{"id":13724,"date":"2024-09-16T09:21:36","date_gmt":"2024-09-16T15:21:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theclarion.org\/?p=13724"},"modified":"2024-09-16T09:21:36","modified_gmt":"2024-09-16T15:21:36","slug":"thoughts-from-the-bible-183","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/?p=13724","title":{"rendered":"Thoughts from The Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"

Grace and Peace<\/strong>
\nby Sarah Wootten Corinth Missionary Baptist Church<\/em><\/p>\n

When was the last time you stopped and looked at the moon? For me, it was last night. My almost two year old niece is fascinated by the moon. Every night we go to the laundry room window and gaze up at the sky. She tells me that the moon is yellow, and I\u2019ll sing a song while we watch. Then, we say, \u201cNight, night moon\u201d and go back to playing or reading.
\nChildlike wonder is an amazing thing to watch. I guess it is unsustainable for us adults to be amazed over everything like toddlers. After all, we have jobs, families, and other responsibilities that demand our attention. My concern is that we\u2019re too easily bored by what seems normal. The moon has been doing the same thing it has always done since the day we were born, so it\u2019s likely lost its luster to us. I hope we don\u2019t do the same thing with the truths of Scripture. Today, we come to a verse that is so normal and repeated that I\u2019m afraid we have forgotten how amazing it is.
\nAs we finish looking at Paul\u2019s greeting to the church of God at Corinth, we come to a simple, yet rich, sentence. It reads, \u201cGrace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ,\u201d (1 Corinthians 1:3, ESV). This sentence is found in every one of Paul\u2019s letters with some slight variations, so we may have a tendency to gloss over it like I did the moon before Annie began pulling me to the window every night. But His grace and peace is truly something worth slowing down and marveling at.<\/p>\n

God, who created the universe and all it contains, came as a man to the earth as a humble servant. We would expect Him to reign from a throne, yet He served and lived among mankind. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet He never succumbed to that temptation. He taught the truth, healed the sick, and raised the dead. He was never unjust or selfish towards anyone. Yet, when mankind in his sinfulness was presented with the One who is perfectly good, we killed Him. When given the One who is holy, we tried to eradicate Him because we are evil. In our sin, we are violent enemies of God. And this is why Jesus came to die \u2013 to save His enemies. We owed a debt of death. Jesus came and paid that debt for us through His own death and reconciled to God all who trust in Him (Colossians 1:21-22). Enemies don\u2019t pay debts for one another. Yet while we hated God, He loved us and paid the debt of death that we owed. This is an act of God\u2019s amazing grace.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t end there. All who trust in Jesus have been reconciled to God. We are no longer considered enemies of God; instead, we are His children. We enjoy eternal peace with God because of what Christ has done in removing our guilt of sin. There is no part of me that deserves to have peace with God and access to Him through faith, and yet, by God\u2019s grace, I do (Romans 5:1-2).
\nAs Paul opens his letter to the Corinthians, he reminds them of this grace and peace that they have received. The believers at Corinth had a lot of problems going on. They were following man instead of God. They thought too little of holiness and too much of power. They were trying to put people with positions, money, or giftings on platforms that they may be exalted. Lord willing, we\u2019re going to dive into each of these problems in the coming months. And as we\u2019ll see, if they truly understood the grace that they had received, many of these problems would have never occurred. Paul is going to teach the Corinthians how the gospel is the answer to the issues they were facing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Grace and Peace by Sarah Wootten Corinth Missionary Baptist Church When was the last time you stopped and looked at the moon? For me, it was last night. My almost two year old niece is fascinated by the moon. Every night we go to the laundry room window and gaze up at the sky. She […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tho"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13724"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13725,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13724\/revisions\/13725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/test.theclarion.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}