Our Bible verse for today: “For it is by grace you have been saved, though faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast.” Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)
Our thought for today: “God is gracious”
A.W. Tozer offers a good definition of God’s grace. In his book “The Knowledge of the Holy” he writes, “As mercy is God’s goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is His goodness directed toward human debt and demerit. It is by His grace that God imputes merit where none previously existed and declares no debt to be where one had been before. Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefit upon the undeserving.”
Grace moves God to “bestow benefit upon the undeserving.” The first and most important benefit of God’s grace for us is that it makes it possible for us to be saved and to spend eternity in heaven instead of in hell. We do not deserve salvation. It comes to us as a free gift from God and entirely through His grace. But as is true of any gift, we have to be willing to receive it. We have to accept it.
A second benefit of God’s grace, beyond salvation, is that He chooses to bless us in an infinite number of ways, even though we don’t deserve to be blessed. He simply requires obedience from us (which is in our own best interest to begin with), and then He blesses us far beyond what we deserve or could reasonably expect. It would take many pages to cite even a fraction of the Bible verses that describe the abundant blessings of God which come to us because of His grace, but here are just a few:
“Test me in this way, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.”
“But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”
“And my God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”
Those are examples of God bestowing benefit upon the undeserving. Our God is truly a gracious God who loves to pour out His blessings upon His people. It’s so much more than we deserve. But He loves us, and He loves to bless us, and He does so because of His great grace.
Oak Hill Baptist Church