Ephesians 2:8 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—“ NIV
Have you ever had an idea or concept stick in your mind and permeate your thinking, catching not only your thoughts, but also your imagination, working it’s way deep down into the fabric of your being and changing you in some profound way? Such realizations are precious to the believer, especially when they come from truths that fill our hearts anew with love for our Savior. For me, the transformational idea has been grace. I want to live this out in my daily life, to see others as God sees me through eyes of holiness, but my natural inclination is to see them through eyes clouded by my own sin, a kind of spiritual cataract. How does one see through the lens of grace?
A few years ago, a Christian buzz-phrase began to show up on bracelets, signs, and bumper stickers. “What would Jesus Do?” I always thought of this as a phrase dictating an outward response towards an external stimulus. In trying to employ the phrase in my encounters with others, I would find myself trying to formulate a response that would be Christlike, thinking to myself, “this is what Jesus would say or do” and then trying to do it because it would please the Lord and I would feel like I’d done something noble and worthy in spirit. Somehow, I don’t think this is what Jesus would do. His approach to relationship with others was to love them as they were, and to point them to the truths of God that he embodied fully. He was compassionate, merciful, kind, and bestowed the gracious gift of forgiveness and reconciliation in his words, his life, his death, and his resurrection. He saw those the Father had given him as he knew he would make them to be, pure, holy, and blameless before the Lord. He was grace incarnate.
As long as I live in this body, I will wrestle with sin. I cannot escape it. But Christ has purchased for me a place in the Kingdom of God and I belong to him. My debt for sin has been pain in full. God sees the beauty of his son when he looks upon me, even though I struggle in this flesh, he gazes upon a beauty that he has ascribed to me and sees me now as I will be in eternity.
Such a truth awakens in me a spirit of gratitude. Through grace I can respond with an obedience that is fired by thankfulness for the work that has been done in me, not so that I might boast of my goodness, but that I might boast of the grace, mercy, love and compassion that has been shown to me by God through the work of his Son, Jesus, and the help that is given to me by the Holy Spirit, enabling me to live in freedom.
Because of the incredible grace of God, I can lean into the love of my Savior and begin to see my brothers and sisters with new eyes. I can leave some of the harsh judgment of the world out of my dealings with them, and let them see grace in me. If I try to do this as an act of obedience rather than as a response to grace in my life, then I miss the true blessing. Joy is found through resting in Him who has saved me and presents me as clean and beautiful before God. I long to please Him, not out of obligation to law, but out of gratitude for his rich, vast, incomprehensible love for me.
