6TH DECEMBER, 2022
PASTOR OLUBI JOHNSON
GOD’S MERCY, GRACE AND SOVEREIGNTY
Acts 10:1-2, 4 (KJV)
There was a certain man in Caesarea called Cornelius, a centurion of the band called the Italian band, A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.
And when he looked on him, he was afraid, and said, What is it, Lord? And he said unto him, Thy prayers and thine alms are come up for a memorial before God.
The fear of God and integrity: honesty of heart, causes the mercy of God upon our lives to increase. Cornelius, a Roman centurion who feared God and prayed regularly to the God he did not yet know (Eph. 2.12), got born-again and filled with Holy Spirit by the mercy of God, exercised in God’s sovereignty, by letting him have a vision to send for Peter. Also, God in His sovereignty allowed Peter to see a vision that caused him to agree to go to the house of a Gentile (Acts 10:24-29; 34-36; 44-46).
The grace of God is the unmerited favour we get from God through the Lord Jesus, that causes God to minister His divine life to us from the inside: through our born-again spirits, enabling us to labour in the Spirit to do the will of God (Psa. 30:5).
Mercy, on the other hand, is the compassion of God towards men that causes Him to give us divine life from the outside: from the air, to save us from destruction and enable us to be faithful to the end, when the weaknesses of our flesh would have caused us to be unfaithful (Lam. 3:22).
We increase the grace of God in our lives by humility: submitting to the will of God when you don’t feel like it, and diligence: applying concentration and strength in doing the will of God (1Pt. 5:5).
For example, God showed mercy, in His sovereignty, to Abimelech, a Gentile king, who had taken Sarah, Abraham’s wife, into his harem, thinking she was Abraham’s sister. God did not allow Him to commit adultery with Sarah because of the integrity of his heart (Gen. 20:2-6).
It is instructive to observe that there are many people like Cornelius and Abimelech today, who have integrity of heart and the fear of God and are not yet born-again through Jesus Christ (Jn. 10.16). They may be Moslems, Buddhists, Hindu etc. However, God moves in their lives sovereignly in His mercy, and will ultimately get them born-again.
So we see that humility and diligence will increase the grace of God upon our lives, while honesty or integrity of heart and the fear of God, will increase the mercy of God upon our lives.
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