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God's Grace: Absolutely Free! (#1)
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God’s Grace: Absolutely Free!
"Pasteurized, homogenized, standardized, Vitamin A added."
One cow turned to the other and remarked,
"Makes you feel sort of inadequate, doesn’t it?"
This series is for anyone here who has ever felt inadequate!
* Inadequate to please God.
* Inadequate to please others
* Inadequate to face your problems
* Inadequate to change your life.
First, understand this: You are inadequate!!!!! :-) Me, too! We’re all inadequate together!
Second, hear this: That’s why the idea of grace is so powerful. That’s why Jesus Christ is so awesome. Let’s focus in on his grace today...
Here’s my definition of Grace:
Grace:
God’s undeserved kindness to me
God’s enabling power in me
Three things you need to believe about God’s free grace:
1. You can’t possibly earn it.
“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God...” (Ephesians 2:8)
Reader’s Digest recently asked the great fighter Muhammed Ali what his faith meant to him. Ali replied:
"[It] means [a] ticket to heaven. One day we’re all going to die, and God’s going to judge us, [our] good and bad deeds. [If the] bad outweighs the good, you go to hell; if the good outweighs the bad, you go to heaven. [I’m] thinking about the judgment day and how you treat people wherever you go. Help somebody through charity, because when you do, it’s been recorded.
I go to parties, [see] good-looking girls. [I] take a box of matches with me. [I] see a girl I want to flirt with, which is a sin, so I [light] my matches, [touches his finger] oooh, hell hurts worse than this. Buy a box of matches and carry them with you. Put [one] on your finger and see how long you can hold it. Just imagine that’s going to be hell. Hell’s hotter, and for eternity."
Ali is right. Hell is hot. But those who go there do so not because their list of good works is too short. They go there because their belief in themselves is too strong. "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith-- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God--not by works, so that no one can boast." (Ephesians 2:8-9)
Source: SermonCentral Staff. Citation: Face to Face with Muhammad Ali. Interview by Howard Bingham, Reader’s Digest, December 2001.
2. It cost the blood of Jesus Christ.
“...being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24)
“Justified” means to be declared “not guilty.” It’s “just as if I’d” never sinned.
So we are freely declared not guilty by His grace. That sounds good! But look at the last half of the verse: “through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”
“Redemption” means “to buy back.” Jesus Christ paid the price to buy us back when we were slaves to sin.
Comments
September 10, 2006
2. Don Phoebus says...
I see no contradiction in the two. The last illustration shows that Christ died that all might be saved. Even though all might not accept the gift. Even if someone bought you a new car, if you don't accept it or go pick it up, they still paid the price. Christ doesn't wait until we pray the prayer of repentance then run out and jump on the cross, He died once for all.
September 2, 2006
1. James Blowers says...
Your illustrations seem contradictory. The first one(s) emphasize that the gift is not obtained unless it is requested, but the last one (donut) makes the point that the gift is given whether the person accepts it or not. It appears that you're claiming that a person is saved whether they claim the gift or not.
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