Eleventh Avenue Church
 

The following is reprinted with permission of The Timely Messenger

ABOUNDING GRACE


In the Word of God following the statement in Romans 5:20, "where sin abounded grace did much more abound," this question is asked:

"What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

"Christ died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them and rose again."
II Corinthians 5:15.

"For in that Christ died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God." Romans 6:10.

"Christ died for our sins."

If Christ, by the grace of God, tasted death for every man then, by that same grace of God every believer is dead unto sin. Very few of God's people have fully appreciated, or even appropriated, the blessed truth of identification; that is, the glorious fact that the redeemed sinner is identified with Christ in death, burial, and resurrection. He has been baptized into the death of Christ; and by the same Divine baptism he has been raised to walk in newness of life. He is also seated with Christ where Christ is, far above principality, power, and dominion. Ephesians 1:20 and 2:6.

It is very interesting to study the 4 'much more's" in the fifth chapter of Romans, and learn that God's grace is altogether sufficient for every, task, every test, every trial, every temptation, every tribulation, and every thorn of every believer. What a wonderful statement we have in II Corinthians 9:8,

"God is able to make all grace abound toward you; that ye, always having all sufficiency, in all things, may abound to every good work"

Surely this super-abounding, inexhaustible grace, this ample provision for all things, leaves all believers without excuse. When the child of
God blunders and fails, stumbles and falls, it is not because of any shortage of Divine grace. This marvelous provision for the believer's spiritual life of victory is definitely stated in Titus 2:11 to 13, which we quote:

"For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, -teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ."

And when that blessed hope is realized, believers shall be saved :from the very presence of sin. They shall then appear with Christ in glory and come into a new realization of that eternity of grace expressed in Ephesians 2:7; "in the ages to come He might shew the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through Christ Jesus."

-Selected.


July 2001 Edition Contents
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