Monday, June 7, 2010

Grace - The End

Revelation 22:21 - "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."

The Bible is a multi faceted book, with a variety of topics and issues thtat it addresses throughout it's pages. It is 66 books, 1,189 chapters and 31,102 verses. While the book is obviously about God (and His relationship to man), in choosing a statement to summarize the message it attempts to convey, it can be a bit cahllenging until we come to the last verse of the Bible, Revelation 22:21.

This last statement utterred in scripture pronounces to us God's desire for all of us on the planet. It is His desire that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with all of us. In those individual words are a plethora of concepts which explore the limitless measure of God's love for mankind.

Grace - The unmerited, unearned favor and empowerment of God (which brings salvation - Titus 2)
Lord - The one who rules over and governs the course of our lives.
Jesus - God in human flesh who dies for our sins
Christ - The anointed one
Be - Have a permanent state of residence in our lives
all - This is for everybody
amen - so be it

When God wanted to finish the book that he penned through the hands of men, he summarizes it's contents in one sentence by saying "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen." Grace is the end.

So quit striving, working, laboring and toiling to earn God's favor. Receive by faith the grace which will enable you to stand to rest in the presence of God.

The end.