By the Grace of God
Though lip service is paid to the gospel of grace, many Christians live as if is only a personal discipline and self-denial that will mold the perfect me–Brennan Manning
If asked “What is Grace” you will get the answer; that grace is given to every man by Christ as a free gift upon His death in atonment(see: 2 peter 2:24) for mans sins.
Many Christians, myself included; while professing that as belief, go about our daily lives as if w must “earn” our way into heaven;this done by obeying the “requirements” laid down by Christ in the Gospels, some of these ”requirements” are as follows:
-
We must be perfect,I.e (living legalistic/strictly) we can never sin again for if we do we risk everything
-
We must take communion regularly (some donomanations believe every Sunday
-
We must be baptised in order to full be accepted in a church.
-
We must obey to the letter everything a religious leader, or church law dictates
Do those “laws” then leave room for grace?
The Grace given by God through Christ asks for and allows that man can acknowledge that we are sinners, Martin Luther put it this way “Sin boldly but belive in Christ more boldly still” Meaning that we cannot escape from sin but since we are saved by grace throught the death of Christ(2 Peter 2:24) we do not need to worry about every little thing.
Dietrich Bonhoffer said: “ when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die“ Christ invited us lay our burdens at his feet, saying that we must leave everythiing behind to follow Him and that we need not worry abouut anything else when we do.
I will be the first to admit that I do not fully understand the Grace of God as I believe that no one is meant to fully understand it. The Grace of God allows me–as it does you–to unashamedly admit that I am a sinner. I get: angery, depressed, I am judgementmental, I lust, I have thought about commiting murder(as a child), and I have swore at God and my fellow man…
That is only a taste of things that I know myself to be guilty of.
By all rights these sins allow that I should die and forfeit enternal life, believe you-me I have don no thing to earn enternal life I DON”T DESERVE IT– by God’s Graceful love I DO HAVE IT
Through the Grace of God and by no fault of our own we can all rest easy that all we have to do is Acknowlege that we are bitter,depressed,tired,”holier then thou” scalawags, bore God (John 3:16). We are counted as loved enough to then recieve the free gift of forgiving GRACE.
See:http://nathanaelsblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/30/summing-up-the-bible/
http://nathanaelsblog.wordpress.com/2008/12/28/what-happened/
http://nathanaelsblog.wordpress.com/2009/04/04/what-happened-to-the-christian-faith-cont/
