By Staff
In the gospel of John, chapter 1, verse 17, the witness of John the Baptist is that "the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." We know about law; it is cause and effect. If we do well, we will be rewarded, but if we do not do well, we suffer consequences. What goes around comes around, and we brace ourselves in a system apart from grace for all the results of a corrupt world system.
There was grace and truth before the advent of Jesus Christ, the Son of God in the flesh. Certainly, God the Father is the author of truth, and we are told in the book of Genesis, chapter 6, verse 8, that "Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD." The grace in Noah's day resulted in only eight people being saved from the ravages of the worldwide flood. If it were not for grace, where would we stand today before Almighty God?
The Holy Scriptures record two occasions when the heavenly beings shouted for joy: the first in the book of Job, chapter 38, verse 7, when the earth was created, and the second in the gospel of Luke, chapter 2, verses 13-14, when Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was made flesh to dwell among men and become the Savior. We should shout for joy because God has given us life and also because He has made grace available to us through Jesus Christ.
The earthly ministry of Jesus was proclaimed several times: by Simeon who took the Christ child in his arms and declared that salvation had come (Luke 2:29-32), by God the Father when Jesus was baptized (Luke 3:22), by God the Father at the transfiguration (Luke 9:35), and the declaration of Jesus Himself in the synagogue in Nazareth: "The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me, because He has anointed Me to preach the gospel to the poor; He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed; to proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD." This was the dawning of a period dominated by grace! (Luke 4:18-19).
We look around at the rampant evil in our day and wonder why God's judgment does not come. The answer is, "Were it not for grace . . . ." As good as we think we are as we judge others, we live and breathe only by the grace of God.
We must never forget that God does not change. The God who destroyed every living thing, except those people and animals in the ark during the great flood (Genesis 7:23) and rained fire and brimstone on Sodom and Gomorrah because of exceeding sinfulness (Genesis 19:24-25), is the God of today. The only difference is Jesus Christ. As Moses interceded with God (Exodus 32:11-14), so today Jesus Christ intercedes with God for us continually (Hebrews 7:25).
Grace is wrapped up in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel is more than the virgin birth, the sinless life, the death on the cross, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The transaction made by God thus established the way for those who believe in Jesus to spend eternity with God in heaven.
The gospel is also the life of Jesus Christ lived among men. Jesus modeled God's system in a fallen world. His life was radical and revolutionary, and most of us dismiss the earthly life He lived as a necessary interlude before the events around the cross and the tomb, or we simply conclude that He was God and the life He lived does not apply to us. The result is, we add salvation to our bag and never partake of the abundant life He promised (John 10:10).
Jesus went back to heaven, and the Father dispatched the Holy Spirit to minister grace on the earth. That grace is the power of God to sustain us as we live the life of Christ in everyday circumstances. The mark of the Christian is love, which brings security and the capacity to serve at any level. The mark of the world is fear, which produces insecurity, anger, and self-preservation.
Our purpose is to glorify God. We do that by living a life that evidences grace is sustaining us.
God will give believers the grace to live the life of Christ in a fallen world, as we exercise faith.