What comes to mind when you hear the phrase “God’s grace?” Perhaps your mind is immediately compelled to think about all of the sins you’ve committed in your life and how the Lord has graciously saved you from the penalty you deserved for that sin. Maybe you also think about how His grace sustains you every single day to live according to His will and not continue being enslaved to your sin.
Both of those are foundational to understanding how God’s grace comes to us and transforms our lives for eternity. And still, there is more to his grace than even those amazing truths. Admittedly, there is infinitely more to God’s grace than we will ever know or be able to search out. For now, I want to call your attention to an aspect of God’s grace that I believe we don’t give enough attention to. I want us to consider how God, in His grace, allows us to experience abundant life in our obedience.
Maybe that last sentence didn’t immediately make sense to you or cause you to fully understand what I’m trying to get at here so let me explain. God, in His grace, has saved us, and in His grace, He sanctifies us, but have you ever thought about the fact that on top of all of that, He graciously allows us to experience overwhelming joy in our obedience? In other words, God has not simply given us rules to live by so that we don’t experience His judgment - His Law actually leads us to life abundantly itself - and that, I believe is also part of His grace to us.
Psalm 119 is a great passage that teaches us the joy of walking in God’s Law. I would encourage you to read through it (yes, I know it’s really long, but I’m willing to bet it will take you less time than it took you to scroll through Facebook or Tik Tok earlier). I do want to pull out one verse for now and focus on it:
“If your law had not been my delight,
I would have perished in my affliction.”
Psalm 119:92
David is saying that when difficult times come and we choose to delight in God’s Law, we will not perish. I think some of us believe that obedience to God’s Word is something that we have to force ourselves into joylessly. While there are certainly times we must obey even when we don’t feel like it, I believe God’s grace meets us to show us the true joy of walking in His commands. That even during hard times of affliction, we can have immense joy as we walk in His ways. Because while sin offers temporary pleasure, obedience to Christ is an eternal fountain of joy and satisfaction that will never fade.
God is worthy of our obedience, and because He is God and we are His creatures, He deserves our obedience. At the same time, He graciously allows us to find pleasure in our obedience to Him. Kings and rulers all throughout history have commanded their subjects to blindly obey whether they have wanted to or not while the King of Kings has given us commands that lead to life and eternal satisfaction. Praise Him for His grace in leading us to abundant life through His perfect precepts!