If Paul could sum up the Gospel in two words I think they would be “Grace” and “Peace.” That is what we discovered in our Sr. High Bible Study over Galatians this past Monday night. In Paul’s salutation to the churches in Galatia, he starts off by saying, “Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” That is why I think Paul would sum the Gospel up in these two words. You might even call them the “cause and effect” of the Gospel. Grace is given to us by God (Romans 5:8) and the outcome of grace in our lives is peace…peace that allows us to rejoice in our sufferings (Romans 5:1-5). After recognizing this simple cause and effect of the Gospel I ran across this quote.
“What are we to make of Christ?” C.S. Lewis asked, and then answered, “There is no question of what we can make of Him, it is entirely a question of what He intends to make of us. You must accept or reject the story. What are we to make of Jesus Christ?” – Lewis, God in the Doc
What it comes down to is…when the fact of grace is staring you in the face, are you going to allow it to make a difference in your life or are you going to simply do it all on your own? I feel like I so often do it all on my own and once I’ve really just botched it all up I then try to let Jesus work on me. It is almost if I would just let Jesus do what He has always planned on doing with my life I would have a lot less headaches and a lot more peace.
We’re called to live out this grace for others to see in our lives. As we start looking at how we can reach the world for Christ we must first look at ourselves and see if anyone is going to be seeing the Gospel. I leave you with another quote I found in my morning Bible reading this week.
“What we are shapes what we do and what we do is so noisy people hardly hear what we say except from a distance.”
Ryan
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3 comments:
Hey friend
really good thoughts
its really got me thinking
hope all is well in north carolina
I think the peace we receive from Grace is more of an inner peace from God than an external peace. It doesn't mean that you will live a peaceful, quiet life. Christ said that his teachings would split families and turn friends on each other, and he hasn't called us to avoid conflict for the sake of physical peace. The inner peace of Christ gives us the stability to endure those times when external peace is gone.
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