Read the passage: Matthew 9:9-13
Jesus doesn’t pick who’s on his team based off of what people could do for him and how they benefit him. No, his operating system is completely built on grace. Grace being God’s free, undeserved love, favour and actions toward sinners, based on who HE is and not on what people have done.
Now, if I’m being honest, in all my years of being a Christian, the idea of GRACE has been the hardest for me to accept. Because you grow up learning that is good, it is POWERFUL to earn, to be self-made, to achieve stuff for yourself. So that your name is lifted high. But grace? To freely receive something you didn’t deserve? That feels weak. And yet, that is everything Jesus is about. We want to say, “God, I’ll do it myself” but the whole point of the gospel is that we can’t, but Jesus does, and that’s not bad news. That’s reality. Christians are Sinners Saved By grace.
But a Christian who cannot understand and receive grace, becomes a Christian who starts looking for their identity, their worth, and their belovedness in places that will eventually crumble and break. Today, we’re looking at the gift of grace and I hope to reflect through the different ways we may respond to it.
As we continue in our series on Encountering Jesus, I want to ask the question, “What do you find when you encounter Jesus?”
And from our passage, we see that you find:
1) A Grace that SURPRISES
2) A Grace that TRANSFORMS
3) A Grace that OFFENDS
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