Grace in a New Year

As a church body we’ve been running (well, at least jogging) through Romans… and I can’t but stop and take a breath in wonder at the incredible love of God revealed in Christ Jesus and set upon those who trust in Him for righteousness and life.

As we finish chapter 8, I’m in wonder at the assurance that comes in the understanding of Christ’s incredible love for us. Nothing can keep us from it or from Him.

There is a spreading goodness in the wondrous work of our Savior in which His grace showers over us who believe. The application of that grace in salvation is not primarily one of responsibility – as if keeping the law that we have died to has been placed again upon us – but of response, the response of the heart to the illumination of God’s love by the Spirit.

O that we might live our lives in gratitude and humility, bearing fruit as the response of a love richly and deeply experienced by us.

The knowledge and experience of a God who came to earth for us… could this perhaps be more fortuitous to us than (just a thought, not sure) if we had never sinned?

Richard Sibbes, a Puritan divine, certainly thought so. In his The Privileges of the Faithful:

“Christ Jesus, who, notwithstanding he was God, took upon him the nature of man, and hath made us by his coming far more happy than if we had never fallen.”

That is because of what we can testify to, what we experience, what we know:

“He doth not only overcome evil for us, but also overcometh evil in us, and gives us his Spirit, which unites us to himself; whereby we have ground to expect good out of every ill, as knowing that whatsoever Christ wrought for the good of mankind, he did it for us in particular.”

Wow. Hallelujah, what a Savior!

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