The Riches of His Grace

Ephesians 1:7-8, Part 2

Jesus’ atoning blood is evidence that God is just and that He deals very strongly with sin. Messiah’s death satisfied God’s justice and integrity. He is now free to love us to the utmost degree because sin is no longer a barrier between us and Him.

No one can ever stand in the shadow of the cross and argue that God takes sin lightly. This gory episode in human history speaks to the fact that God will never put up with evil. All have sinned—you have and so have I—but the cross argues for us; the blood liberates us. Our account is stamped “Paid in full,” and God now fully accepts us in the Messiah. It reminds me of the words of the old hymn “It Is Well with My Soul”:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

This marvelous truth is what Paul called, “The riches of His grace” (Ephesians 1:7). God did it all. We have all done nothing to deserve it or merit it in any way. We have not even added to it.

We owe everything to the riches of God’s grace, “which He lavished on us” (Ephesians 1:8). When Paul said that God has “lavished” His riches on us, he is drawing a word picture of riches that are heaped onto us way beyond measure. Paul was illustrating how God washed us clean at the moment of our salvation, but also continues to cleanse and liberate us throughout our lives. Though we are now God’s adopted children, we are still prone to sin and failure in the flesh, yet God continues to lavish His riches of grace and forgiveness upon us.

When we, as believers, stumble and cover ourselves with the filth and grime of sin, He picks us up, dusts us off, forgives us, and restores us to our proper service for Him. God’s forgiveness is ever-present and graciously granted to us throughout each new day and throughout our lives. It is a magnificent sense of liberation that we receive daily, new and fresh every morning (Lamentations 3:22–23). 

Again and again, as we walk with the Lord, we can experience the joy of being set free and restored to usefulness. We are not second-class citizens of heaven, but full-fledged children of the living God.

Because He freely accepts us, we are free to forgive ourselves.

Some may say, “Well, if God is so easily forgiving, then I can sin all I want, knowing that God will always ‘let bygones be bygones,’ right?” Wrong. If that is someone’s attitude toward the grace of God, then it may well be that they have never truly experienced His forgiveness! Those who truthfully know God’s forgiveness would never take it so lightly. 

Grace is something to be accepted in awe and reverence, not exploited or trampled underfoot. As Paul wrote, “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin live in it?” (Romans 6:1–2).

For those who follow God, there is no agony like the agony of guilt. Nothing haunts the soul like the shame of sin. At the same time, nothing liberates the soul like the knowledge of God’s forgiveness and the experience of God’s wholeness—His shalom.

Once we have been set free from sin, why would we ever want to go back into bondage and struggle under that awful, crushing load again? Thank God, we have been set free by the work of the Son upon the cross.