The gospel: Free

“I’m searching for God.”

“I found God.”  

We often hear these statements, don’t we? But true conversion is always that God found us. Jesus seeks and saves. In Galatians 1:15 Paul says that God “called me by His grace.” Our part is to receive the free gift of grace. That is what it means to believe the gospel.

The true gospel is free.

The true gospel is the gospel of grace. Grace by definition is a free gift. It cannot be earned or paid for or it’s no longer grace.

If we believe that we are somehow responsible for our own salvation we don’t understand the FREE gift of grace. We don’t really understand the gospel.

So Paul, in Galatians 1, understood that His salvation was a free gift. Paul was not looking for Jesus, Paul was going the opposite direction of grace and yet grace found him and turned his life around.

Religion is man’s attempt to earn his way up to God. We try to make ourselves the hero. In the gospel of grace, God does what we could never do. He reaches down from heaven and gathers us up to Him because of grace. He comes to us because we could never earn our way to Him.

Jesus is the hero of the story.

And that’s not just Paul’s story:   Every single one of us who has believed the gospel have been save by grace when we were going the opposite direction.

That’s how He found me.

I wasn’t seeking God. At all. I had tucked God in my back pocket and was content to live a self-centered, pleasure-pursuing, outwardly-righteous life. At 18-years-old everything on the outside looked great, but I was well on my way to becoming the god of my own life, and I now shudder to think of where that would have taken me.

Paul was on his way to a ruinous life. And so was I.

But God. (de theos)

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ  … for by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. (Eph 2:4-9)

But God came after me. But the FREE gospel rescued me. I was going the opposite direction and He arrested my life into His service.

Jeff’s story is the same. He literally ditched the guy who was supposed to talk to Jeff about God. Jeff ran away from God, was not seeking Him, and yet God, through this campus missionary, sought after him, came to Jeff’s house, came to his room, sat down and told Jeff the glorious good news of the gospel. He believed the gospel and was saved. By grace.

By grace you have been saved.  No matter what your story, if you have believed the gospel, you have received a FREE gift, you have not earned it. The gospel is free.

How does that impact you today?

 {Thanks for reading.}