The Gift

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May 1, 2016 2374

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8)

Recently I was reading through my emails and in one of them, I was offered a gift. It was actually a gift card offered as part of a marketing scheme by a business. However, underneath the big headline there were two small words, which read Conditions Apply. Frankly, I wasn’t surprised. Businesses don’t just give you something and if there hadn’t been a “catch” I would have been suspicious.

But the same thing can happen with God’s grace. We can fall into the trap of looking for the “catch”. We can search for the conditions apply, assuming that they must be there. And people can try to meet these assumed conditions, thinking that if only they try hard enough or are good enough they can earn grace – that they can receive this gift.

You see, there is a difference with God, though. There is no conditions apply written after “…it is a gift of God (Eph 2:8). Of course conditions did apply, but we don’t have to meet them – we couldn’t even if we tried. Jesus met them for us on the cross. We can never earn salvation; we can only accept it through faith. By grace God gives us this free gift.