“For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8
Do you believe in grace? I suspect all of us would answer in the affirmative, when it comes to what we hold true in our minds regarding salvation. But do our lives reveal that we truly believe in grace? I fear that often we confess one thing with our mouths, and another with our lives. If we truly believed in salvation by grace alone, we would not hesitate to be vulnerable before one another. But too often, we are tempted to play the part of having our lives together, for we assume that we need to appear holy before other believers. Sam Alberry says of this, “The problem, I suspect, is something of a misstep in our formula of what it means to live for Christ. We think we’re his PR agents: If I look good, then Jesus looks good.”
But that attitude leads to a performance of the Christian life in our own strength, which borders on hypocrisy. God is not calling us to perform – He is calling us to a life of genuineness, with all our weaknesses and all our sins, so that His grace may be on display for a watching world. If He can save even the likes of us, nobody is beyond His grace! We were never meant to be the public relations agents for God – we were meant, rather, to be trophies of His grace! We are broken men and women, and He is our Savior. It’s not the case that I need to look good so Jesus can look good; rather I need to be honest about my spiritual bankruptcy, my utter depravity, so that Jesus will appear as the magnificent Saviour that He is!
It is all grace the moment we are saved, and it remains nothing but grace that will lead us safely home! Alberry continues, “Grace, then, becomes not just a formal doctrine but a felt reality. No one is too low, too far gone, too needy—too anything—to worry about not fitting in around here. Our testimony is not “I was a mess, then Jesus showed up, and now I’ve got everything together,” but “I was a mess—and I still am—but I’m a mess who belongs to Jesus, a mess he is committed to sorting out. He came to me, has stuck with me, and continues to be my all in all.” Hallelujah! What a Saviour!