WE CAN ONLY BE SAVED BY GOD’S AMAZING GRACE
A Sunday Message
OUR INADEQUACY HIGHLIGHTS THE GRACE OF GOD
In some sense, this pandemic can help us become humble as it exposes our weaknesses and inadequacies.
Our insufficiency tends to exhibit the glory of grace. The setting of God’s undeserved grace is humility because it recognizes its own incapability and inability. Pride boasts in its own capability and will abhor humiliation. Self-centeredness and conceit are both incompatible with grace.
It may be hard to believe, but unless our hearts are supernaturally transformed, we are deeply antagonistic at God’s grace due to our natural arrogance within. If we are not born again by the Spirit, we may assume on loving God’s grace, but in truth, we hate it. Sinful pride finds the grace of God unpleasant because it solely glorifies Him and repudiates our self-merit.
God’s grace denies the warrant of any human credit and refuses to be indebted to us. If God favors us because we deserve it, it is no longer gracious. If that is the case, the favor becomes a well-earned wage, making us recipients of honor due to us. This is what Paul is pointing out.
ROMANS 4:2-4
For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God.
For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.”
NOW TO THE ONE WHO WORKS, HIS WAGES ARE NOT COUNTED AS A GIFT BUT AS HIS DUE.
THE ULTIMATE PURPOSE OF SALVATION
When the Apostle declared that we are saved by God’s grace and not by good works, he is also revealing the ultimate purpose of salvation.
EPHESIANS 2:7-9
SO THAT IN THE COMING AGES HE MIGHT SHOW THE IMMEASURABLE RICHES OF HIS GRACE IN KINDNESS TOWARD US IN CHRIST JESUS.
FOR BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED THROUGH FAITH. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, NOT A RESULT OF WORKS, SO THAT NO ONE MAY BOAST.
There it is. The ultimate purpose of your salvation is the exaltation of God’s immeasurable grace and the elimination of any human boasting.
Unfortunately, we do not like it if salvation is not about us, for us nor because of us. We despise the idea of underserving and unmeriting a generous act of favor toward us.
THE HEART HATES SUBORDINATION AND DEPENDENCE
To be undeserving means to be inadequate and dependent. This is the reason why the Jews grumbled. They do not like that.
They want a king who will protect and provide but not a God who will govern and prevail over them. For Jesus to be the “Bread from Heaven” conveys His dominion and their submission. That spells total dependence towards God and categorical admission of need. To believe in Jesus Christ requires an abdication from selfward trust.
JOHN 6:41
So the Jews grumbled about Him, because he said, “I AM THE BREAD THAT CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN.”
Their grumbling is more than about provisions. It is about SUBORDINATION and DEPENDENCY. If the Lord says, “I will give you daily bread”, many will be happy with Him. But no, He said, “I AM THE BREAD THAT CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN”. That ignited their complains.
If the heart refuses to surrender and abdicate control to become dependent, it will fail to recognize God’s trustworthiness. Instead, it will resort in doubting God’s integrity.
If you catch yourself complaining on how God manages your circumstances or griping about His seeming uncooperativeness in fulfilling your wishes, you are in company with the grumbling Galileans.
Like them, you may think that you deserve His goodness, and His failure to give in to your demands makes Him unworthy of your trust and allegiance.
This is why the people belittled His character instead when He said, “I AM THE BREAD THAT CAME DOWN FROM HEAVEN”,
JOHN 6:42
They said, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, ‘I have come down from heaven’?”
Well, if He cannot yield to their cravings, they might as well question His character. This is what blinds the heart from knowing the true God. Tragically, ignorance of God is a rejection of eternal life.
KNOWING GOD IS ETERNAL LIFE
JOHN 17:3
And this is ETERNAL LIFE, THAT THEY KNOW YOU THE ONLY TRUE GOD, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.
Accordingly, this is exactly why we must only be saved by God’s grace and not by the merit of our goodness. Because left on our own, the sinful, selfish, self-centered heart will not seek this kind of God (Romans 3:10-12). It will naturally reject Him. It will insist on its worthiness and stubbornly demands God’s blessings.
That is why, if anyone is to graciously receive eternal life, God had to make the first move, long before our first one. And the ultimate end must be the praise of His grace. The Apostle Paul wrote about this astounding reality,
EPHESIANS 1:4-6
EVEN AS HE CHOSE US IN HIM BEFORE THE FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. IN LOVE HE PREDESTINED US FOR ADOPTION AS SONS THROUGH JESUS CHRIST, according to the purpose of his will, TO THE PRAISE OF HIS GLORIOUS GRACE, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.
DEVOTION TO CHRIST IS EVIDENCE OF GRACE
What the Lord Jesus told the Jews is similarly staggering,
John 6:44
NO ONE CAN COME TO ME UNLESS THE FATHER WHO SENT ME DRAWS HIM. And I will raise him up on the last day.
God’s grace. Eternal Life. Man’s utter inability. All in one statement.
If you have an intimate knowledge of God today, if you know Jesus Christ as your Lord and only Redeemer, if you have surrendered your life to His sovereign authority and abdicated your throne in repentance, you can rest assure that you are a recipient of God’s grace. You have eternal life now.
The reason why you believed in Jesus Christ is because God has already revealed Himself to you. This is eternal life. The amazing grace of God has already saved you.
John 6:45
It is written in the Prophets, ‘AND THEY WILL ALL BE TAUGHT BY GOD.’ EVERYONE WHO HAS HEARD AND LEARNED FROM THE FATHER COMES TO ME.
Let God’s grace be praised that the glory of His Name be exalted.
Pastor Jay-R Remorosa