Living by Grace Today- Practical Holiness

The purpose of the grace of the gospel of the grace of Christ is a holy people who display him to the world. On the cross he purchases a people for himself who are to be zealous for good deeds. Christians eager for the things of God; believers hungry and thirsty for righteousness and who mourn their sin; those who seek his kingdom first; who have a poverty of spirit knowing daily their need for new fillings of his grace that others might see their good works and give glory to their Father in heaven.

Practical holiness is the displaying of Christ to the world. That’s what the church has lost because it has lost its grip on the doctrine of grace. The church in Crete was ungodly because it had been taught by teachers who had departed from the gospel of grace- teachers who had become man-centered in their thinking and teaching and behavior (Titus).

So what is practical holiness?  You don’t just ask Jesus to help you do good works as if you are asking him to aid your own efforts. Living by grace in the present is when you look to the past you trust by faith in all that his grace is for you on the cross and when you look to the future you trust by faith in all his promises in his word to you.

When you trust in the grace of his righteousness imputed to you and saving work on your behalf, you know that you don’t have to earn God’s love or forgiveness of your sin. Then when you receive Christ’s future promises as yours by faith, it enables you to live by grace through faith in this life. So you say with the apostle. ‘By the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me was not in vain. Nevertheless, I worked harder than any of them but it was not I but the grace of God with me’. 1Cor. 15:10