You Need Grace For Success.

You who are trying to be justified by the law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. – Gal. 5:4 NIV

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The Almighty God had created and formed man that he named Adam and placed him in the garden of Eden – Gen. 1:26-27. He was to later form a help mate, who Adam called a woman and named Eve, and both of them lived together in the garden with strict instructions from Jehovah that they could eat from all the trees in the garden aside from the fruit of the one in the middle of the garden – Gen. 2:8-23. However, following the deceptive advice of Lucifer who was exploiting the  crafty personality of the serpent, they contravened the instruction of Jehovah and were consequently driven out from His presence – Gen. 3:1-24.

The Almighty God, due to His love for man and His desire to have man reconciled to Himself prescribed several laws and ordinances that He felt would help to achieve his intention but none of those was successful in bringing man back to His presence, so He thought of a once and for all solution – Lev. 1:1-7:38; Jn. 3:16. He offered His only Son, who incarnated into a man, that came into the world through the virgin Mary, as the lamb to cleanse both already committed and yet to be committed sins of men. All anyone who desires to benefit from the sacrifice need do was to accept this Lamb of God as Lord and Saviour, in which case such will have resolved to adhere strictly to all the teachings of Jesus Christ which includes completely loving and worshipping Jehovah exclusively and loving others as themselves – Jn. 14:6; Matt. 22:37-40; Acts 3:11-26. By this action of Jehovah, He had concluded that the old ordinances were not effective even though He did not deter anyone from still practicing them if they so wish – Heb. 8:7. It is just that those ordinances would not be able to achieve the purpose for which they were established – Matt. 5:17-20.

Being aware of this information, Evangelists like the Apostle Paul took a decision, and following the directives of Jesus Christ when he was departing this realm, to go round the world sharing this good news of Jehovah’s improvement to his solution for the reconciliation of man to Himself – Mk. 15:15-16. Not only is this plan very effective, it was not expensive and was less stressful for anyone who chose to accept it. All it required was for an individual to believe, and operate in that belief that this solution of Jehovah was all that was required to restore man to the peace that was always available in the Garden of Eden – 1Jn. 5:1-12. This was the message that Apostle Paul spent time extensively and on two different occasions, delivering to the Galatians and he felt convinced that he had done a great job – Acts 13:14-14:20; 16:1-5. More so, the Galatians were already giving testimonies of how they were receiving the Holy Spirit and how the Spirit was working great miracles in their life – Gal. 3:1-5.

So, he was more than surprised when he heard that some adherents of this old order, which Jehovah had concluded was never going to achieve the purpose for which He established them, had successfully convinced them to swap the perfect solution they received through his Evangelism efforts in their midst, for one that will never achieve the ultimate goal and intention of the law-giver. Not only must he have felt the need to protect all that he had invested in the Galatians, but also felt the loss that such a decision by them will be to the objective of harvesting souls into God’s kingdom. He thus concluded that they must be foolish to have accepted such and in the scripture that is the foundation of today’s Devotional made them see the implication of such a decision. It was a decision that was going to separate them immediately from Christ, resulting in their losing access to Grace. It was not going to be possible for them to operate in both the old order and the new one at the same time. They were either going to be for Christ or away from him but the implication of the latter was the loss of Grace. The Grace is the undeserved favour that comes to all those who have chosen the option of the new solution that Jehovah prescribed. The Grace not to be credited with the wages of sin, which will always be part of man for as long as man remains in flesh – Psa. 51:5; 1Jn. 1:8. The Grace of having the blood shed on Calvary but which flows endlessly, to constantly wash away all sins, thus presenting such an individual as perfect before man and God – Heb. 9:13-14. Perfection means all that such a person does will always be total and complete, not because such a person is sufficiently skilled to be that way, but because the imperfections of such is instantly perfected by an unseen power. The result of such interventions by Grace is a victorious and peaceful life in this world and assurance of same in the life to come. No other solution provided access to this Grace than the one that Jehovah Himself prescribed and that is the basis on which the true Christian should operate.

The Christian today must realize that it is simply inefficient to put new wine in an old wine skin just as it is not efficient to patch an old fabric with a new one – Mk. 2:21-22. Attempting to operate in both doctrines without filtering what is relevant to the new from the old, and discarding all that is no longer useful to the practice of the requirements of the new order, will make the Believer operate a life without Grace and there is very little that a life without Grace can achieve, in terms of success and progress, in this world and in the world to come.

As much as Jesus Christ did not come to abolish the old but to improve on it (Matt. 17-20), the Christian today needs wisdom to be able to identify, in all situations, what needs to be accepted and what needs to be discarded. This will only be with the help of the Holy Spirit since he only has the mind of Jehovah God in all situations – 1Cor. 2:11-16. That is when he/she can live a fulfilled life in this realm and still reign with Him in His kingdom. May God bestow on us all the wisdom to achieve such noble objectives in Jesus name. Amen.