Lent Blog #5
Lately I've been thinking a lot about grace and forgiveness. I think we forget how linked together the concepts in the Bible (love, grace, peace, hope, forgiveness, etc.) really are.
What does it mean for me to forgive others? What does that actively look like in my life?
And yet, what does grace look like?
So often we take these super radical statements in the Bible, but don't think of them that way:
"For it is by grace you have been saved"-- Ephesians 2:8
The way that I remember grace is by defining it as an undeserved gift-- something that I don't deserve but get anyway. This is Christ sacrificing himself on the cross for ME... dying for MY sin... taking on MY burdens... and being beaten and killed. That is something that I don't deserve. But he did it anyway.
And it is by that very grace that I can believe in him in the first place. My sin separates me from God, but grace allows for me to enter into relationship with him.
"Bear with each other and forgive one another as I forgave you"-- Colossians 3:13
Forgiving people that hurt us is hard. It's something that I struggle with, and God has really been working with me with over the past few years.
Because Jesus died for my sins, though, he forgave me. And I don't deserve that forgiveness at all. I have done horrible things to myself, to others, and against God himself. No one of us is worthy of his love and forgiveness, but he gives it anyway.
And because he gives it to me, and I have been renewed by it many times in my life, I know that I am to forgive... no matter the struggle.
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I've been thinking a lot about these things, and I feel like God has been wanting me to be thinking about grace especially-- it's the subject of the book I randomly picked up to read for fun, it's a huge part of Ephesians that I had to read for class tomorrow, and we talked about it today in my Covenant (small) group at Truett.
Be expecting more grace.
Feel free to give some out too.
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