For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich.
And of His fullness we have all received, and grace for grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
The concept of Grace borders on the totality of the Person of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ came into the world to save us and to bring us into fellowship with the Father. John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that He gave Jesus Christ, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jesus Christ didn’t just come with grace to save us, He Himself is the grace of God sent to us; He is the embodiment of the grace message. Grace and peace are multiplied unto us, through the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Therefore, grace is all that Jesus is to us in His substitutionary work for us, and all that He is in us to bring us into the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ.
Many have supposed grace for just unmerited favour, or mere forgiveness of sin, or God just winking at the time of ignorance, or God’s mercy given unto us for pardon of sin. But grace is much bigger than all that. Grace is God’s empowerment to live the life of Christ, the natural weakness or frailty notwithstanding. When the apostle Paul was complaining to the Lord about the torn in his flesh in 2 Corinthians 12, the Word tells us that he besought the Lord thrice that it might depart from him, but the Lord told him that His strength is made perfect in his weakness, and that when he is weak then he is strong. Here, the grace of God is referred to as strength. Evidently, grace offers us far much more than forgiveness. Grace does not only forgive us, but also recreates us and build us up into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Beloved, begin to see grace as God’s ability at work in you because of Jesus’ substitutionary work, by the power of the Spirit, changing you from glory to glory until you come to maturity in all that pertains to Jesus Christ in His fulness. This helps you to not make excuses for not growing up spiritually, or just staying in the zone of forgiveness of sin for sinning again and again, but rather trust God to work in you by His grace to live like Jesus Christ lived, in all points, without sin. This is the true biblical balance to the message of grace. Yes, we have forgiveness in Christ! And much more, an irreversibly transformed life by grace unto the praise and glory of God. Hallelujah!
My Solid Front (Confession):
In the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ, I declare that the grace of God is working in, through and upon me, bringing me into the fullness of all of God’s plan for me. I am enabled by grace to fulfill my God-ordained destiny. Amen.
Further Meditation: 2 Corinthians 12:9; Philippians 2:12-13.