The Humbling Reality of Grace

• Printable Version - Share on Facebook - Posted by Pastor Marty Pena February 9, 2017 - Filed in Teachings - 1,390 views

  As received from the Holy Spirit...2 Corinthians 1:2 Grace be to you and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; 4 Who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble, by the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God. 5 For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also abounds by Christ. 6 And whether we being afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we are comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. 7 And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing, that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so shall you be also of the consolation. 8 For we would not, brethren, have you ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, above strength, so that we despaired even of life: 9 But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead.

  It is only as you are stripped by God personally and as you are completely exposed in His Presence and brought to the very end of yourself that you understand the amazing power and the humbling gift that grace actually is. We so have absolutely NOTHING to boast within ourselves except to boast in the Lord and all that He has wrought and accomplished in us.

  Isaiah 26:12 LORD, You will ordain peace for us: for You also have wrought all our works in us.

  Self-righteousness is an ugly monster that puts its victim in a deceptive state of self-importance. It causes a person to elevate themselves above others through vain conceit. It causes a person to be puffed up through self-deception and makes them think that they have attained a state of spiritual superiority through self-effort. This state of hypocrisy causes a person to be easily critical and judgmental of others who doesn't seem to match their own state or standard of self-righteousness or self-importance.

  It matches the prideful attitude of the prideful Pharisee in Luke 18.

  10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a tax collector. 11 The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank you, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this tax collector.

  12 I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. 13 And the tax collector, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. 14 I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for everyone that exalts himself shall be abased; and he that humbles himself shall be exalted.

  I thank God for purifying our hearts in the furnace of affliction. I thank the Lord for stripping us on this journey of death to self in the pathway of the cross so that we may learn to only boast in the Lord our God and that we learn to love and treat others with the same GRACE and COMFORT with which He continually treats us.

  It's only when the light of God's truth penetrates a person's own sinful heart that he realize and understand that without the grace of God He is nothing but a sinner as the rest of humanity.

  God did not call us to be the judge. He called us to LOVE AS HE LOVES. The self-righteous religious spirit loves to be critical and judgmental and loves to seek fault in others as with the Pharisee in Luke 18.

  LOVE UNDERSTANDS THE WEAKNESS OF THE ONES HE DIED FOR AND GIVES THEM THE GRACE THROUGH HIS POWER TO CHANGE

  The moment that you point your finger to judge or to condemn or to criticize you expose your ugly self-righteousness and sense of superiority because you seem to forget where you were when God intervened to save you.

  Isaiah 58:9 If you take away from the midst of you the yoke, the pointing of the finger, and speaking wickedness.

  1 Corinthians 4:5 Therefore judge nothing before the time, until the Lord comes, who both will bring to light the hidden things of darkness, and will make manifest the counsels of the hearts: and then shall every man have praise of God.