Paul writes in his second letter to the church at Corinth, “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”<\/p>\n
I awoke to a song on the radio about grace. Mmm…. Grace.<\/p>\n
My thoughts turned to what is commonly known by theologians (pardon the pun) as common<\/em> grace, as well as, special<\/em> grace.<\/p>\n Both kinds of grace are mediated through Jesus.<\/strong><\/p>\n John 1:3 explains, “All things were made through Him, and without Him was not any thing made that was made.” In other words, everything that exists is because it was created and made by Jesus. Romans 11:36 conveys this fact, “For from Him (Jesus) and through Him (Jesus) and to Him (Jesus) are all things. To Him (Jesus) be glory forever. Amen.”<\/p>\n Do you realize, you are alive this very moment by the power of Jesus? Hebrews 1:3 tells us, “He (Jesus) is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of his power.”<\/p>\n This is common to all of creation. All of creation is upheld by the word of his power!<\/p>\n Mmm…. Grace!<\/p>\n Now what is so special about special grace? Ephesians 2:8-9 tells us, “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.”<\/p>\n It is this special grace that saves us. Paul continues in Ephesians, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.”<\/p>\n Mmm… Grace!<\/p>\n It is grace in Jesus that creates us. It is grace in Jesus that re-creates us through faith in Him. This is nothing of our own doing.<\/p>\n We have nothing to do with our first birth, and we have nothing to do with our second birth. It is all of grace.<\/p>\n And those good works we so want to do for God? Jesus is fruiting<\/em> through us. In other words, it is the fruit of what Jesus has done on the cross that blooms in our lives (See Galatians 5).<\/p>\n This is good news! This is the Gospel because it is all of Jesus. This is grace<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul writes in his second letter to the church at Corinth, “But He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[58,59],"tags":[162,26,226,263,423],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gospel","category-grace-2","tag-common-grace","tag-gospel","tag-grace","tag-jesus","tag-special-grace"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3hM8I-eH","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.davecruver.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}