Friday, November 21, 2008

My Grace is Sufficient

I am still trying to wrap my mind around the whole concept of grace. In 2 Corinthians 12 Paul writes about his thorn in the flesh, how he asked three times for it to be removed. In verse 9 the Lord tells him "My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness."

I know that we are saved by grace. By the definition of grace, meaning "unmerited favor". So in other words because of God's unmerited favor on us we are saved. Because He had favor on us when we were still in sin, Christ came and paid the penalty for us. The Father loved us so much that he showed favor on us, we did not deserve and sent His son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty of death for us. We are saved by turning from our sin and receiving that free gift of grace.

This passage in 2 Corinthians is not talking about grace in the terms of saving; he is talking about living daily in that saving grace. Here is where I had to do much study to learn what that meant. Then find out how to apply this kind of grace to my life. Here's what I came up with. Let me break it down in simple terms for you.

When Christ says "My grace is sufficient for you. My strength is made perfect in weakness.” He means when you were saved through grace (unmerited favor), you were given favor in Gods eyes, and you no longer need to continue to strive or work to be good enough. It is through Christ that we are good enough and when we just accept that and rely on Christ, we will see His power working through us.

I think a lot of Christians accept Jesus as their savior and then work real hard to keep their salvation. They think they have to "perform" with good works. Christ saved us through grace and we do not need to "perform", we only need to "transform" into His image. Our job is to saturate ourselves in the word for the renewing of our minds and yield to the spirit to give us the strength to "transform".

It is in our weakness that we are transformed in the image of Christ because; guess what, we do not have the power to change our hearts. We must ask for the supernatural power of the spirit to transform us, to help us to love, to give us the characters of Christ.

It is in this daily surrender that we begin to learn to "live in grace", the unmerited favor of God. We begin to learn that we can stop striving and trust in Him for all things. He is the creator of all things and His grace is sufficient.

4 comments:

Ordinary Things said...

Great post. This every day "living in grace" is what Christians need to learn the most. Once I understood this, I was healed of the little insecurities that were keeping me from loving others as I should. It is very freeing. We can't give to others what we don't posess. When we are focussed on "performance" its all about us. But when we focus on His grace we can then show that grace to others.

Jason The Bald Guy said...

ahh I love your post!

Doesn't it feel great to be free from expectation! the truth really does make you FREE INDEED!

Robin said...

Oh yes, Daily Surrender, moment by moment at times too; The only way to truely follow Jesus! Oh, how I love Him so!

Anonymous said...

What a good reminder - always needed - that we can't earn God's love or favor. We already have His love and received His favor when we surrendered to Christ. We are reconciled to God through Christ, not ourselves. It's hard, especially for those of us with Type A personalities or an ingrained "Protestant work ethic" to accept that we can have something so wonderful without the power to earn it.