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The Rev Andries Combrink is a Presbyterian Minister of the Gospel. He lives in Centurion, South Africa.

To teach the Word of God is his calling, based on the Reformed tradition.

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Matthew 4: 4

"Man shall not live by bread alone,

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Only by the grace of God!

Sep 23

Written by: Andries
Wednesday, September 23, 2020 2:25:23 AM

The Lord told Paul that in spite of his “thorn in the flesh”, God’s grace is sufficient for him. God’s grace speaks of the truth that we receive the mercy and love of God even though we can never “deserve” it through anything we do by our own initiative, but share in its holy work in us only through faith, a gift of the Holy Spirit.

This is the very heartbeat of our Christian heritage.

We read some important Gospel-truth about grace in 2 Corinthians 12: 7 – 10:

“Therefore, in order to keep me from becoming conceited, I was given a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me. Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

How did God’s grace make a difference in Paul’s life? How did it meet his needs?

1. Grace could meet Paul’s needs because it expresses God’s acceptance and pleasure in us. When we freely and without merit receive God’s grace, we enjoy the status of favour and approval in God’s eyes. Grace means that God loves us, that he is favourably inclined towards us; we have his acceptance and his promise of caring for us always.

2. Grace could meet Paul’s need because it was available to him all the time. When we sin, fail or doubt, or fall short, it does not put us outside of the reach of God’s grace. Since grace is given freely to us in Jesus, it can’t be taken away because we stumbled. When we hold close the sovereign grace of God, we respond to his grace with faith that grants us salvation through faith in the Gospel, the Good News about salvation and redemption through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God’s Son. His grace is ever ready to meet and minister to our insufficiencies.

3. Grace could meet Paul’s need because it is the very strength of God. So much of the power of this world is expressed in things and in ways that bring harm and destruction to us, to the world we live in and to God’s work. It happens when we take a worldly perspective about authority, spiritual power and strength, and deny God’s truth about the almighty strength of grace and love.

God’s grace is not weakness or the tolerance of impurity.

Instead, it is the power of God to fully and completely give what we lack.

Being spiritually pretentious and conceited kills the working of God’s power through our attempted witness and our lives.

But to trust in God and through faith embrace his eternal grace, enables us to be true vessels of his love, and as such, of his power!

Ephesians 2: 8 – 10:

⁸For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God — ⁹not by works, so that no one can boast. ¹⁰For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

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