Here in Acts
chapter 24 and in Ephesians he refers to it as the Grace of God.
Acts 20:24
"But
none of these things move me, neither count I my life
dear unto myself, so that I might finish my course with joy, and the
ministry, which I have received of the Lord Jesus, to
testify the gospel of the grace of God."
Do you see how
plain that is? Paul’s whole ministry was to proclaim this Gospel, the Grace of God. Now we think it may be appropriate if we come back
to Ephesians chapter 3, for a moment to look at the word
"Grace." As many because of the falseness of false prophets goes have believed a lie of major deception caused by Religion. So we'll clear the air so to speak or at best attempt to. We just can't walk by it any longer we can't sweep it under the fug and leave it there to rot.
Ephesians
3:2a
"If ye
have heard of the dispensation of the grace..."
Now like we've
said, "very few people have any idea of the Grace of God."
We don’t claim to know all that much, because it’s beyond full
human understanding. How a Sovereign, Eternal, Creator God would do
what He did simply because He Loves the human race. He took on human
flesh, walked among men for three years on the dusty roads of
Palestine, and then ended up offering His New Covenant inaugural meal. Then going to the Cross to suffer the most horrible death ever
invented, all because of His Love for mankind. And through that death
on the Cross He was able to pay the price of redemption for the whole
human race, not just for a few chosen ones, but for the whole race.
Now listen, that’s GRACE!
And that’s
beyond our comprehension. He didn’t have to do that. He could have
just zapped the human race and started over. But from day one, from
the time that Adam and Eve first disobeyed God's voice, spoken Word,
and sinned in the Garden of Eden, on up to the rebellious multitudes
just before the flood, on up to the tower of Babel when again that
group of humanity met in pagan consort, God could have zapped them,
but He didn’t. He let them go on until He was able to find one man
200 years later in the Ur of the Chaldees we know as Abraham, and
begin again something totally different, all because He refused to
give up on the human race. And why didn’t He? GRACE! The grace which He had given the first man Adam, when to him He promised by way of a vow to bring a Redeemer through that Grace who would reveal His Grace and Truth to all and John in chapter 1 does so. John says the He was the Word from the beginning and will be the Word in the end. So Grace is not cheap grace but is indeed the benefit of our benefactor Christ, Grace is the person Christ Jesus and therefore Grace is Living just as Faith and Truth are Living. For God is not a God of the dead, Satan is their god, for God is God of the Living.
So everything
that God does, and the patience of God toward the human race is all
because of His Grace. Now we call that one of God’s attributes. It
is something that is in the very make-up of the eternal God that
prompts Him to give out all this divine blessing and Love on a
rebellious human race. All we have to do is just look around us
today, and just stop and think for a moment, why does God put up with
it when everything is flying in His face in total rebellion? All God
would have to do is speak the Word and we’d all be gone. But God
doesn’t do that, and why doesn’t He? GRACE!
Under the Law (remember we said that the law is an external ministration of mans flesh voice and by that voice ministers death and death only)
that wasn’t the case. Law was demanding, Law as we’ve said so
often is what? Severe! It was severe, and there was no bending it. If
you broke the Law back in it’s purity in the early stages,
invariably the penalty was death? So that was the Law, and there
wasn’t Grace in that except it was the Grace of God engineering a
way for man to come back, but in reality Law is legalism, it is
severe, it is the very opposite of Grace. Mans engineered liberalism pushes that aside and makes a joke of the Law and the laws legalism, for one has a right to do as one pleases, as one hears the voice of his flesh so he does. But now on the flip side,
we have the Cross, we have the same God who gave the Law and all of
it’s severity to Moses for Israel, to keep them within its corral
under it tutorship. God now opens the window of heaven and through
this Apostle’s writings we have the opening of the door of GRACE! As just stated mans religion has cheapened God's Grace and by so doing has made it of no effect on mans consciousness. The conscious of man has been seared with a hot iron through the habit of the many as warned by Paul in 1 Corinthians 11:
1Corinthians 11:29-32
"For he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks damnation to himself, not discerning the Lord's body. For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep. For if we would judge ourselves, we should not be judged. But when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world."
Some people say,
"Well don’t you make too much of Paul?" No! Paul knew
only one thing, and that was "Christ crucified for our sins,
and risen from the dead," and you can’t find that anywhere
else in Scripture that we are to believe that for Redemption through
which we are brought to so Great a Salvation except in Paul’s
writings. So we don’t elevate Paul above that. But you see God,
as He kept things secret as we saw, He has decided that
it’s through this man that He would reveal the things that had been
kept secret. That’s why Paul, over and over, uses the term
"revelation," how God revealed to me such and such,
and he writes it over and over again. It's all by Grace, Christ the Spirit, just as in the beginning. This is good News!
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