Grace: God Adding His Super to my Natural

Did you know that there are two types of grace? Grace is the ability to do what I am not able to do alone. It needs God.

The first type of grace comes to us through salvation. It’s the whole reason why Jesus had to be born as a man and live sinless. There was an Old Testament contract that had to be fulfilled. Jesus did this by living a human life completely sinless and being offered as a sacrifice. In the Old Testament, sacrifices were what put you in right standing with God.

There is a second type of grace. This is the type that Jesus used to live a sinless life.

Any time that Jesus was overwhelmed and struggled, he went to God for help. He would ask God, “what are we doing today?” or the game changing quote in the garden, “is there any other way?” Jesus didn’t die solely for you out of love. He also did out of obedience.

Jesus talked publicly and privately about dying for at least 3 years. When the day came to die, He like anyone of us, wanted to avoid the pain.

Because He was all man while on the earth, He had to believe that God would fulfill His promises. He had to believe that His life sacrifice would be worth something. He had to trust He would be risen again. He had to believe God. The garden scene tells us it was a struggle.

The one thing that Jesus did so well, that many of us do not, is go find grace. When he asked God the question “is there any other way?” and God says “no”, Jesus had two choices. He could decide to do things on his own and walk out, or He could lean in, and find grace to finish the job. Up to this point, Jesus had a life of leaning into God to do what His physical body couldn’t do on its own.

Why is it important to understand there’s two ways to use grace?

There’s a culture in Christianity now that takes part of this grace message and highlights it in a way that we use grace to sin instead of grace to overcome. There’s truth to the grace message. There is only one way to become a christian and that is though grace. God is very clear. The bible also talks about through grace, is the forgiveness of sin. If you sin, go accept the grace that God gave at the time of salvation and move on.

What the Bible doesn’t highlight is the use of grace to sin. In this culture, that has become popular. Instead of my life being focused on what Jesus wants me to do, I use salvation as a get out of jail free card while I do what I want. Does it work? Yes. Is it the intention of grace? No.

Once a person is saved, the intention of grace, is to be used like Jesus used it to stay sinless. Jesus went to God every time life was hard, and he lined up with God’s Truth and what God was doing. At that moment, the thing that felt impossible became possible. Jesus then stays away from sin, and does what He sees God doing. The use of grace in this context is what kept Him sinless.

Grace is heaven’s trump card. When you are in a bind, you can go to the Father, line up with what He says, and act on that. The things that are impossible in your life you will find possible through grace. But our modern day Christianity likes to use grace to keep us going to heaven, but allows us to sin. This is the complete opposite lifestyle that we see in Jesus.

I want to challenge us in this season to start to use grace in the way that Jesus did. Not as an open door to sin, but as a way to not sin. You are not alone. You have every advantage that Jesus had to move forward and live a sinless life. My encouragement is raise the bar in your life. Be like Jesus.