Grace from God's point of view!
Now I will attempt to present Grace from God’s point of view, and this will only be a glimpse, a very limited view that is because of me; I’m very limited, shortsighted, and imperfect and we could go on and on. Nevertheless I will attempt to present Grace from God’s point of view and I think it will serve a very valuable point and I believe it will be helpful to lots of readers and believers.
Let’s remember that God is outside of time – so in his view it is accomplished already – finished – his own are already in heaven with him in glory and the devil, his angels and his followers and those who he was able to deceive have already been punished. All the saints are in heaven praising God for his grace and glorifying him for who and what he is; King of Kings, Lord of Lords, our glorious heavenly father, great beyond greatness, gracious beyond grace, merciful beyond mercy, loving like no one can love.
At the beginning of our time God spoke and the heavens and the earth were created, and our Creator saw that it was good. God created man and named him Adam. Of course God knew beforehand that Eve would be deceived by the serpent and that Adam would disobey his command to not eat of the tree of the knowledge of Good and evil. Thereby sin entered into the world through Adam and all the human race became affected by Adam’s “disease”. Because of Adam’s transgression, we are all now born with Adam’s corrupted nature and all of us became sinners and death was the obvious and unavoidable result. But God already had the answer for our problem. But it took a lot more than a word from God “to fix” our problem. For God willingly gave up his only Son for us. Jesus Christ took on flesh and came into the world lived a righteous life for 33 years and died on the cross for our sins. Afterwards he rose from the dead and returned to his father and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. The Holy Spirit took Jesus Christ’s place and continued the work Jesus started by living in and among God’s children and preparing them for heaven and for Jesus Christ’s return to bring his own to heaven and bring all into judgement. So you can see or maybe start to understand that God’s plan is working and coming together piece by piece. God has all things worked out according to his plan. God knows those who are his, although we don’t know for sure and it isn’t always apparent because we cannot see the inside of others and because we don’t know the final outcome either. God is all knowing and all seeing.
Now if you do a great favor or something extraordinary for someone, what would you like to get? For sure you want to get thanks and you want to be appreciated for what you did for them.
Adam got us into this “mess”, God at his great expense has made a way out of the condemnation we are under. Put yourselves in God’s shoes for a moment; consider if you did all this for the human race; making a way for them by giving up your only son, so they could escape condemnation and be in heaven. Now how would your attitude be toward people that didn’t accept this amazing offer, or didn’t come to you for this opportunity but instead laughed and mocked and just did their own thing? Wouldn’t you be very angry or furious? Wouldn’t your anger be kindled against them? Would you still be willing to accept them into your kingdom? Most everyone’s answer is NO.
Yet God is very patient and forbearing. Not only has he made a way at a great expense to him for us to escape condemnation, but he is extremely patient toward his own. Remember what happened before the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra? Abraham asked the Lord, what if you find 50 righteous persons in the town, will you still destroy it? The Lord said; no, and Abraham begged all the way down to 10 righteous people – and the Lord answered that he wouldn’t destroy Sodom and Gomorra if 10 righteous people were found in it. But there weren’t even 10 righteous people found there. Therefore God destroyed Sodom and Gomorra for their wickedness, but saved righteous Lot out of it.
So let’s sum it up; according to God it is all done already; he made us, knows the condemnation we got ourselves into; has made a way of escape at an extremely great expense to himself; he calls his own, promises all the help they need to walk his way and follow and trust Jesus Christ, even promises his Holy Spirit to his children and leads them into his kingdom. And even though he is very loving and forbearing, he will be glowing with anger toward anyone who refuses his kind offer or takes it as a joke or just proudly disregards him.
All human creation is under a sentence of condemnation and rightly so – there are no innocent, neutral cream puffs for we all have sinned and fallen way short of God’s standards.
God is in control of everything and by his Grace has made an amazing way through his son Jesus Christ for his own to escape the sentence of condemnation and live a life by faith in him, becoming more and more like him and promises to lead us into his heavenly kingdom to be with him and there to praise him forever and ever.
Amazing Grace!