The Problem of Receiving Grace

1 Peter 5:5b … for God resisteth the proud, and giveth grace to the humble.

Psalm 138:6 Though the Lord be high, yet hath he respect unto the lowly: but the proud he knoweth afar off.

If you want to be a registered engineer, there is the matter of qualifications, training and capability. If you want to enter a school, there is the matter of standards. If you want to be a doctor in a hospital, there are the qualifications and the matter of capability. If you want to do business, there is the matter of skill. Qualifications, standards, capabilities, and skills are indeed useful in certain things. But if man wishes to come to God, qualifications, standards, capabilities, and skills are out of the question.

Only when I am a helpless, hopeless sinner, standing on the lowest ground, can I receive grace. Man misses grace not because he is too sinful, but because he is not low enough – not yet humbled. This is precisely where the greatest problem lies. We are great in all kinds of sins. At the same time, we are very great in pride. Pride is at the root of all sin. We serve ourselves as God of our lives. On the one hand, we have an absolute need; on the other hand, the ground we stand on is one on which we cannot receive the grace we need. This is due to nothing other than our pride.

God gives grace to the humble. If you humbly turn to God, as an act of confession and repentance that you are a sinner, your wrongdoings will not deter you from receiving God's grace; rather, they will cause you to receive His grace. As long as you humble yourself before God, God's grace will flow to you.

Thank God that the grace of God flows down to us; it is not pumped up to us. No one can ever pump God's grace up to himself. Therefore, all those who are high have to come down.

Even God Himself cannot fill a full glass. When we are full of our self we cannot receive, but when we are made empty, we then can receive. God will bring the high places low that they may be filled. It is in the valleys that we find water, which flows from the high place of resurrection life of God, meeting us in the low places. It is the work of God in our lives that brings us to a low place that we might receive of His loving grace. You might say we receive God’s work of prevalent grace, of being brought low, before we willingly receive His saving grace. It is God alone who saves us from our prideful self.

<END>