Week 1 - Wednesday

Amazing Grace

through whom we have received grace and apostleship (Romans 1:5a)

The word grace means undeserved favor or kindness. God has shown His kindness to us in many ways. He has given us a beautiful world to live in. He gives us food to eat, and friends and family to love. Every breath of air we breathe is a gift from God. But nowhere is God's kindness shown more wonderfully to man than in salvation. Salvation means deliverance from sin. Because of their sin, all people are separated from God (Isa. 59:2). One way that the Bible describes a person's separation from God is by saying they are lost. As an illustration of this, think of a lost child. Think of a child who has gone the wrong way and cannot find it's way home. Lost children have no idea which way to go. They are helpless. What a lost child desperately needs is for someone else to come and save them. In the same way, a person separated from God is just as hopelessly lost and more desperately in need of being saved. What they need is for someone to come and show them the way to go too. That's the reason why Jesus came to earth. Jesus came "to seek and to save that which was lost"(Luke 19:10). He came to save us from our sins.

All people are sinners and consequently they are all separated from God by their sins. Because of their separation from God, they are all lost and they don't know where to go. The only way any of them can be saved is through Jesus Christ. Here's how that happens. Whenever a lost person hears the gospel message, believes it and receives Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior, they become saved. Once a person is saved, they might think the reason they were saved was because they decided to believe in Jesus. However the Bible says that whenever a person believes in Jesus, the decision to believe was produced in their heart by God. They never would have done that on their own. Remember they were lost. They didn't know which way to go. God had to show them the way. If you are saved now, think back to what you were like before it happened. You had no interest in following Jesus. But then one day you received Him as your Lord and Savior, and suddenly following Jesus became the most important thing in your life. That didn't happen because all at once you were a better person, or because you were smarter than you used to be. It happened because God gave you the faith to believe. Salvation is a gift from God. It is unearned favor which God gives to undeserving, hopelessly lost sinners. That's why it's called grace.

After a person has been saved by grace, God calls them into His service. Apostleship is from the Greek word apostolos, which means one who is sent. First Paul was called by God, to be an apostle. Then he was sent by God, throughout the world to preach the gospel. One of the requirements for being an apostle was that you had to have seen Jesus in person, after He was raised from the dead. Because Jesus is no longer on earth as a man, Christians today cannot be apostles. But as believers in Christ, they still have received apostleship. Every person who has been saved by God, has been sent into the world to be His witness. Some Christians are called by God to travel to different parts of the world and be a missionary, like Paul was. However God calls most Christians to work for Him right where they live now. No matter where you are, there are probably plenty of people around that you could explain the gospel to. If you have received God's grace in salvation, you are now in His service. Is your life demonstrating that? Take the time now to thank God for His amazing grace in saving you and commit yourself to be more faithful in serving Him.

Readings for today: Eph. 2:4-5, 8; John 6:44; 1 Pet. 2:9-10; 2 Cor.5:18-20