God's Amazing Grace

GOD’S AMAZING GRACE

Romans 8:28-30

Good News Christian Fellowship

BUCAS, Daraga Albay

February 18, 2007

Introduction

The title of my message is GOD’S AMAZING GRACE. I want to show you from the Word of God about the eternal purpose of GRACE for the good of His people, in all its fullness and blessedness is eternal and was bestowed upon chosen sinners in Christ.

Our text will be Romans 8:28-30. We are told that we were loved, justified, called and glorified in God’s eternal purpose of GRACE in Christ. Only the all wise God could devise and execute the sovereign purpose of his grace toward us.

Here is a golden chain of grace. This is like the ladder Jacob saw, reaching up to heaven, upon which the angels of God ascend and descend as ministering spirits sent forth to minister to those who shall be the heirs of salvation. Each rung of the ladder was fixed by our great God in his eternal purpose of grace, before time began.

(1) In choosing to save us

(2) In guaranteeing our godliness

(3) In drawing us to Himself

(4) In declaring us righteous

(5) In securing our glorification

God does these for us because of His abounding sovereign grace. God shows goodness to those who deserves only his severity. We deserves death, but out of His riches of his grace salvation had appeared (Titus 2:11). “God commanded His love towards us, in that, while we are sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

In Ephesians 1:7-8 we read, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us..”

Take note the word “lavished.” The grace was not only given, it was lavished - generously showered – on us. He gives us abundantly. How amazing, how marvellous his GRACE is!

Grace is never spoken of in the Bible as God’s response to man’s choice, but just the opposite. According to this Book the believer’s faith in Christ is the result of God’s eternal choice of his people in Christ. Grace is not conditioned upon something in us. Grace cannot be earned, won, merited, or even attracted or influenced by us in any way. Grace is “unmerited favor.” Grace is God’s sovereign, eternal, and free favor toward sinners who fully deserve his wrath.

Grace is free, in the sense of being self-originated, and of proceeding from One who was free not to be gracious.- JI Packer

We all deserve to be punished throughout all eternity for our sins, but Christ Jesus has already taken our punishment. God, by his grace, that is His unmerited favor toward us, can now be just in saving us, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. Our redemption is in Christ Jesus, and not in ourselves.

Proposition: All the blessings, privileges, and benefits of grace flow to us from and were infallibly done for us by his great grace in Christ, our great Savior.

Romans 8:28 we read, “All things work together for good to those who Him, who have been called according to His purpose.”

What a comforting declaration! “In all things God works for good.” What does Paul mean?

• There is a temporal good, and

• a spiritual good,

• and an eternal one.

However, Let’s focus our attention on that which is eternal and spiritual. Here he explains to us what is meant by those words “according to his purpose.” Our experience of salvation in time is the result of God’s accomplishment of our salvation in eternity “according to his purpose.”

Let’s look at these two verses. May God the Holy Spirit, whose words these are, teach us their meaning, write them upon our hearts, and use them to inspire worship and adoration for God our Father for His eternal works of GRACE.

CHOOSING TO SAVE US

Verse 29 begins, “For whom He did foreknow, he also did predestine.” The word “foreknowledge” gives some people a good deal of trouble because they think of God as being bound to thinking as we do. There are actually very few things that ay of us really foreknow to any degree. The word “foreknow” means “ordain beforehand or “foreordain.”

To foreknow is to determine or choose ahead of time. For God to “foreknow” us to be His children is for God to sovereignly choose to save us.

Ephesians 1: 4 reads, “even as he choose us in him before the foundation of the world..”

Peter declares that all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ unto life everlasting are “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” How we rejoice in God’s electing love! God’s gracious, sovereign election of our unworthy souls unto salvation is the source and cause of every heavenly, spiritual blessing (Eph. 1:3-4).