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How Galatians 2:21 Can Change Everything
Brian Mashburn
July 29, 2018
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Do You Set Aside Grace?
The word grace, at least as compared to what it means in scripture, has been cheapened a bit by its modern usage.
For example, when we pray at dinner, we call it "saying grace." When we are past a deadline, but not enough to owe a penalty, we are within the "grace period." Royalty are referred to as "his grace" or "her grace." A decisive, final blow to an idea or event is called a "coup de grace". We can be in someone's "good graces." We can be "graced" by someone's presence. We can "fall from grace" with someone. Someone can "move with grace."
Goodness gracious, there are a lot of uses of the word grace (see what I did there?). I'm not mentioning it because I have a big problem with this, generally.
But I do take issue - and I'm wondering if I have taken enough issue - with how we as Christians have cheapened the concept of grace as God intends it.
Our "Game Changer" verse for today is in a letter where we find Paul hyper-offended by those diluting the Gospel by saying it included something other than grace. It compelled him to say, confrontively and definitively, "I do not set aside the grace of God." (Galatians 2:21)
Here is my question for today. Do you?
Chances are you do. You don't set out to, and you don't intend to, but you do. The grace of God is the most unbelievable concept in all of creation. If that is true, then that makes it, well, unbelievable. So countless Christians do not believe in grace the way the Bible presents it, and so live their Christian lives with a mixture of grace and law that Paul says actually destroys the grace, and nullifies the power of Jesus dying on the cross.
My hope and prayer is that, after today, you will be like Paul and never set aside the grace of God again.