GRACE
For You are God, gracious and merciful. Nehemiah 9:31 (NKJV)
Yesterday we saw that God is merciful, and today we want to focus on the fact that He is also gracious. What's the difference? Aren't mercy and grace the same thing? While the two attributes are similar, they do have a significant difference.
Mercy, as we saw, is the act of sparing and saving from judgment and condemnation. In relation to God, it speaks of Him rescuing us from the punishment we deserve for our sin. Put another way, mercy is a matter of not giving us what we deserve. Grace, on the other hand, goes above and beyond mercy by giving us what we don't deserve. Some have aptly defined grace as "God's unmerited favor towards the infinitely undeserving."
It's merciful of God to save us from eternal condemnation and death, but it's gracious of God to then adopt us as His own, to make us inheritors of eternal life, and to give us every spiritual blessing in heaven (Ephesians 1:3). Mercy removes the burden, grace adds the blessing.
That's how God operates in our lives, because it's His nature to be gracious. He isn't satisfied with simply not giving us what we deserve, but He delights in taking it a step further by giving us what we don't deserve. A life that's surrendered to God represents an abundance of riches...it's overloaded with evidences of His graciousness.
So if God is gracious and pours out His grace in our lives, what's next? The next step is for us to follow His example by allowing His Spirit to work through us in a way that enables us to be gracious to others. For then, and only then, do we become good stewards of God's grace.
As each one has received a gift, minister it to one another, as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. (1 Peter 4:10 NKJV)
What does this passage reveal to me about God?
What does this passage reveal to me about myself?
Based on this, what changes do I need to make?
What is my prayer for today?
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