Grace: More Outlandish Than We've Made It Out To Be

I have read or heard these verses a thousand times, but I confess to have missed just how outrageously generous this proclaims God to be.

How many times God's grace is painted as available to us when we repent, turn from our wicked ways, believe,and follow a new and cleansed lifestyle. But this is not what scripture describes here. Instead, this is "God, who is rich in mercy (an understatement I dare say) made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions!" Another way to read this might be, "while we were still deeply deceived and living out lives of sin like everyone else, God did what only God could do and resurrected our dead spirits through Christ while we were still killing ourselves!

Picture this, we reach out to the "lowly and the lost" and offer them the Gospel story and the promise of something better IF THEY believe and follow-through with what we see as a few simple things —simple to us at least. Then we walk away hoping, even praying, that they reverse a pattern of life that's probably taken years to establish. We rejoice when they do. When they don't, and they usually don't, we often just don't seek them out again or we might even avoid them.

But God's approach is fundamentally different. He asks nothing. He gives everything, and I mean everything! He takes what's old and makes it new. He doesn't even ask, "do you believe?!" He kills the fatted calf (which is Jesus, btw) and throws a party in celebration of your return. Before you even know what to think, you've been draped with a robe, a ring on your finger, and you're being embraced by the one who knows everything you've done to that very moment, but says "welcome home, my child, all is forgiven. Now come follow me."

Do we share the Gospel like this? Like it's really done? Like all we need to do is acknowledge what God has already done for us through Christ? Who we are in Him? What has been done FOR us, not what is expected FROM us. When we look at the world do we see "the saved" and "the lost", or do we see brothers and sisters "actively living in the life of Christ" and other brother and sisters "who don't realize they've been given life?"

Now THAT is good news!

Created 9 months ago