“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.” (Galatians 1:3–5, ESV)
When I was in Savannah, our church began a ministry in a home for children ages 7-17. We began this at Christmas time with a puppet show for the kids. At the conclusion we had about two-dozen kids indicate a desire to trust Jesus for eternal life.
Following this event, our contact in the home called me and indicated that the director wanted to speak with me. So, I went to the meeting. In short, the director wanted us to come every Sunday and conduct a worship time for the kids.
After this meeting I sat with our contact person who was in charge of the school inside the facility. In our short conversation, he made a strange statement. He stated, “I wish I was a Baptist.” I asked him to explain and he said, “If I was a Baptist, I would not have to spend time in purgatory.” He went on to say, “But I cannot understand how or why a vile person, like Adolph Hitler, could believe in Jesus a day before he died and enter heaven.”
Then I explained a very important point about God’s grace and its connection to bringing glory to Him. I explained that the more God extends grace and mercy to the undeserving, the more that He is glorified.
Imagine that two benefactors lent two men some money. One lent one-dollar to a man and the other lent one-million-dollars to another man. Both men asked to be forgiven their debt and each benefactor did so. You might say, “Oh, forgiving one dollar is nothing. A dollar is just chump change.” Yet you would never say this about the man who forgave a debt of one-million-dollars. You would say that that man was a saint, that he was extremely magnanimous. The man who forgave one-dollar would receive some recognition, but nothing even close to the praise the man would receive who forgave a one-million-dollar debt.
The manifestation of God’s grace, His unmerited favor that He grants to the underserving brings glory to Him.
Paul wrote in this introduction that Christ “gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.”
The amazing grace of God seen in the work of Jesus dying on the cross to save the wretched is an eternal testimony that brings glory to God. The church, which is the assembly of all who have been saved will stand forever as an eternal display of God’s glory.
Renewing the Heart 