Taking the Grace of God for Granted

“And if you call on him as Father who judges impartially according to each one's deeds, conduct yourselves with fear throughout the time of your exile, knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.”

(1 Peter 1:17-19)

As a people who have heard the gospel time and again, our tendency is to take it lightly. We begin to take the grace of God for granted. We begin thinking that our way of life does not matter because God loves us and will forgive us no matter what we do. We go through our day to day life assuming that God’s grace will be present in our life even though we completely disregard him.

We’re reminded of a few truths in the above passage that should cause us to think twice. They cause us to rethink our flippant attitude when it comes to God. They create within us an attitude of repentance. And they cause us to value his grace above the sin to which we desperately cling.

We’re reminded, first of all, that God judges impartially according to each one’s deeds. In other words, God doesn’t show favoritism. He’s not going to hold us to a different standard than he will others because we were raised in the church or in a Christian home. His judgment is based on his holiness and righteousness, a standard up to which none of us can live.

We’re, then, called upon to conduct ourselves with fear throughout the time of our exile, or the time of our life here in this world. We’re reminded, in these words, that this world is not our home. We are citizens of God’s kingdom, and must live as such. We must live as his representatives, as his ambassadors, until the day he calls us home.

This also means that we must live reverent lives. We must realize our place before God. And, for this reason, we must defer to the Lord in all that we do. We must seek to honor and glorify him in all things.

We are to do this knowing that our salvation came at a great price. Our sin was not something that God was able to simply overlook. It required the life of his Son. Jesus had to give his life on the cross for us, that we might be forgiven. He had to give his life, even though he knew no sin and was in no way deserving of this fate.

When we consider these truths, we realize that we cannot take God’s forgiveness and mercy for granted. We can’t count on them while we’re embracing sin and rejecting his deliverance. His grace is more valuable than anything else we could possess, and we’ll treat it as such.