This month, as we are leading up to the Good Friday and Easter Sunday, we are taking some time to reflect who we are IN CHRIST. If you want to read a little bit about how God blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavens, you can read about that here.
Today, I am writing about something we talk a lot about in church, but I’m not sure we really believe it’s for us – well, at least not after salvation that is. That is GRACE. I think most of you, if I asked, would say that you can’t earn your salvation, that it was Christ’s work on the cross that paid your sin debt, that there is no way you could work or earn your way to heaven (and if you do think you have to earn your way to heaven, please read this).
The thing is though, AFTER our salvation, we start acting like if we are only good enough, God will love us more. That if we do too many bad things or mess up too often, we will run out of God’s grace. Like it is somehow finite. Limited.
I’m hoping that after today, you can let go of that idea. In Ephesians 1:8,9, it says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us.”
You’ll notice that it says “we have” – not we had or we got, but we have. What do we have? We have redemption, forgiveness and His grace. And we don’t have just enough grace to save us. Nope – God lavishes grace on us out of His riches.
Since I am a word nerd, I looked up the word riches and lavish in the Greek. The word riches is the Greek word ploutos which means “fullness, abundance, plenitude” and it is out of the root that mean full or be filled. Lavished is the Greek word perisseuo and it means “left over and above a certain amount.”
This verse gives us a picture of God’s grace that is overflowing and plentiful – it’s not something He passes out in stingy little servings. We can never run through all of God’s grace. We will never get to the bottom of the grace barrel.
Grace always seems a little too good to be true. I mean, sure, God loves us enough to save us from hell, but lavish us with grace? Doesn’t that kind of grace only belong to people who sell everything they own and go to Africa, or the pastor or some extra spiritual like that?
The Good News is that we not only get salvation, we get a new identity, and that identity comes with some pretty awesome perks – one of the best of which is lavish grace.
You are God’s precious child. Even if you come to Him and you have a smudge of mud on your face and your hands are grimy from digging in the dirt, He sees the beloved child underneath all that. No matter what you do or don’t do, He is always waiting for you with His arms open wide.
It’s because His grace never runs out that you can always run to Him. – Tweet This!
Blessings, Rosanne
p.s. A great read on the topic of grace is Can I Get a Do-Over? by Elizabeth Ward. Btw, when I recommend books on here, it’s because I’ve read them and liked them myself. 🙂
p.s.s. Today, I’m linking up with Holley 
Gerth – don’t forget to visit her site for more posts that will encourage your heart!
1 Comment on In Christ I am – Lavished by God’s Grace
Leave a Reply
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
This was beautiful. I loved the words in Greek especially lavish.