Effect and Response to Grace

I have some very bad news for all of us. Most of us have probably heard it before. Every time we go to church we admit to it. It is that we are all sinners and deserve nothing but God’s wrath for the numerous sins we commit daily and the sinful nature we were born into which has been passed down through the centuries from the instant Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit. But thanks be to God that our story does not end there. Let us see what the Apostle Paul has to tell us about the rest of the story: Read 1 Corinthians 15:3-10.

What Paul has to tell us is what he referred to as something that is “of first importance.” What is so important is the great Gospel message that Paul dedicated the rest of his life to spreading and sharing and that he shares with us right now in his first letter to the people of Corinth. Listen again to what Paul shares with us: “that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…” Here we are reminded that Christ sacrificed his life for our sins. The key word in that statement is “our” sins. He did it for us because we would not be able to fulfill the law like he did, our sinful nature would not permit that. Christ conquered death and the grave, rising on the third day to appear, as recounted by Paul, to Peter, the rest of the Twelve, and then to more than five hundred people and not including the others Paul didn’t mention. We believe and have faith in that resurrection and we, like the people of Corinth, have never seen Jesus. Jesus told Thomas after he appeared to the disciples, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed” (John 20:29). We are those blessed people. We are blessed with eternal life through the sacrifice of Christ and the faith in Christ’s death and resurrection instilled in us by the Holy Spirit.

Because Christ has covered every multitude of sins, we live in a state of grace, undeserved and yet unconditional grace. Paul mentions that it is because of that grace that he is the apostle that he is and he was able to stand in the face of numerous persecutions knowing that the grace of God was upon him. Paul says he does not even deserve to be called an apostle because of the persecution he did of the first believers as Saul. But we do not deserve the grace, mercy, love, and salvation that has been lavished upon us freely either. We have received it though by grace through faith in Christ. By the grace of God we are people of God, we are his children. He is our Good Shepherd, our Almighty Father, and Wonderful Counselor.

The grace of God enables to us to do great things. It is so easy for us to stop our story at our sin and dwell on that as though we can do something about it. However, there is nothing we can do about our sins because they have already been dealt with. The effect of sin left us dead and without hope but the effect of grace is love, hope, forgiveness, holiness in God’s sight, and salvation. We live each day in the grace of God.

It can be too easy for us to think that because of the effect of grace, especially forgiveness and salvation, we can think to ourselves sometimes, “Oh it doesn’t matter if I sin, God will forgive me anyway, after all, that is what grace is all about.” Part of that is true, but it does matter if we sin even though we are still forgiven. We need to now ask ourselves what is our response to the effect of grace because the faith we’ve been given in Christ Jesus? Just because God made us holy does not mean we don’t need to turn a cold shoulder to sin, rather, because God made us holy we need to turn a cold shoulder to sin. We could talk for hours of all the things God’s grace enabled Paul to do, in the same way it enables us to do good works as our response to the grace already given to us.