Grace

Part 1- God’s Grace Transcends Time

2 Timothy 1:8-9

8 Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony of our Lord, nor of me His prisoner, but share with me in the sufferings for the gospel according to the power of God,

9 who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began…..”

Titus 2:11-14

11 For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men, 

12 teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present age,

13 looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ,

14 who gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works.

What is grace?

Grace is an undeserved favor with God. It is something that can never be earned by our own merits. As Titus 2:11 says, this grace is offered (has appeared) to every human on earth, but it has to be accepted. Just because something has appeared to me does not mean I have it. I may have been shown it, but did I respond properly to it? Grace is a free gift, however when we are given a gift, does that gift do us any good if we don’t first accept it? And how do we accept God’s gift of grace? Our birthday gifts do us no good unless we accept them and claim them as ours. We must claim God’s gift of grace through Jesus Christ if we want the blessings found in that grace. We accept God’s grace when we complete God’s plan of salvation. We hear the word, believe that Jesus is God’s son, repent of our sins, confess Jesus’ name before men, and are buried with Christ in baptism and raised to walk a new life in Christ. Then we must be faithful in our commitment to Him all of our lives. I have scriptures to back this plan up at the end of each of my posts. 

So when did God’s grace for mankind begin? Was it a switch that was turned on the day Jesus died on the cross? We know that Jesus died so that we can have access to God’s grace and have the opportunity to be in heaven for eternity. So was there grace before Jesus Christ died on the cross?

Let’s look at what Paul has to say about this in 2 Timothy 1:9, “…who has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus before time began…” Did you catch that? Grace in Christ Jesus began before time began! God always knew He would have to have a plan to save mankind from himself. He knew it before day one of creation. God’s plan to save mankind began in the mind of God before He ever said let there be light. 

God has always shown grace to His people. Grace is the common thread throughout the entire Bible. For example, Genesis 6:8, says that “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” The Bible says Noah was a just man and walked with God. (Genesis 6:9) Obviously Noah wasn’t perfect or he wouldn’t have needed God’s grace, but he was committed to living his life for God. 

God also showed grace to Abraham and Sarah when Abraham stretched the truth by saying that Sarah was his sister instead of his wife, because he was afraid for his own life. (Genesis 12:13) Abraham argued with God in Genesis 17:17-18 saying that he and Sarah were too old to have a child and for God to just let Ishmael be the son of promise. Imagine that, arguing with God! Then, Sarah laughed at God’s promise to give her and Abraham a son in their old age. (Genesis 18:12) But God still kept His covenant with Abraham even though Abraham took matters in His own hands instead of trusting God. Genesis 12:3b says, “And in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.” Is this not grace that God is showing towards Abraham and Sarah? 

God even showed grace to Sarah’s handmaid, Hagar and her son Ishmael after Abraham had to banish her from the camp. (Genesis 21:17-21) God showed grace to this woman and her son who got caught up in the mess that Abraham made when he and Sarah didn’t trust God to keep His promise to them of having children. God knew it wasn’t Hagar’s or Ishmael’s fault that they had gotten put in the situation they were in and He had mercy on them and showed them grace. Genesis 21:17 says that God told Hagar to not be afraid and that He would make a great nation come from Ishmael. And then one of the sweetest verses that I noticed while studying this lesson is Genesis 21:20, “So God was with the lad; and he grew and dwelt in the wilderness, and became an archer.” Can you just imagine God watching over this child that was not even the son of promise? What a wonderful God! Hagar and Ishmael were not even of the lineage of Christ in which God was trying to preserve but He cared for them and saved them anyway. If this doesn’t show us what kind of God we serve, I don’t know what else could. Is this not the epitome of grace?

And what about Joseph? To start with, it sure doesn’t look like God is showing grace when Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery. However, Joseph explains in Genesis 45:7 that God sent him before them to preserve a remnant for them in the earth and to save their lives by a great deliverance. I love what Joseph says in Genesis 50:20, “But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, in order to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive.” God saved His remnant, the lineage of His Son, by letting Joseph be despised by his brothers, sold into slavery, thrown in prison, and then elevated to governor of Egypt through the providence of God. Sometimes bad things happen that lead to a good end. This is so hard for us to understand, but if we will just put our complete faith and trust in our Father in heaven, we will get through our trials. Just like Joseph, we will be able to bear whatever cross we have to carry because God will help us carry it. 

Then, we have Moses, who argued with God three times telling God to send someone else to deliver the people of Israel out of Egyptian slavery. And this was even after God turned Moses’ rod into a snake and then back into a rod! (Genesis 4) And the children of Israel, need I say more? They were in and out of God’s good graces all the time. They complained non-stop and were made to wander in the wilderness for 40 years because of a lack of trust in God. (Deuteronomy 8:2) But what did God do for them in the wilderness? He made sure they had water and food, manna and quail from heaven. (Exodus 17:6, Deuteronomy 8:3, Numbers 11:31) He even made sure their clothing and shoes did not wear out for the entire time they were wandering. (Deuteronomy 8:4) After the time of the judges, they wanted an earthly king because they wanted to be like all the other pagan cities around them. The God of heaven wasn’t good enough for them! God warned them of what would happen if they had an earthly king, but they didn’t listen to Him. (1 Samuel 8) Can you imagine not listening to God’s advice? This statement by God breaks my heart, “And the Lord said to Samuel, “Heed the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you, but they have rejected Me, that I should not reign over them.” (1 Samuel 8:7) God said, give them what they want. They don’t want Me. After all the grace that God had shown to them and after all He had done for them, they wanted a man to rule over them instead of God! They followed after false gods and were carried into captivity and the list goes on and on of their shenanigans, but God still showed grace to them and preserved the lineage of His Son……not only for them, but for us!! We have Jesus as our Savior because of what God did back then. Let that sink in!

I have two more examples of people in the old testament to whom God showed grace and they are Rahab and David. God knows the hearts of men and women. He knows my heart. He knows your heart. He knows our motives in everything we do. I know He saw a good heart in these two people. Rahab was a prostitute, but she was willing to give shelter to God’s two spies in her home and ultimately saved their lives. She risked her life to save theirs because she believed in the God of heaven. God showed grace and mercy to her and she left that sinful lifestyle and served God the rest of her days. (Joshua 2) She is one of the women mentioned in the genealogy of Christ in Matthew 1:5. Her example of faith is mentioned in Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25. How is that for God’s grace? And David, called a man after God’s own heart in 1 Samuel 13:14 and Acts 13:22, committed adultery and murder during a time in his life when he allowed himself to be drawn away from God. But God showed grace to David and forgave Him. We can see David’s heart and love for God in the inspired Psalms that he wrote. The grace of God has always been here, and it has gotten us to this point in history. God knew we had to have a Savior. And it had to be a sacrifice that would take away the sin of everyone from the beginning of time until the end of time. That sacrifice is Jesus Christ. The blood sacrifices of the old testament only rolled sins forward. They could not take sin away. 

So how does the grace that God showed people in the Old Testament compare to the grace God shows us today? Well, the grace part is the same. God showed them grace because of different reasons and the reasons are the same with us today. Maybe they tried their very best to follow Him when no one else was. This sounds like Noah. Maybe they truly repented when they were convicted of sin. This refers to Abraham, David, and the children of Israel. Maybe they trusted Him enough to turn to Him and cry out for help in times of great distress. This would be the example we see with Hagar. Maybe they risked their life for the purpose of God’s will and then turned from a sinful lifestyle to follow God the rest of their days. This sounds like Rahab to me. And then maybe they went through an entire life of ups and downs from slavery, to prison, to prosperity and never wavered in their faith in God. This sounds like Joseph. Maybe they had no confidence in their ability to do God’s will and resisted God’s purpose for them. This would be Moses. Christians all over the world today can fall into any of these categories. We all probably fall into one or more of them. I can see a glimpse of my own life story in a couple of these folks. I’m sure we all can. And then this……maybe they were used to carry out God’s purpose on this earth of saving mankind. This would be all of the above people and more. All of these people were used by God to preserve His Son’s lineage for us today, so that we would have the opportunity to have salvation through the sacrifice of His son. So is God using us to preserve anything today? Yes, He absolutely is!! He is preserving His church through us and it is up to us to train the next generation to allow God to use them and then they train the next generation and so on and so forth. Our purpose as Christians will never end until Christ returns. We cannot stop working for His purpose of saving souls no matter how bad we think the world is getting, no matter how far away from God the world seems, no matter how ugly things get, we DO NOT GIVE UP! God shows us grace as Christians, through our obedience to the gospel of Christ, because we are all imperfect sinners who can never earn salvation on our own. He does this not only because He loves us as Christians, but because He loves all of mankind. He is using us to reach others and convince them that they need His grace in order to be saved and to show them how they can tap into that grace through Jesus Christ and be with God for eternity. Are we all allowing Him to use us for His purpose with all our many talents and personalities? It’s a beautiful thing to be a Christian and fully embrace His purpose for our lives. We can do this only because of His grace. 

Did you ever wonder why God chose to make Jesus the sacrifice for our sins? When I was much younger, I had questions in my mind about God’s whole plan for us to be saved. I remember thinking, couldn’t He have saved us without sacrificing Jesus. He’s God. He can do whatever He wants. Why did He have to send Jesus to die? But that was just my immature mind trying to figure out the mind of God. And by the way, my mind is still immature. I’ve just grown enough spiritually that I don’t question His plan for us. At least I try my best not to question it. The point is, my questions don’t matter and your questions don’t matter. God is the Creator of the universe and His ways and thoughts are higher than my ways and thoughts. (Isaiah 55:9)  I can never understand the “why” behind God’s plan of salvation from the beginning of time. All I know is that I am going to follow my Creator’s plan. I’m not going to try and change God into what I want Him to be or change His grace into something other than what it is. The world has decided that it can take care of itself without God’s plan, that it can decide right from wrong without consulting God, and that it can basically save itself. The devil has the world convinced that God is wrong, just like he convinced Eve that God was wrong when he said “you will not surely die”. Satan has convinced the world that it can make up its own god and that it can make their god’s rules up that, of course, are not in the Bible. It’s no different than when God’s people convinced Aaron to make the golden calf. The world’s version of god is not my God. As Joshua said, “And if it seems evil to you to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods which your fathers served that were on the other side of the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15) The world can choose who it serves, but as for me, I’m serving the God who has shown me grace my entire life and has had a plan for me since the beginning of time, even when I was in sin and far away from Him. But let’s always keep in mind that everyone else in the world, no matter what walk of life they walk, has just as much right to hear the gospel and have the opportunity to receive God’s grace as I do. I’m no more deserving than anyone else. Let’s never forget that God is no respecter of persons. (Acts 10:34) Now whether they accept it or not is up to them, but they deserve the opportunity. 

Why did God show us grace through the sending of His Son to earth to die for us? I believe that He knew that He needed to make a statement of love toward us that was so amazing and so tremendous that it would transcend throughout all time until He sends His Son back again. And nothing else would show His love for us more than allowing His son suffer through humiliation and beatings and then die that cruel death on the cross. Jesus’ entire existence as a human on earth, from His birth, to His death, to His resurrection, is so profound in our history that our entire system of keeping time is based on Him. It’s either B.C., before Christ’s birth, or A.D., after Christ’s birth. A.D. actually means “anno domini”. This is latin for “in the year of our Lord”. Since Christ was raised from the dead, this means He is alive with God in heaven right now. So guess what, it is the year of our Lord, 2023. Have you ever thought about that? It’s 2023 only because Jesus was born 2023 years ago. Everything is under His authority whether we recognize that authority or not. So whether you accept God’s grace through obeying Jesus or not, it’s still 2023 friends, and it’s still all about Jesus, no matter what the world says. Let’s never forget that His grace was reaching forward to each one of us even then.

 This post has been about how God has shown grace to mankind since  before creation up to this point in time. In my next post, I will discuss what grace means for us as Christians today and we will dive into what grace actually teaches us about living the Christian life. I really hope everyone has a wonderful Lord’s Day and week ahead! I appreciate everyone who supports and reads my blog!

If you are someone who needs to obey the gospel, so that you can experience God’s saving grace through Jesus, the plan that you need to follow is below.

• We have to hear His word. (Romans 10:17) 
• Upon hearing the message of Jesus, we believe it. (Mark 16:16) 
• Then, we confess Jesus’ name before men. (Matthew 10:32) 
• Next, we repent of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Acts 3:19) 
• Finally, we are baptized into Christ for the remission of our sins. (Acts 2:38, Matthew 28:18-20, Mark 16:16, Romans 6:3-4, Acts 22:16, 1 Corinthians 12:13, Galatians 3:26-27) After baptism, God adds us to His church. (Acts 2:47)
• Then, we remain faithful in our commitment to Christ until death. (Revelation 2:10, 2 Peter 2:20-22)