Welcome to the In Touch podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, April 21st.

People often wonder what they have to do to be a Christian.

The good news is that all the work that's required for salvation has already been done by Jesus.

Well, grace is free, but it is not cheap.

And there's a difference between being cheap and being free.

You see, the cry of cheap grace is man's attempt to defend this prideful insistence on doing something to help God or to add to what God has done for him. You see, grace is God's goodness and graciousness toward us without regard to merit or worth on our part and in spite of

what we deserve. But there is something inside of us that somehow feels better if we think that we

can help God or if we think that we can help God, or if we think that we made a

contribution, or that it wasn't just all of him, but that somehow we helped him. When it comes

to forgiveness of sin, salvation, the fullness of the Holy Spirit, that's not a single solitary

thing we can do. That's what I'm going to talk about in this message.

The high cost of the grace of God.

Free to us, but not free to him.

No cost to us, but a high cost to him.

It isn't cheap grace.

It's free grace, but given at a high cost.

And Paul describes this in one single verse in 2 Corinthians chapter 8.

So if you'll turn there, and let's think about this in terms of that title, the high cost of God's grace.

In the 8th chapter of 2nd Corinthians, right in the middle of a passage of scripture or two chapters here to deal

with the grace of God in the area of giving and how God promises to bless and so forth.

Listen to what he says in this ninth verse.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor,

...