Running God's Race

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
Ephesians 2 v 8
Grace is God’s race. We are running towards God, running for God, running after God, running with God in order to obtain His favour. We have opted out of our earthly rat race. We are saved not by our own merits or anything we can claim to have done or not done. God pours His grace upon us a gift. It cannot be purchased or won by our own efforts. The path we now run having been saved is the path of doing good works. Our good works do not bring us salvation but rather as we have been saved by faith in Jesus and have so obtained access to the riches of His grace. We do good works as we have tasted of the riches of His grace: His forgiveness, His kindness, His love, His trust, His power, His blessings, His protection, His provision, His guidance and enablement.

We give a gift to someone as a sign of our love and affection for that person. It costs us something and it is valuable. Similarly, God gives us the grace of salvation as a free gift. It cost Him His only Son Jesus. It is precious and extremely valuable. It is the precious stone that the merchant, in one of Jesus’s parables, would have sold all his wealth to purchase. He gave it to us to demonstrate His love for us. The temporal link between efforts and rewards , between deeds and consequences, between sins and wages, between actions and curses is broken forever. Salvation is not only an eternal experience but a daily experience. We need to experience the grace of salvation in our homes, at our workplaces and in all our relationships.

Grace is not given to us in fits and starts but is a continual experience. It is the continual fellowship meal or feast to which Jesus, the Lord of the Banquet has invited us to. To avail it we only need to hear His voice and believe His word. There are many dishes to taste of in this spiritual banquet. It will nourish us. It will strengthen us. We will enjoy the many delicacies on the Lord’s table. Our response should be to be thankful and not to treat the invitation of God to His feast in a casual or cavalier fashion. We need to run God's race using His grace.

Prateep V Philip