Read: Acts 14:21-28; Galatians 1:1-3:23
We have identified grace as being “God’s unmerited favor” but it is so much more than that. It is the ability to do through God what you can’t do by yourself. It is accessing God’s supernatural power. We can not do anything apart from God so all we do is through his grace. In Acts 14:26, the believers in Antioch entrusted Paul and Barnabas to the grace of God for the work which they fulfilled. They had opened the door to the Gentiles to bring salvation. God had given them the ability to do this.
Everywhere the new Christians went they faced opposition. After they got home they found out that their new church in Galatia had been fooled by people who came in and deliberately twisted the truth about Christ. Does this sound familiar? Paul assured them that the message he taught them didn’t come from human reasoning but by direct revelation of Jesus Christ. Jesus had himself appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus and there was no way to reason that. These false teachers were trying to make sense of something that can’t be understood with the human mind. It has to be revealed to our spirit and accepted by faith.
Fourteen years after Paul’s conversion he went back to Jerusalem and found that people had sneaked into the church to take away their freedom and make them follow the law. Paul explained the question of the law and grace. God gave the law to show people their sin. God gave the law along with the promise of blessing. The law had power until it was fulfilled in Jesus. He became the curse of sin so that the we could have the promise. Jesus was the only one who lived a completely sinless life so the law ended with him because he fulfilled it. We need to live in the blessings!
Lord, help us to live in the blessings and see the truth, not the manifested evidence of the lie. We need the Holy Spirit to help us do that.
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