© 05 Colin Melbourne
Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ
Holy Bible, Eph. 1:2 KJV
The Holy Spirit begins most of His Epistles to the Body of Christ with this thought. He does so because it is vital that we comprehend and embrace God’s grace and God’s peace.
They form the foundations of genuine fellowship with your Heavenly Father.
God wants you to have peace, His peace, always, but you’ll never have real peace until you accept God’s grace wholeheartedly.
Grace is Getting What You Don’t Deserve
Look at that religious person, grinding through his holy routines day after day, or that sister in bondage to guilt because she missed a prayer meeting: No peace.
Aren’t you glad that God never gives peace to us because of our own efforts to please Him? (Eph. Ch.2)
You certainly feel good when you obey the Lord, or fulfil some divine obligation. But that doesn’t bring the peace of God; it merely lifts heart conviction temporarily.
The peace of God is far greater; it cannot be earned, or deserved, and it never ‘wears off’.
Have you got it today?
There’s only one way to obtain the peace of God: Through understanding and accepting His Grace to you.
Do you want that now?
Are you anxious about your soul, or worried over facing Almighty God at your judgment?
If you are a sinner, you should be, because you are in eternal jeopardy. But for the believer, for those who have accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour, there’s abundant grace and righteousness poured out from the Throne of God.
There is a river, the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.
Ps. 46:4 KJV
Streams for the city, quenching the thirst of God’s people.
Grace or Law?
Christian! You stand in the grace of God, not under law, but blessed by the grace of God. (Ro. 6:14) He has put away your guilt, nailed your sin to the Cross, Christ bore all the punishment you deserve so that you can revel in the grace of God.
What grace?
This grace…
He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?
Ro. 8:32 KJV
It is the most majestic gift imaginable, the essence of grace runs contrary to all humanity.
We are born selfish, evil to the core; to be gracious is anathema for a sinner. The unsaved perceive it as a weakness,
‘Only a wimp would turn the other cheek, or give to those who steal from him.’
That’s humanity isn’t it?
That’s how you used to think before you met Christ.
That is how you would still think: But for the grace of God.
He Desires Mercy Not Sacrifice
Come on you saints, you never would have been saved unless Grace was after your hide. Grace wanted you when you were worthless, wicked, and vile. When every thought you had was always only evil.
As an example of His wrath and judgment, He wiped out mankind save for the remnant of Noah and his family. That is what you and I deserved too, isn’t that the truth?
You weren’t searching for God, He was chasing after you.
You didn’t want Him: He wanted you.
You only love God now, because He first loved you, and that was when there was nothing good in you, not an atom.
Do you think you were not so bad? Think again; look through Heaven’s eyes. You were steeped in sin, filthy, doomed and helpless, without hope, without merit, and without God.
Gracious Hunter of a Savage Beast
Then Grace came, in Christ, and melted your hard heart with His love.
Without a word of condemnation He drew near, and you knew, you just knew, that you were condemned. The nearer a sinner gets to God, the more aware of their sin they become. His Presence quickens a hunger for righteousness.
After a lifetime in sin, you yearned to be clean.
One word would make you weep:
I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
Jn. 10:10b KJV
Life?
Me?
And you sensed the spiritual vacuum inside like never before.
Grace.
Guilty, rebellious, selfish and ungodly…
Not judgment, but grace.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son…
For His worst enemy: You.
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;)
Eph. 2:4-5 KJV
Grace, grace, God’s grace.
You warranted death and judgment, but he took your place and gave you life and peace.
There but for the grace of God, go I
My hometown of Warrington, in the North of England, used to echo to the voice of a valiant preacher. He did no wrong, but was persecuted by the Catholic authorities for proclaiming the Gospel of Grace. They tried to seduce him into denying Christ and worshipping idols like they do, but he stood firm for Jesus. They put him in prison with the scum of England, where he shared the Gospel. On witnessing one of his fellow inmates taken to be hung on a gallows, he was heard to say,
‘There but for the grace of God, go I’.
John Bradford knew what he was apart from Christ, and understood the Grace of God. It was Grace that saved him, the Gospel of Grace was his message; that is why he chose to be burned to death rather than deny his Saviour.
How could he deny the Grace that pulled him from Hell’s mouth?
For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast. Grace be to you, and peace, from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Eph. 2:8-9, 1:2 KJV
The Purposes of the Law and the Gospel by John Bradford
Foxe’s Book of Martyrs Chapter on John Bradford
© 05 Colin Melbourne
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