34. The Gospel of Grace

Grace is the most powerful thing in existence and the gospel is the most grace saturated “event” in history past or to come. This leads to the conclusion that the gospel is the most powerful thing ever. A perfect God being born a man to live among men, living a sinless life against all the odds we face, submitting to a horrific death at the hands of the men He came to love, and finally rising from the dead so that we might have life.

Still, I haven’t touched the surface of how amazing the gospel is. It’s the ultimate love story and superhero story combined! In the past year, I’ve read/ am reading two books on the gospel. ‘A Gospel Primer for Christians‘ by Milton Vincent goes into great detail on how meditating on the gospel daily can completely change our lives. ‘Gospel‘ by JD Greear is not as concentrated (or small for that matter) with truth, but still explains how the gospel allows grace to win over religion.

As sinners, we deserve death. It’s just that simple.

Holy God + sin ≠ existence in the same universe (and beyond!)

BUT, Jesus died our deserved death. Anytime God looks at us, He sees Jesus’ perfection, which means we can live in that identity of perfection. This is the grace of the gospel. Starting to see why it’s the most powerful thing ever?

As with any other type of grace though, there is an expected a response. Unlike other types of grace,  our response to this one is literally life or death. To accept this gift of grace, we enter another realm (and family); we are given eternal life and adopted as children of God.

The first response would be to accept the free gift because we know we desperately need it and cannot earn it with even our best effort. This step makes God your Lord and Father, Jesus your perfection and advocate, and the Holy Spirit your helper and seal (of salvation).

Reflecting upon the incredible work of the gospel is the key to living victoriously in this new-found identity and future eternal life. This is the second response.

The gospel of grace extends to, and transforms, every aspect of life. But only if we make the very serious, life-changing decision to respond by submission once, and then every single day.

I’ll leave you with a beautiful section from ‘A Gospel Primer for Christians‘:

Outside of heaven, the power of God in its highest density is found inside the gospel. This must be so, for the Bible twice describes the gospel as “the power of God.” Nothing else in all of Scripture is ever described in this way, except for the Person of Jesus Christ. Such a description indicates that the gospel is not only powerful, but that it is the ultimate entity in which God’s power resides and does its greatest work.

The gospel is the greatest gift of grace we are offered so our response holds the greatest weight. We can either ignore the gift and be given death as we deserve, or receive the gift and live a new life.