We emphasize grace because grace is the emphasis of the New Testament. In fact, the word grace is used 128 times—it is the most emphasized word in the New Testament. The Apostle Paul used the word grace 94 times in his writings.
Like book ends Paul begins his epistles with “Grace and peace with you all” and ends his epistles with the same pattern everywhere from Romans to Philemon with “the grace of the Lord be with you or your spirit” For me it is like two book ends that hold us all the books (believers) together and no one can fall out of place. Believers are rubbing shoulders to shoulders but with his grace holding us together into one. Here we all stand and not fall away.
We need to preach is radical grace because if try to balance grace we will nullify grace. If we try to balance grace it will hinder grace in our lives. Grace cannot be balance even with obedience. This is not to do away with obedience. I believe obedience comes only with the power of grace.
Many people believe obedience must come first. I tell you, you are pushing the cart without the horse. The horse must pull the cart of goods (blessings). So Grace gives you the strength to obey God. Grace does not replace obedience but grace empowers obedience. So that’s our obedience is the obedience of faith from God. This blessings can only flow through grace only.
We emphasize grace not to make light of sin. Sin is sin and God is not soft on sin. His wrath on sin is demonstrated in the Old Testament with his wrath. This shows the severity of his actions. God came hard on sin. He is fire and brimstone God. God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah in a few seconds. So we don’t get easy grace. We don’t get cheap grace or soft grace. We get severe grace. We get a grace from God that sent Jesus to die on the bloody cross with so much pain with we could not even bear. Sin was so severe that is why it took such tremendous gracious grace to quench it. God for us is a good loving God and for all mankind.
People stress obedience over grace and say we think too lightly of sin; however, I believe the exact opposite. Those who stress obedience over grace do not understand how deadly sin is. We are saying that sin is a monster that we do not have any ability to conquer in ourselves, although we hate it—we want sin out of our lives, and the only way to get it out is to rely on grace. That is why we have to emphasize grace.
Grace is not God overlooking sin but Grace is God killing sin as someone says. When God saved us, judicially He killed our sin; in fact, judicially He killed us (our old man). The Lord God can now look at me as perfect because of God imputed righteousness on me and He had already paid the death penalty for my sin. That is the grace that saved me, the grace that sustains me and blessed me. Let the layer of grace comes upon us – grace upon grace like Jesus.
The grace that saved me was God judicially killing off every bit of sin at the Cross.
That is the grace we proclaim! Amen! May the grace of God be with you all in your spirit. Why spirit – because it must be embedded in our spirit to manifest the power of His works, love and blessings in our lives. By Sunny
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