Grace, the love of Jesus Christ

"Grace, the love of Jesus Christ" - (Hebrews 4:16) Grace is a gift from our Heavenly Father bestowed through His Son, Jesus Christ. The word grace, as used in Scripture, refers primarily to enabling power (means to do something, authority, ability) and spiritual healing, offered through the mercy and love of Jesus Christ. God's gift of His life infused into us (endowing someone, quality, an idea, a feeling) into our souls by the Holy Spirit to heal it of sin and sanctify it. Sanctifying grace makes us pleasing to God.

I. Spiritual healing offered through the mercy and love of Jesus.

A. Jesus was sent to the cross and died to save us from our sins without deserving it.

1. He did so through the gift of sacrificial love (offering, martyrdom).

2. The grace-filled "invitation" to approach the throne of grace with confidence.

3. Our confidence, I believe, is based on the knowledge that He died to save us and that He "lives to keep us."

4. We have the certainty (truth) of a cordial welcome because He has invited us to come.

5. The Old Testament (OT) could not come close to Him.

6. Only the high priest and only one day a year.

7. You can come into His presence at any time of the day or night and obtain mercy and find grace for timely help.

8. His "mercy" covers the things we shouldn't have done and "His grace" empowers us to do what we should, but what we don't have the capacity for.

9. To obtain mercy and find grace in crucial moments, perhaps where we deserve nothing; just when and where I need it.

10. You are attacked by a temptation.

11. At the time of the assault, you look to Him and there is the grace to help at the crucial moment.

12. You do not postpone your request until sunset prayer time.

13. Out there in the street, when you have the flame of temptation before you, turn to Christ crying out for help and grace will be there at the crucial moment.

14. (Ephesians 2:4-5; 8-9) "By grace are ye saved."

15. For God these words constitute (to form, to compose) one of the most significant, they indicate that a prodigious change has taken place; for His great love; a change from the doom and despair of the valley of death to the unspeakable (incalculable, indescribable) delights of the kingdom of the Son of God's love.

16. The author of the change is God Himself.

17. No one else, you or me, no one else could have done it; no one else would have "wanted" to do it.

18. One trait in this Blessed Being is that it is "rich in mercy."

19. Let us be thankful; He shows us mercy by not treating us the way we deserve to be treated (Psalm 103:10).

20. Today, with all the years that have passed, it continues to be an inexhaustible mine of riches.

21. The reason for His intervention (acting, promoting improvement, perfecting) is given in these words: "because of His great love with which He loved us."

22. His love is great because He is its source.

23. It is greater to feel loved by the Mighty Sovereign of the universe, for example, than by a fellow human.

24. God's love is great because of the price He has paid.

25. Love sent the Lord Jesus, the only Son of God, to die for us in the agony of Calvary.

26. (5) God's love is great because of the extreme unworthiness and repulsive (disgusting) condition of the people He love.

27. We are dead for our trespasses and sins.

28. We were enemies of God; we were destitute and in degradation.

29. Despite all this, He loved us.

30. As a result of God's love for us and because of Christ's redemptive work we have been:

(1) made alive together with Christ; (2) raised together with Him; (3) seated with Him.

31. Such expressions describe our spiritual position because of our union with Him.

32. He functioned as our Representative, not only for us, but "as" us.

33. When He died, we also died.

34. When He was buried, we were also buried.

35. When He was crucified, resurrected, and seated in the heavenly places, so were we.

36. All the benefits of His sacrificial work are enjoyed by us because of our bond with Him.

37. To have "life together with Christ" means that converts are now associated with Him in newness (originality) (transformation) of life.

38. The same power that gave Him the resurrection of life has also given it to us.

39. The wonder of it all leads Paul to interrupt the warning of his thought and to exclaim, "By grace are ye saved."

40. He is overwhelmed (stunned) by the unfathomable (which cannot be ascertained, not thoroughly known) favor that God has shown to those who deserved precisely the opposite. This is "grace"!

41. Mercy means that we do not receive the punishment we deserve.

42. Grace means that we receive salvation that we do not deserve.

43. We receive it as a gift; not like something we won.

44. And it comes to us from the One who was under no obligation to give it.

45. A.T. Pierson: It is a voluntary exercise of love to which He is not obligated. What constitutes (creates, forms, gathers) "the glory of grace" is that it is a free and independent exercise of God's love for miserable (little courage, misery, unhappy) sinners. Amen