All Because Of Grace

All Because of Grace

Ephesians 2:4-10

Community Bible Experience

March 23, 2014

Morning Service

Misconceptions about grace

1. Grace is not enough

Somehow we falsely believe that grace is not enough to provide salvation. We believe that we need something more to get into heaven. We have to have more faith, more prayer time or more service to the church. We believe that we have to do more spiritually because grace is too easy. There must be something more that we must do. When grace is no longer enough to gain salvation, salvation becomes about us instead of Jesus.

2. Grace can be earned

The false concept that grace can somehow be earned by enough good works or enough acts of service. We have to do enough good things to be able to get into heaven. If we could somehow earn grace, it wouldn’t be grace. How many good things would you have to do to get into heaven? The reality is that it is by grace alone that we gain entrance into heaven.

3. Grace allows us to sin

Another misconception is that because we live under God’s grace that it gives us the right to sin or behave however we wish. The reality is that we do live under the grace of God but it is not a license to sin or to go back to our old lives. The grace of God gives us the ability to live a godly life. Grace allows us to be empowered to walk with God and not walk in the old lifestyle.

This morning I want to explore the reality of God’s grace. If you have your Bibles with you, please open them to Ephesians 2:4-10

4 But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. 6 And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9 not by works, so that no one can boast. 10 For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:4-10

I. The life giving power of grace is amazing

The reality is that before we encountered God’s grace, we were dead. We were as lifeless as a car battery without any charge. We weren’t physically dead but rather we were spiritually dead. We were breathing, still had a pulse but we were really not living. We were simply existing, just being part of the landscape of life without experiencing life. There is a massive difference between being alive and really living. Just being physically alive does not mean that we really experience life.

Our transgressions and sins had created within us a state of spiritual death. We looked good on the outside but on the inside we were lifeless. Sin caused us to fall away from the plan that god had for our lives and we were living with an inner corruption that plagued every area of our lives. The corruption of sin was killing us from the inside out. We existed in the middle of an unlived life.

It is not until we experience the amazing nature of God’s limitless and amazing grace that we move from death to life. God’s grace causes a change within us and we move away from the unlived life and enter a new reality of eternal life. We have been given a spiritual jump start to bring the dead battery in our hearts to life.

God extended His divine favor to those who didn’t deserve it. Grace is being given what you need, instead of what you deserve. The reality is that we deserve to remain in the life that was dead. We deserve to be far away from God. We deserve a life that ends in death. Living in God’s grace means that He gives us precisely what we need rather than what we really deserve. God gives us life when we deserve to die – He offers us what we desperately need.

I have come that they may have life and have it to the full John 10:10

Jesus Himself makes the purpose of coming to earth clear. He came to give us life when we were walking in death. Jesus came to give us the opportunity to experience genuine life and to do so in abundant fashion. The life that Jesus offers is full and overflowing with His divine grace. He gives us a life that we can get no other way. Jesus exchanges the emptiness of our unlived life for the depth of His fullness. It is an offer that we could never earn and never deserve. We have this offer all because of grace.