God’s Grace is God’s love for us, not our love for him.
Very often, we are concerned and talk about how much we love God. We think about the things that we are doing to prove that we love God.
Somehow, we subconsciously imagine that we grow deeper in God because of how much we love him and because of what we do to prove that love for God. But is that really true? Does our love for God and our hard work make us more intimate with God, more successful? Let’s look at this scripture.
“And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18 may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19 and to know this love that surpasses knowledge —that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.” Ephesians 3:17-19 NIV
I belief that we are transformed into the image of God by beholding the glory of God, not by doing anything. When Christ is unveiled to us and revealed to us so much so that we understand or grasp how wide and how long and how high and deep the love of Christ is for us, we are changed into the image that God wants us to have.
This is seen in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.”
We see that it’s not by working hard, trying hard, but by seeing how much Christ loves us, how much God loves us that we become like him.
Now, I’m by no means saying that good works are not important for the Christian. They are vitally important. As the scriptures say, that God has prepared good works for us to do from the foundation of the world (Ephesians 2:10). The good works have been prepared for us to walk in them. We don’t have to invent the will, we have to submit to God’s love and allow him to do the work in us.
God’s love is powerful. Please enjoy the following message from Pastor Francis Chan.
