Orange Moon Cafe "Why Grace?" Part 3 - The Price

The Special of the Day… From the Orange Moon Cafe…

 

  "Why Grace?" 

 

Part 3 - The Price

 

   The grace that comes to us as the freest gift ever given necessarily cost God everything dear and precious to Him.

 

    "God… loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins" (I John 4:10).

 

    The word "propitiation" means appeasement.  A perfect, righteous, and holy God must judge sin in order to remain true to Himself.  Unlike human beings, He cannot simply overlook unrighteousness.  If He did so, He would cease to be who He is, placing His creation into certain jeopardy because the Lord could no longer be trusted.  This He cannot do, and thus, the price for sin had to be paid.  The Lord Jesus Christ did so by bearing our sins on the cross of Calvary, and even more, by being "made to be sin for us" (I Peter 2:24; II Corinthians 5:21).

 

   Why grace?  Because only thereby can God both kindly bestow His mercy and righteously execute His justice.  In Christ, the Psalmist's declaration is fulfilled: "Mercy and truth are met together.  Righteousness and peace have kissed each other" (Psalm 85:10).  The suffering and death of the Lord Jesus appeased the Divine requirement for the  administration of moral equity.  "The wages of sin is death" declares the Word of God (Romans 6:23). Somebody had to die.  Somebody did.  Christ died for our sins" (I Corinthians 15:3).  Somebody also had to make pardon possible in accordance with the love, grace, and mercy of God's nature.  Somebody did.  "But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.  By grace ye are saved" (Ephesians 2:4-5).  The price was paid, and thus, the pardon can be offered.  Only grace, the grace that gave the Savior to Calvary so that it can give Him to our hearts, makes this possible.

 

     Our Heavenly Father's perspective of what Christ did to deal with the issue of sin far transcends our understanding.  God knows His righteousness has been appeased.  He knows how perfectly His Son dealt with the challenge of atoning for our sins.  He saw every drop of blood shed by the Savior that makes possible forgiveness for every dreg of sin committed by sinners.  He knows infinitely better than we do that "the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin" (I John 1:7).  He knows the price paid by His Beloved and He knows He can righteously offer pardon to all who will receive it by faith in the Savior.  Why grace?  The Apostle Paul best answered the question…

 

"Christ Jesus, whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to declare His righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God, to declare, I say, at this time His righteousness: that He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."

(Romans 3:24-26)    

Tomorrow: Grace and the Christian life

 

Weekly Memory Verse

    "It is He that hath made us, and not we ourselves." (Psalm 100:3)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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