“For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.” -Romans 5:17.
We gaze into an eternal fog when we first believe. We know with certainty we are a new person but without understanding the mystery of being in Christ or Jesus being in us. The fog thins as we begin to experience God’s love and glory!
Grace is God’s process of revealing our special love relationship of being in Christ
Jesus! God is love and His agape love grows through our active relationship in Him! Faith is appropriating or consuming His love. When we are consuming His loving grace our faith grows into His fulness. Grace is a relationship conditioned upon our
responses to God’s expressions of agape love.
Grace is an unseen truth acting in the believer’s life according to God’s purpose and our need. This truth, sourced in an invisible eternal existence of God’s glory, flows out from our eternal Father independent of human appeal. Our temporal perspective distorts the substance of grace and its true meaning. Grace operates within the intimacy of agape love, guiding us into a glory created within each person who is in Christ Jesus. A believer inhales grace with every breath he breathes.
God’s physical creation is an expression of God’s agape love.
In some ways the subject of grace directs us to the climax of our earthly salvation; glo-rification is a believer’s destiny in God’s creation! We were made in God’s image and we will be restored into a fuller fullness of His glory when our body is glorified in His presence. This is what father Adam removed from us but what our second Adam,
Jesus, restored … and so much more … through redemption. He will glorify us but the power of our salvation also results in a holy calling within His grace!
The above Romans 5:17 verse reveals our reign in Life with God’s free gift of
righteousness and an abundance of grace through Christ Jesus. This rests upon our justification and glorification as we have in Romans 8:30. We move from being justi-fied, in Romans 5, to no condemnation in Romans 8 where our Spiritual person in Christ is revealed; a believer reigns in Life even while suffering! A believer produces the aroma of Jesus Christ! We are being conformed to the image of Jesus!
The Law of the Spirit of Life is operating as the principle in our glorious salvation; it is Life giving into our meager human flesh. The Law of the Spirit sanctions His image to be glorified in us. It is providing gospel structure within us while giving light to our earthly pathway. God enables us to experience the beauty of Christ while enabling fel-lowship with our Father God through our Lord Jesus. But this is so much more than was provided through Adam; it is a Love gift transcending imagination into unseen eternity. God’s love is shed into our heart, flooding our awareness of Himself. By faith and grace, we may now wade into His love while still in our flesh!
A miracle of re-birth has occurred giving us a Spiritual Father in heaven. We are both (1) children of God as well as (2) legal sons and daughters participating in God’s family through Jesus. This birth from above provides us with Spiritual senses to commune and fellowship with our faithful Lord and Savior. The Holy Spirit continues working, re-vealing Christ in us, sealing us complete in Jesus.
The purpose of created life was and is the Glory of God displayed and enjoyed! We now turn to grasping this amazing infinite grace because through it, God’s grace begins flowing into our Life proffering His glory. God’s glory is our missing part. Our intimate connection to our Father God comes through Jesus’ sacrificial death gifting into us His own Life. His life source is like a spring of eternal water flowing into our soul. Only by drinking this, His living water, can we become whom we are intended to be!
Jesus’ coming into human flesh is an expression of God’s agape love.
Our sin was not God’s choice. He is pure, just and righteous as well as Loving. Through Adam, we introduced sin into His holy, righteous equation and we destroyed our standing for fellowship. We were created in the image of God to reflect and enjoy God’s glory but we lost our original identity through sin. While condemnation is a righteous judgment, we also lost our glory with Him and the joy of being who we are intended to be! Living life short of God’s glory is our dreadful and grievous conse-quence.
Humanity lost God’s glory because of sin. But in Christ, we are created new again, a
second time, in the righteousness of God and in His Holy Spirit. This is more than what we lost through the first Adam. This is NOT the part of the gospel we most often hear. Our focus typically is the sin question and not our loss of God’s fellowship. Humanity, through sin, exchanged the glory of God for images of things! It is God’s glory we fall short of and it is His glory we receive thru the Law of the Spirit of Life by way of grace and faith.
Before we were born again in Christ and created as “Sons of God,” we developed a personal culture grounded in a “world view” of life. In our natural circumstances, we do what it takes to be accepted by others. Loving self is an approved avocation neces-sary to protect and secure our human image and success. We learn to defend our-selves and protect our reputation. We compete for the things important to physical life by feeding our wants and cultivating our desires. We mold our own personal culture as we cultivate desires with real, actual choices. We define our reality out of our personal circumstances, so that, our personal choices gratify our wants, desires and
security.
These human things define us and are established in our soul. They become rooted in our heart, grounded in our mind becoming the prejudices we choose to serve in a sub-conscious way within our natural physical habitat.
When we are created new in Christ Jesus, we begin changing these desires and choic-es. The evangelical church community adopts Biblical principles creating a different “world view,” a “Christian world view!” If we adopt this Christian world view” by
modifying our personal choices, we begin a new journey within a body of believers but our deep personal sin culture will still remain essentially intact. We fit ourselves into a new “Body Life” commitment but what about Spiritual purity? We are just like the Christians in Corinth; Paul wrote letters of correction to them. They were babes in Christ, drinking milk from the word but not drinking the living water inside of them; they were not eating the meat of the word.
Moving from milk to meat is what we are called to do. We are to give up our
“Christian world view” and accept God’s eternal Biblical view. We are to see and know ourselves within God’s personal relationship as Father God. We are now both children of God and “Sons of God” but if our deep personal sin culture still remains
intact because we are not eating at His table, we will NOT grow in grace and Spiritual knowledge!
When we are created new our identity changes because God births us into a Spiritual Creation. We have been removed out from the control of our personal culture in the flesh. Our new identity possesses a new Life source bubbling up within us from Life in the Spirit of God. God’s grace culture is now operational in our life; our Spirit is unit-ed in Christ through the Holy Spirit of God. We have resurrection power in the Holy Spirit replacing our personal culture with God’s grace culture.
God’s gift of Spiritual Life reveals God’s glory to others around us expressing God’s agape love in us.
Walking in the light of Jesus, eating His bread and drinking His cup, is a life long jour-ney. Much like the disciples who had hardened hearts, we too have wills conditioned to respond to the deep schooling we instructed our own soul before our
Regeneration. We disciplined our minds to see things a certain way. These biased views are still hardened in our heart when we are birthed new in Jesus.
An older person typically takes years to once again see and hear truth in Christ like a babe who unconditionally believes in Jesus. This is why it is so difficult for a rich person, with much to give up, not in just material goods, but giving up who they have become, giving up security in their own natural self. But this grace exchange is so much better than the seeming cost!
We must continually expose our personal culture to God’s Truth making ourselves vul-nerable to the righteousness God reveals in His Word. It takes time to begin seeing ourselves from God’s eternal point of view. Some things we put on the back burner! Other things we just ignore because we do not want to deal with them.
God’s character and attributes are eternal. They have no time line and He does not change. We cannot comprehend all God is, in His eternality, but He gives us grace
upon grace so we cognitively begin entering into His divine oneness. We will recognize His eternal nature in our own soul thru conscious understanding as He, in
gentleness and love, nurtures us to be whom He has already made us. He has begun an eternal work in us and will continue until the day of our rapture! But ours is an in-tentional choice we must make. Paul prays this for the Thessalonians:
“Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; He will surely do it.”
The shape of illumining grace is the cross but we must not only accept it, but be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, we need being filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ.
A price was paid for our sin judgment. God chose to make a sacrifice in human death, releasing grace into human flesh through His resurrection power. Grace is our portal into God’s righteous power and new Life. If we do not consume His love to us, His grace is limited by our consummation of it!
Grace is an organic Spiritual cocktail of divine qualities manifesting God’s power and wisdom. It becomes ours by drinking and washing in the bubbling water of Life within us. Our indwelling Holy Spirit uses the water of the Word to nurture into us a new Life.
Thru disciplined exposure of divine provisioning, the Word penetrates our personal cul-ture through our responsive choices. But we must engage our relationship with the Father thru Jesus with the agape love He provides. It is a snub to Him not to give Him the love He is giving to us! How can we, His children, not respond, in kind, to His abso-lute agape love!
We received not only redemption through Jesus’ death but the ultimate consummate gift, the resurrected living Jesus with all His divine resurrection power and wisdom. We are called to a disciplined walk in His complete, perfect Life. Yet, it is not us, but Christ in us, performing His work of discipline, instruction and loving us. This is the essence of His grace. It begins with God; it grows in us by faith; we become mature in Him and are able to participate thru His divine purposes and plan. Grace is sourced in God Himself producing a relationship glorifying Himself in us and also us in Him.
Grace begins in God’s own heart. Love permeates grace giving it its fragrance. It has no dimension to be sized, cut or packaged. Agape love comes into us from outside our boundaries. Agape love produces grace itself, eluding our finiteness until, by grace, we are drawn into its Light. Grace flows out of eternity itself penetrating our finite under-standing while containing boundless infinities. It is a quality of Life growing into us; it is a knowing surpassing our understanding but producing eternal confidence and faith. Grace begins by God growing into us a relationship wherein our human soul receives the vigor of divine truth and communion into His triune being.
God’s gift of the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus and is an expression of God’s agape love.
For many believers, grace is just the act of becoming a “born again” person receiving forgiveness of sin. This, of course, is true but the gospel includes God’s constant
attention to our Spiritual condition, health and maturity. Grace includes everything in our life once we are in Christ. We are adopted into God’s family being birthed Spiritual-ly by God Himself. Our ability to access God by faith is through grace. It was grace that sustained Paul in times of difficulty and weakness. Paul exhorts Timothy to be strong in grace so he could endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ.
Paul writing to Titus:
“For the grace of God has appeared,
bringing salvation for all people,
training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions,
and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age,
waiting for our blessed hope,
the appearing of the glory of the great God and Savior Jesus Christ,
who gave himself for us to redeem us from all lawlessness and
to purify for himself a people for his own possession
who are zealous for good works.”
In these few verses Paul states the qualitative nature of grace. Grace brings salvation to all people, but to those in Christ, grace restores, confirms, strengthens, instructs and purifies. We are God’s personal possession! He disciplines us into His own
truth and holiness through His grace, if we allow Him to do so!
Grace provisions us for fellowship in Christ Jesus. God purchased grace for us!!!
It cost Him the death of Jesus, the Son of Man. But it isn’t just God the Father and
Jesus the Son of God securing grace for us. God the Holy Spirit operates as the divine Sovereign indwelling our new Spiritual being.
Grace is given so we can begin participating in Life, God’s Life. God’s Life is a grace cul-ture flowing out of eternal values. God’s agape love exceeds our soul’s capacity so He begins to reshape our “Christian world view” into His Eternal View. He has re-birthed us so we can understand His divine person. He created us for His own enjoyment. He is glorified in us by our participation in His Life. It is not so much about us; it is much more about Him, about His glory; it is a collaborative communion into Him thru His grace.
God’s Spiritual Life created in us is an expression of God’s agape love.
The purpose of grace is our holiness. We are made righteous when we are created new in Christ Jesus but holiness is a totally separate issue! Holiness is what we do with His righteousness … and what we do with our righteousness! Christ is our Rock of righteousness but our holiness is what we build upon THE Rock! This is what Gala-tians 2:20 is all about!
“I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ in who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.” -Galatians 2:20.
“… put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in
true righteousness and holiness.” -Ephesians 4:24.
Holiness is also translated sanctification, that is, being separated into God. The things of the world and the things of God are exact opposites. When we accept God’s love gift of eternal life, we are to turn away from the worldliness of our earthly culture and put on the character of holiness and purity in Christ Jesus.
Grasping grace is choosing holiness through deliberate daily choices glorifying the gift of Life we now possess in Christ Jesus. Grasping grace is growing in the glory of God, so that, we radiate His presence as we walk in His sandals. This is our calling since we have accepted His gift of Life. We are stewards of God’s grace
“To Him belong glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen!” -2Peter 411b.