Ever feel like you’re just swimming in your own failure? Like you’re constantly feeling like you don’t add up and that God is just condemning you at every corner? Do you pursue good works to earn God’s love and acceptance?
It is so easy to forget the gospel of grace. I’m reading a book called “The Ragamuffin Gospel” by Brennan Manning for the 5th time. It is all about grace and we cannot comprehend the love of Jesus Christ. He describes a Ragamuffin as one who is a ‘saved sinner prostrate in adoration, lost in wonder and praise. He knows repentance is not what we do in order to earn forgiveness; it is what we do because we have been forgiven.’ This truth just rips me up every time I hear it. We need to engrain this truth on our hearts because we cannot understand grace and Jesus truly accomplished for us on the cross. It’s nothing that bibles schools or textbook theology can teach. I keep finding myself in this distorted understanding that it is me who choses to love God when it says that “not that we love God but that He first loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation (full and satisfying payment) for our sins” The cross reminds me that my sin deserves death but that God would give up his only Son to give me life. THIS IS GRACE!! God’s unmerited favor, a gift that I did not deserve but were given. How could I not trust a God who did this for me? I think the tendency in legalistic religion is to mistrust God, to mistrust others, and mistrust ourselves. Do we really believe that God is love? The author submits that ‘we need a new kind of relationship with the Father that drives out fear and mistrust and anxiety and guilt, that permits us to be hopeful and joyous, trusting and compassionate.’
Donald McCullough puts it this way:
“Grace means that in the middle of our struggle the referee blows the whistle and announces the end of the game. We are declared winners and sent to the showers. Its over for all the huffing, puffing piety to earn God’s favor; it’s finished for all sweat-soaked straining to secure self-worth; it’s the end of all competitive scrambling to get ahead of others in the game. Grace means that God is on our side and thus we are victors regardless of how well we played the game. We might as well head for the showers and champagne celebration.”
I would challenge you to read this again...For someone who try’s SO hard to do everything right for God, people and myself the gospel of grace screams out to me YOU ARE A VICTOR REGARDLESS OF HOW WELL YOU PLAY THE GAME. I don’t know how to explain the freedom that comes in knowing this. My prayer right now is that you would come to know grace as we so struggle with comprehending it. That we would be so blown away by Gods love that it would change the way we live our life.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” Romans 8:1
“I have come that they may have life and have it abundantly” John 10:10
“The hookers and swindlers enter before us because they know they cannot save themselves, that they cannot make themselves presentable or lovable. They risked everything on Jesus and, knowing they didn’t have it all together, were not too proud to accept the handout of amazing grace”
His grace is enough.
-Jer
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