by Kevin Burton
The grace of God, His mercy, transforms a wretch like me and I just can’t grasp it.
Without God’s grace I’d be a dead man walking. With God’s grace, I’m redeemed, washed in the blood of the Lamb, converted from an object of scorn to an object of wonder.
This is not my doing. I’ve accepted an offer from God, through Jesus Christ. The change means everything for what I look like now in God’s eyes and what I will look like throughout eternity.
“For the ages to come I will be a trophy on display showing forth the exceeding riches of His grace, shining forth in the kindness He has poured forth upon me in His Son,” wrote Dane Massey, a former pastor at Mulvane Christian Church, in a message on Ephesians chapter two.
“His Grace! That undeserved, uncalled for, direct opposite of what is expected, (when one beholds the Sovereign Holy One of chapter one and the filthy perverted sinner that I am in 2:1-3) fountain of love rich in mercy!”
“Here is the “trophy case” that will cause the angels to bow their heads in awesome wonder and send Satan and his rebellious horde muttering into hell for all eternity. Love rich in mercy,” Massey wrote.
Here is Eph. 2: 1-7, KJV:
“And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins; Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:”
“Among whom also we all had our conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.”
“But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus: That in the ages to come he might shew the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”
“If Ephesians ended at 2:3 it would end with devastating ruin, leaving us in the valley of death pictured in 2:1-3,” Massey wrote. “Dead in our sin, standing on the edge of a chasm of great expanse between us and the Glorious God of chapter 1.”
“Dead! With no hope nor means of recovery. Ruined beyond man’s ability to repair, for any who would think to help, are in the same plight.”
“But as one is about to turn away in total hopelessness, verse 4 breaks over you like the cool breeze off the rushing, fresh flow of a glacier fountain bursting forth from the Sovereign Mountain of the Grace of God in Ephesians 1,” Massey wrote.
“A flow of the clear refreshing Sovereign Love of God, gurgling rich with His great mercy, overwhelming and filling the great chasm between His Holiness and my depravity.”
“Everyone is in need of redemption. Our natural condition was characterized by guilt: ‘all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God’ (Romans 3:23),” reads a passage on the website, www.gotquestions.org.
“Christ’s redemption has freed us from guilt, being ‘justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus’ (Romans 3:24).
“The benefits of redemption include eternal life (Rev. 5:9-10), forgiveness of sins (Eph. 1:7), righteousness (Rom. 5:17), freedom from the law’s curse (Gal. 3:13), adoption into God’s family (Gal. 4:5), deliverance from sin’s bondage (Titus 2:14; 1 Peter 1:14-18), peace with God (Col. 1:18-20), and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19-20),” the passage reads.
“To be redeemed, then, is to be forgiven, holy, justified, free, adopted, and reconciled. See also Psalm 130:7-8; Luke 2:38; and Acts 20:28.”
“The streets of heaven will be filled with former captives who, through no merit of their own, find themselves redeemed, forgiven, and free. Slaves to sin have become saints,” the website reads.
“No wonder we will sing a new song—a song of praise to the Redeemer who was slain (Rev. 5:9). We were slaves to sin, condemned to eternal separation from God. Jesus paid the price to redeem us, resulting in our freedom from slavery to sin and our rescue from the eternal consequences of that sin,” reads the website.
“He has saved me in spite of myself,” Massey wrote. “Stand upon the precipice of this great void, this fearful chasm our sin has created and catch a glimpse of that fountain springing forth with ‘love rich in mercy’ flooding, filling, cleansing, and overflowing.”
“Here is true conversion, the fountain of eternal life, the redemption of old. May it flow to the depth of our souls.”
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