What is Grace & why do we need it?
Brothers and sisters, friends—listen to me! I’m not here today to give you a dry lecture. I’m here to shout from the rooftops about the greatest news the world has ever heard: **GRACE!** God’s astonishing, breathtaking, undeserved grace! Grace is not a polite religious word. Grace is the roaring love of God crashing into the lives of guilty, helpless sinners like you and me, rescuing us when we deserved nothing but judgment! Ephesians 2:8–9 thunders it: **“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast!”** This is the heartbeat of the gospel—God’s grace, free and glorious!
But oh, friends, to feel the weight of this grace, we must first face the darkness of our sin.
What is sin? Sin is not primarily a list of wrongdoings—though wrongdoings certainly flow from it. Sin (in its deepest biblical sense) is the **power**, the indwelling principle of rebellion that rules in every human heart that apart from Christ. It is the corrupted nature that **drives** us to commit sins—those individual acts of wrongdoing. Sin is the root; sins are the rotten fruit. It is high-handed defiance against the holy God who gave us breath, a dark force that enslaves us and makes rebellion feel natural.
And the Bible doesn’t mince words: **“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God”** (Romans 3:23). Every single one of us—yes, you, and me!
How did we get this way? Go back to the beginning. Adam, our first father, stood in the Garden as our representative. God gave him one command, and Adam **chose** to disobey. In that moment, sin—as a ruling power—entered the human race like a deadly virus. Romans 5:12 declares, **“Through one man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death spread to all men, because all sinned.”**
Hear this clearly: You and I did not become sinners because we first committed a list of individual sins. No! We were **born** with the power of sin already at work in us. We inherited this fallen, corrupted nature—this indwelling principle of sin—from Adam. His rebellion brought sin into human nature itself, and that sinful nature, with its condemning guilt and deadly power, has been passed down through every generation like a dark inheritance—straight to us. We didn’t start neutral and then choose to become sinners. We were born with the power of sin already reigning in our hearts, inclining us toward rebellion.
It is **this power of sin**—this inherited sinful nature—that separates us from God. We were born already separated from Him, spiritually dead and cut off from His life, not because of any specific wrongdoing we personally committed first, but because of the fallen nature we received from Adam. The individual sins we commit—lying, lusting, hating, rebelling—are simply the **evidence**, the outward proof that we were born in this state of separation, already estranged from our holy Creator.
Look at a little child—nobody has to teach a toddler to be selfish, to grab, to scream “Mine!” It comes naturally because the power of sin is already at work. And the proof is in our lives! We commit sins because the power of sin rules us by nature, and that power has already placed us under condemnation before a holy God. The sentence is death—eternal separation from Him. We are helpless!
That’s why we need a **Savior**! We need Someone to rescue us from this body of death, to break the power of sin over us and reconcile us to God!
And praise God—He provided that Savior! Jesus Christ, the sinless Son of God, stepped out of heaven, lived the perfect life we could never live, and then marched to the cross. There, He took **your** sin, **my** sin, upon Himself.
God poured out on His own Son the wrath we deserved! Jesus paid it **all**—every drop of the penalty! And on the third day, He rose victorious from the grave, conquering sin and death forever!
This salvation is a **free gift**! It is utterly unmerited, completely undeserved! Romans 6:23: **“The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”** You don’t work for a gift—you receive it with empty hands!
How do you receive it? By **grace alone**, through **faith alone**, in **Christ alone**! Nothing of yourself—no sacraments, no rituals, no church membership, no good deeds added. Just faith—simple, childlike trust in Jesus and what He did for you!
We must cling to the pure gospel the apostles preached in the book of Acts: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved! That’s the message that turned the world upside down in the first century.
But centuries later, men added layers—traditions, ceremonies, denominational rules. Friend, hear me: **You are not saved by belonging to any church or denomination**—Catholic, Protestant, or any other! No organization on earth can save you. Only Jesus saves!
The moment you believe the true gospel—the moment you trust Christ alone—something miraculous happens. The Holy Spirit instantly enters your heart, you are **born again** as a new creation, and for the first time you are able to truly hear God’s voice and follow Him. You are **saved forever**! Your sin debt is canceled—**paid in full** by the blood of Jesus! The power of sin is broken, you are delivered from separation and brought near to God, and you are placed into the true body of Christ, where Jesus Himself—not any pope, pastor, or priest—is the one and only Head!
This is the gospel of grace! Let me declare it plainly one more time:
- You were born separated from God because of the power of sin you inherited from Adam—spiritually dead and estranged from Him from the start.
- The sins you’ve commit are the evidence of that separation and fallen nature.
- The penalty is eternal death.
- Jesus Christ paid that penalty completely on the cross and rose again defeating the power of sin.
- God offers you full forgiveness, deliverance from sin’s power, reconciliation to Himself, and eternal life as a **free gift**.
- The instant you believe the gospel and put all your trust in Jesus Christ alone, the Holy Spirit enters your heart, you are born again, and you gain the ability to hear God’s voice and follow Him.
If you’ve never done that, **do it right now**! Cry out to Him! Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved—**forever**! The Holy Spirit will enter your heart, you will be born again, and you will pass from death to life, from darkness to light, from separation to eternal fellowship as a child of God, able to hear His voice and follow Him!
The Bible pleads, **“Now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation!”** Don’t wait another second. Jesus is calling you. Will you come? Will you trust Him today?
Let’s Pray
Father in heaven, break hearts with the reality of our separation and overwhelm them with the glory of Your grace! Draw souls to Jesus right now. Send Your Holy Spirit to make them born again, that they may hear Your voice and follow You forever. Save them eternally by Your mighty power. For the glory of Christ we pray—Amen!
- Believe this message with your whole heart today.
- Tell Jesus right now, “I trust You alone to save me.”
- He will never turn you away.
- This is the only message that saves.
- Believe it—and God will make you His child forever.
- You will be able to hear His voice and follow Him.
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In Christ’s love,
The Reach NZ Ministry Team
www.reachnz.org
