In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley.

Next on In Touch, the high cost of God's grace.

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 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, there's not a single solitary thing we can do. And so people

who are sort of legalistic in their feelings and people who think that the way you get accepted in the eyes of God is you live up to a standard or you live up to rules and regulations and if you live up to those, then God will accept you.

If that is your approach to the Christian life, you'll have a very, very difficult time with grace.

And secondly, what you'll do is you'll say, well, this idea of grace that it's all of God, none of me, that makes it too easy. Well, for example, if you were to say to a lost person, or if a lost person were to say to you, you mean to tell me that in order to be saved, all I have to do is to believe in Jesus? You mean to tell me that there's nothing I can do or that I should do? What about going to church and reading the Bible and praying, giving all that money? What's that got to do with it? Nothing. Wait a minute. You mean to tell me that I can be saved by simply believing? Right. You mean all I have to do is to believe? Correct. I don't have to do anything else? No. What kind of salvation is that? Free. That's the kind that is free. Well, how can it be so free? That's what I want 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 2nd Corinthians chapter 8. So if you'll turn there, 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,

that you through his poverty might become rich. I want to read that one again. Look at that.

For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus

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