I have been studying Romans in my devotions and it has been wonderfully refreshing and convicting. In my busy, crowded world, I tend to lose sight of my riches in Christ. The basic truths of my salvation slip out under my radar, and I forget what an incredible gift my eternal salvation is. To sit and ponder just for a minute what Christ has done for me -- wretched, miserable, emotional me -- makes me realize how real and yet how unfathomable is His grace.
All is grace. Everything above hell is grace.
In Romans 5, the Apostle Paul uses the wonderful little phrase "much more."
"Much more, then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him" (vs. 9).
"For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by His life" (vs. 10).
"But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many" (vs. 15).
"For if by one man's offence death reigned by one: much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ" (vs. 17).
And my favorite. "But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound" (vs. 20).
Much more. Abounding. Christ offers us so much more in Him. He went above and beyond, surpassing anything we ever deserved, even to the point of giving us that which we did not deserve. Dr. McGee writes, "As we go through [Chapter 5], we will notice an expression that is very meaningful. It is 'much more.' What Paul is going to say is that we have 'much more' in Christ than we lost in Adam" (author's emphasis).
God, in His mercy, did not give us what we deserved. God, in His grace, gave us what we did not deserve. "As mercy is God's goodness confronting human misery and guilt, so grace is His goodness directed toward human debt and demerit. It is by His grace that God imputes merit where none previously existed and declares no debt to be where one had been before" (A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy).
The debt I owed, the price I deserved to pay was paid in full by Christ at Calvary. His precious blood provided the necessary redemption for my sin (I Peter 1:18-19).
Christ took what I deserved, but did not stop there. He gave me much more -- what I did not deserve. "Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines Him to bestow benefits upon the undeserving....Its use to us sinful men is to save us and make us sit together in heavenly places to demonstrate to the ages the exceeding riches of God's kindness to us in Christ Jesus. We benefit eternally by God's being just what He is. Because He is what He is, He lifts up our heads out of the prison house, changes our prison garments for royal robes, and makes us to eat bread continually before Him all the days of our lives" (Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy).
Because of what Christ has done for me, I can boldly approach the throne of grace. I am called a child of God and a saint. When God looks at me, He sees the righteousness of Christ. Oh, how wonderful, oh, how marvelous is my Saviour's love for me.
"For ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty might be rich" (II Corinthians 8:9).
"We can never know the enormity of our sin, neither is it necessary
that we should. What we can know is that 'where sin abounded,
grace did much more abound.' To abound in sin: that is the worst
and the most we could or can do. The word abound defines the limit
of our finite abilities; and although we feel our iniquities rise over us
like a mountain, the mountain, nevertheless, has definable boundaries:
it is so large, so high, it weighs only this certain amount and no more.
But who shall define the limitless grace of God? Its 'much more'
plunges our thoughts into infinitude and confounds them there.
All thanks be to God for grace abounding."
- A.W. Tozer, The Knowledge of the Holy
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