How To Value Grace

Several years ago the cell phone industry gave out free phones if you’d sign a contract with them. They also offered buy one get one free offers all the time. For the most part, they have abandoned that practice of selling phones for one simple reason: customers didn’t value the devices. Even though that device was worth several hundred dollars, because it was free to the customer, they treated it poorly thinking, “It’s a free phone. If anything happens to it, I’ll just go get another one.” Now customers are charged hundreds of dollars for the devices and they take better care of them.

I wonder if we’ve done the same thing with God’s grace. Do we treated it poorly because it is given to us freely? While it really doesn’t cost us anything to accept it, it did cost God His only son. When we face temptation, we think, “God will forgive me. I’ll just ask for forgiveness later.” We get an “it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission” attitude with God. Because grace is free to us, we don’t value it like we should. We know that the more we sin or fail God, the more abundant God’s grace is. There is enough to cover our sins, no matter how bad they are.

Paul must have been experiencing the same lack of appreciation for God’s grace with the Roman believers. In Romans 6:1-2 he wrote, “Should we keep on sinning so that God can show us more and more of His wonderful grace? Of course not!” He knew how valuable God’s grace was and it upset him that people just treated it as commonplace. It bothered Him that people used the free gift of grace to live their lives in sin apart from the way God wanted them to live. He saw that they placed no value on what grace really cost.

It’s easy to devalue something that is free to us. It’s in our nature to treat it poorly. Unlike the cell phone companies, God is not going to start charging you more for His grace. Ephesians 2:8-9 says, “For it is by free grace (God’s unmerited favor) that you are saved (delivered from judgment and made partakers of Christ’s salvation) through [your] faith. And this [salvation] is not of yourselves [of your own doing, it came not through your own striving], but it is the gift of God; Not because of works [not the fulfillment of the Law’s demands], lest any man should boast. [It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no one can pride himself in it or take glory to himself] (AMP).”

We can’t earn God’s grace or salvation by doing things. Since the price was paid by the death of Jesus on the cross, it has been made free to us. It’s paid for. We simply need to find a way to value it in our lives and to learn to not treat it like it didn’t cost anything. If we consider what grace cost Christ each time we’re faced with temptation and ask ourselves, “Is doing this worth a nail in the hands of Jesus,” we’ll learn to value it more and follow through with temptation less. We’ll find that we will live like He asked us to and place a higher value on something that cost Him so much.