Grace Saves and Enables

Grace is the truth that God loves me, provides for me, empowers me, and blesses me based on Him, not on me or my performance.

In Ephesians 2:8-9 we are told that we are saved by grace and not by works. Christians acknowledge that salvation is totally by the grace of God and not about what we do or ever could do.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is depending on God’s grace and God’ grace only for salvation.

Galatians 3:3

Are you so foolish? Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?

Paul is asking these Galatian Christians how they could be so foolish to believe that they were saved by faith but are now to work to prove they are saved. Paul is asking if they really think that they can justify their salvation by doing works.

Matthew 5:3 says, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”

There are two words in the New Testament translated poor. One means poor in comparison to someone else. The other means completely bankrupt. The word that is used in the Matthew passage means bankrupt. When we realize this and acknowledge it, God can bless us.

It is the same concept that James communicates in James 4:6. God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble. When we humble ourselves and acknowledge that, in our own strength and our own resources, we cannot do anything of eternal significance, God blesses us and we experience His grace.

Jesus says that He did not come for the righteous but for the sinner.

We are all bankrupt.

Paul pictures that bankruptcy in Romans 3:10-12. He says, “None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.”

That is us before we experience the reality of God’s grace – Bankrupt! We have no assets, nothing we could hand over to God even as a partial payment on our debt. 

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is acknowledging our bankruptcy apart from Jesus.

Grace is God paying off our debt.

Grace is not God just forgetting our debt. That would compromise God’s holiness. Grace is God paying our debt through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

My debt was so huge that I could not possibly pay it. Jesus paid off a debt that I could not.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is depending on grace to provide all we need for life.

John 15:5

I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in Me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing.

It is the grace of God that enables me to abide in Jesus.

It is the grace of God that allows me to produce spiritual fruit.

Raise the Roof and Remove the Walls is the grace of God enabling us to abide in Jesus and produce spiritual fruit.

God’s grace alone saves us, helps us grow, meets our daily needs, and guarantees our future in heaven. God’s blessings are never given to us based on our performance but based in Jesus’ merit.

Jesus paid it all. I mean all! He not only purchased our forgiveness of sins and our entrance into heaven. He also purchased every blessing and every answer to prayer we will ever receive.

God’s grace is huge.

God’s grace is awesome.

God’s grace is ours for the asking.

In God’s Grace Raising the Roof and Removing the Walls,

                                       Joe