By: Dale Weckbacher
Ephesians 2:8-9
For by grace you
have been saved through faith. And this is not your own
doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result
of works, so that no one may boast.
(ESV)
As the Christmas season approaches, it is a time when people
are both busy and stressed out but also full of joy as they anticipate the joys
which come at Christmas time. Many of us
are stressed with buying gifts, wondering if the late gifts we ordered online
will arrive on time. We stress when we
drive into the parking lot of the store and realize we must trek for what seems
like miles to the front door of the store.
In the stores, it seems like wall-to-wall people all stressed out as we
are and let us not forget the stressed-out store employees working long hours
while trying to maintain their cheerful attitudes.
However, we can also find joy this time of year in giving
gifts to those we love and receiving gifts given out of love from others. Many of us also find joy in having a few days
off work. Still others find joy in
either traveling to see family of having family traveling to see them. My prayer for my readers is that they can
focus on the joyful parts of the season and allow these joys to help them
through the stressful parts of the season.
The year is also thankfully coming to a close. While the year has been a roller coaster ride
with a contentious Presidential election in the United States and other parts
of the world, the year ends with hope that things will improve. However, not everyone shares my optimism,
like Michele Obama who has said the United States is heading into a time of
hopelessness after the Donald Trump electoral victory. (1) However, I, and I hope my readers, am
approaching the coming year with hope it will be better than the past year.
Dionne Warwick made famous the song “What the World Needs
Now Is Love.” While love is the
ingredient necessary to change the hearts of people across the world and bring
about lasting change, only one type of love is sufficient to bring about this
change. That love is the love of God our
creator that was made available to everyone through the grace of God when he
sent the world his only begotten son. What
the world really needs now, in fact what the world has needed since the fall of
Adam and Eve from the Garden is grace God’s grace.
The good news is that God’s grace is free for Jesus already
paid the price through his death on Calvary.
This is great news for us all for due to the fall of Adam and Eve, we
are born under the curse of sin (Ephesians 2:1-3) and therefore need to accept
this free gift to be saved. Failure to
do so leaves us under the curse of sin with the penalty of death (Romans 6:23).
This gift is not something God was required to give for God
could have evicted Adam and Eve from the garden and left them to die in their
sins. Fortunately, God has great love
for humanity and thus created a path through Jesus Christ for humanity to be
saved and restored humanity to the position he intended at creation (Ephesians2:4-7).
For this reason, Paul could write in Ephesians 2:8-9 that
our salvation is not the result of our own good works but the work of God’s Son
Jesus Christ on the cross. This does not
mean we should abandon our good works for they most likely serve to improve
humanity but instead changes the purpose of our good from trying to earn
salvation to an expression our love for Jesus Christ and sharing that love with
others in need of God’s salvation.
This is the greatest joy one can experience both during the
Christmas season and throughout the rest of the year. I therefore want to share this great gift
with anyone reading this who has yet to unwrap it by taking a moment to pray
with me,
Dear Lord Jesus, I know I have sinned
(Romans 3:23) and know that the penalty for my sin is death (Romans 6:23). I ask you to forgive me of my sin and cleanse
me as you promise in your Word (1 John 1:9).
I believe you died, was buried, and resurrected from the dead and now
declare you Lord of my life.
Many of us are guilty of re-gifting a gift we did not
like. However, I want to encourage
everyone to freely re-gift the gift of salvation from God by sharing the good
news of what God has done for you with others.
While re-gifting usually results in our losing the gift given to us,
when we re-gift the gift of salvation with others, we do not lose our own
salvation but instead multiply it. When
we do, we will be giving others what they need most, grace God’s grace.
Merry Christmas everyone.
1. Staff, WITW. Michelle Obama says America is
entering a time of hopelessness. nytlive.nytimes.com. [Online] The New
York Times, December 16, 2016. [Cited: December 17, 2016.] http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2016/12/16/michelle-obama-says-america-is-entering-a-time-of-hopelessness/.
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