Are you saved? Do you know how you are saved? Do you know who saved you? Have you accepted God’s grace? Do you understand what His grace is? Will you accept His grace?
We see little grace from people we encounter, though some show more grace than others. If there is one good thing that has come from the COVID-19 pandemic, it is that more people are showing grace to others. Grace is a gift. Grace is forgiving a debt. Grace is giving to someone else without expectation of being repaid.
This is what God does for us. He freely gives us salvation. There is something we must do, as with any gift, we must accept it. Ideally, we accept this free gift humbly and with thankfulness. Ideally, we will be grateful enough to work on His behalf.
Let’s look at it from a human perspective. If a friend, parent, or sibling give you a gift for no reason, would you be looking for opportunities to do something for them? I believe most of us would. We will either look to give them a gift at some point in the future or we will look to do something for them. You see, our time is a gift as well. So, doing something for someone else, giving up our time, is also a gift or grace.
Paul is telling the Ephesians in the first 10 verses of chapter 2 about this free gift of salvation. He is emphasizing our salvation is a gift from God. Not only that, but he says that God has already raised us up and seated us with Him in heaven. That’s right, we are seated with Jesus in heaven, even as we live here on this earth. How amazing is that?!
Paul is emphasizing John 3:16, which says that God loved us so much He gave His Son. God has a love for us that we cannot fully comprehend. His love gushes over us like a teenage girl gushing over a movie star and is sacrificial to the point of giving His Son as a sacrifice on the ultimate altar to remove all our sins.
God’s love is demonstrated in His grace that saves us. He sees our wrongdoings and still gives us the ultimate gift of being with Him for eternity. How can we experience such an awesome love and not be grateful? How can we not want to return some small portion of God’s love to Him? How can we not work on His behalf to show this same love to others?
I pray we all feel the love of God. I pray each one of us accept His wonderful gift of salvation. I pray we show His grace to those around us. Experience God’s love. Accept God’s wonderful grace. Know that He provides salvation for you. God is awesome!
Ephesians 2:6-7 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.
Marty Pressey 