His Grace Is All I Need

Meditations for Ragamuffins 

January 29, 2024

His Grace Is All I Need

But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners

Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8 NRSV 

When Saint Paul petitioned God about a personal issue, the one he characterized as a thorn in his flesh, God’s response was “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Corinthians 12:8). God’s grace is God adopting us as his own children and inviting us to know Him as our “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15). Being adopted by God means we can live with nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of his face. This reality empowers us to respond to our personal issues as we are being transfigured, much like the Messiah, and as our lives are gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like him. (See 2 Corinthians 3:16-18 MSG). The wonder of our right-standing, as God’s adopted children, is that God made this all possible through Christ dying for us while we were still lost and separated from Him in our sin.

This truth means that God’s response to Saint Paul, and to each of us as we petition Him about our personal issues, is the same guidance God gives us for our daily living: “My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness.” Even though we know the entirety of our relationship with God is rooted in God’s grace, we try desperately to fashion a religious system by which we can measure our lives and reach a verdict that we are worthy to inherit God’s promise of eternal life. Listen to the formal, as well as the informal, eulogies after a person has died. They tend to accentuate the positive, and ignore the negative, in vain efforts to qualify the deceased for a heavenly reward.

Christ’s death provided the way for my right-standing relationship with God, my Abba Father. Christ’s death was sufficient for me the day God’s prevenient grace opened my heart to receive His offer of salvation. Christ’s death will be sufficient to cover my sins with his blood today, and tomorrow, all the tomorrows of my life, until by God’s grace my faith becomes sight, and I behold by Savior, face to face.

My Takeaway: The greatest challenge I face in my mortal life is to daily resist the urges of moralism and legalism. God’s plan was to save me by His grace, and for me to live day by day in His grace, because His grace is all I need.

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

 

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com.

 

Copyright © 2024 by Alex M. Knight

 

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2015 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.