By Nonie Sables
The Journey of Grace begins -2018!
I would like to start by saying that GRACE is one of the most beautiful things in the world that God has ever shown, and let us ever experienced. This is one of the “Five Solas” of the Reformation – “By Grace Alone!” (I would like to write a specific discussion about this particular Sola). I sure am a recipient of God’s grace and a product of God’s grace. If I can say this, the apostle Paul has written about this all the more. Paul knows the great sin he has committed against Jesus himself and the early church. First, he gave thumbs up for Stephen’s stoning. Then he continued to pursue followers of “the Way” even outside the city of Jerusalem. Acts 9:1-3 noted these things, “Now Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest, 2 and asked for letters from him to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, both men, and women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” He mistreated them, bind them, and he literally just persecuted the church. In his mind, what he knows is that he was just doing what’s right during that time.
But after his encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ at the road of Damascus, by grace, the Lord himself forgave him, saved him, and appointed him as a missionary to the Gentiles (see Acts 9:15). He was totally a different person since that excellent road experience. By the grace of God, Paul became the servant of his former object of persecution-Jesus Christ. As a result, he understood what grace is, by experience. In his letter to the Corinthian church, Paul said these things, “10 But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me did not prove vain; but I labored even more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God with me (1 Corinthians 15:10).”
Three times in this verse that he mentioned the word grace. First, Paul is telling the Corinthian church that whatever he is right now, whatever spiritual level he has achieved, and whatever status he has among the disciples and believers, were all the product of God’s grace in Christ Jesus. The same Paul said this words in 1 Cor. 4:7, “7 For who regards you as superior? What do you have that you did not receive? And if you did receive it, why do you boast as if you had not received it?” Secondly, Paul said that this grace did not prove vain or ineffective. In fact, great was the effect on his life! What was the effect? The answer leads us to the next point. Thirdly, this grace caused Paul to work more and accomplished more for the Lord than all of the other apostles and disciples, “yet,” Paul said, “not I, but the grace of God in me.” That phrase was an acknowledgment of God’s working in his life. For sure I would like to experience the same thing as Paul did, and I would want my readers to suffer this and to have the same understanding of Grace!
This is my desire in this site – Making the Grace of God Known!
Thanks for joining me!
(Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations on this site is from New American Standard Bible)
