at clouds and longing for the day God would take us up! He already has! He came down, embraced us, and has seated us in a place of godly power and authority with Jesus. And with this re-positioning comes the humble privilege and daily responsibility to be open always to his grace and kindness and to share both with others in this world. The Passion translation (TPT) quotes verse 7 as “Throughout the coming ages we will be the visible display of the infinite, limitless riches of His grace and kindness, which was showered upon us in Jesus Christ.”
What a powerful commissioning the Lord has given us! And not something that we will do from our own power but from our positioning in Christ! We are alive because He is alive! We have kingdom authority, because we are seated with Him! In a world that still has way too much “polluted unbelief,” we get to reflect something far greater….His grace which we carry with us every day. His grace….an all-sufficient grace…. a grace that is for everyone we meet. The kingdom of God is at hand!
Let us pray:
Lord Jesus, we want to embrace this world as You do, with confident hope and the sacrificial love that You showed us. Help us to recognize that You have given us all that we need to minister to others because we are seated with You in heavenly places and empowered by the life we have in You through Your Spirit. We proclaim boldness over our lives in Your Name. Amen.