Grace From The God Of All Grace

The ascension positioned Jesus Christ in authority over all demonic powers. Many today seek that kind of power, the power of the anointing. But how did Jesus get there? What qualified Him for such glory and honor and power and dominion? A body was prepared for Him. (Psalm 40:6-8; Hebrews 10:5-7) Jesus was holy unto the Creator God His Father. And He was wholly His. (John 1) Jesus is God. He had no original sin, so the devil sought to tempt Him into practical sin. How so? Upon being filled with the Holy Spirit, He was led by the Spirit into the wilderness. (Luke 4; Matthew 4) Jesus would undergo testing to see if He qualified to be our Savior. He did. He refused to misuse power for personal comfort and ease, so He would not command the stone to become bread. He refused to misuse His position and throw Himself down. He refused to tempt God. He refused to compromise relationship.
He refused to side step the way, the plan of redemption. Rather, He humbled Himself. He surrendered fully to the Father's will, to the heart, mind, yes, the soul of God that loved the cosmos so that the Father sent Jesus to get the corruption brought in by Adam’s sin, out of the system.
(See Genesis 1-3)
Jesus sanctified Himself. (John 17) He prayed that the Father might sanctify us through the truth. Hebrews 2 tells us:

But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, for the suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that He, by the grace of God, might taste death for every man.
For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason He is not ashamed to call them brethren.
(Hebrews 2:9-11 NKJV)

Jesus knows that it is the truth that sanctifies. And what is the truth that sanctifies? What is the truth that births the desire in us to be holy unto the Lord, and wholly His?
It is that God who is love, the God of all grace, gives grace. There's something about grace that when God gives it, you cannot resist it. God's grace flows from His heart of love, mercy, compassion, and concern over human misery caused by sin's corruption. God's grace flows from His soul that yearns to initiate relationship, to restore relationship, to bind one to Himself who alone is the Source of all life and blessing. We cannot resist God's grace when it flows because such kindness, such goodness leads us to repentance.
When God gives grace, we melt in the heat of the passion of His love, the security of His faithfulness to supply. We will come to Him. We will surrender to Him. And then we will revive. And then we will truly live and be alive.
God does not lord it over weakness, though He is Lord of all; nor does He exploit weakness to flaunt His own perfection. No, God gives grace, favor unmerited, to lift, to raise up, to redeem from the pit.
When does God give grace? God gives grace as we come to the standard of His perfection. For example, we have His Law, the law and the commandment. We are condemned because we just know we fall short, as Romans says. The Holy Spirit comes and convicts us of sin, righteousness, and judgment. We become aware of our sins and of the nature of sin within. But God gives grace in the offer of the gospel.

What is the gospel? It is the good news that sinful human beings dead in trespasses and sin, in Adam, can be justified freely by God's grace, counted righteous, through faith in Jesus Christ alone. Yes, eternal life is the gift of God. (Ephesians 2:8, 9) So, it cannot be earned or deserved.
All in the first Adam humanity have a sin nature and sin because they/we are sinners. They/we don't even live up to the standards of their own making or to the "light" they have received. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. (Romans 1-3) God in His mercy, however, promised provision in One whom He would send. Though God is just and must exercise the judgment against sin, He is also loving and merciful. God, therefore, sent Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, to live the life of perfect, personal, perpetual obedience meriting life and to die the death that covenant-breaking and lawlessness required. So, Jesus, who was without sin, and without iniquity, nevertheless went to the cross to pay the death penalty for sin. That means that by His life and by His death, the requirements of the Law were met, both as to obedience and as to penalties for disobedience. And He was buried and rose again.
For us this means that the cross work of Christ has tremendous significance. When we get out of the "savior" business, and accept Christ as our substitute and our advocate before the Father, we "receive Him." Then we find that our sins are forgiven. Debt and liability are canceled. We are redeemed, bought back, by His blood shed, the price being paid. God's wrath is propitiated. Peace with God is established, and alienation abolished. The works of the devil are destroyed. By God's grace, His life and blessing can be ours.
How does God give grace? Freely. He gives grace, grace to believe and have faith in Jesus; grace to repent and find life; grace to know truth, reckon that truth to be for us, and yield to it; grace to be delivered from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of Christ.

For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His Blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. Moreover the law entered that the offense might abound.
But where sin abounded, grace abounded much more, so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
(Romans 5:6-9, 20, 21)

By the grace of God we come: to Christ, to the cross of Christ, to the place of surrender, to the kingdom of His rule and reign, to the Holy of Holies, to the very presence of the Almighty, to communion with the Holy Spirit.
By grace our sins and our sin is forgiven, and the wrath of God is propitiated through the shed blood of Jesus. More-so, know that we were crucified with Christ. We died with Him. We were buried with Him in baptism. And as we die to sin, we rise in the power of the resurrection.
(Romans 6-8)
We reckon ourselves so. We yield ourselves to be the righteousness of God as God has declared us to be in Christ Jesus. We have died and our life is hid with Christ in God. (Colossians 3:3) In Christ we live. In Christ we have dominion over sin and death, over devils and disease. In Christ, we truly love.
God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. Who then sits on the throne? In heaven it is Jesus. To Him belongs honor, glory, wisdom, dominion, power, and praise. Who rules? Who is king? Who is on the throne of our lives? To whom do we bow? To whom do we go? Are we independent or can we live in common union with Another, with the Almighty? God is perfection, yet He is pleased to dwell, to hang out, to bond with imperfection. God is holy, yet He loves His own. His love sent Jesus to find those given to Jesus by the Father and bring them "home" to a heavenly Father.
What is the power of grace to revive? The joy of God's all-consuming love in doing everything, enduring whatever pain, whatever sacrifice, whatever insult, to find those marked by electing love, to bring them back, buy them back, motivates Him to act. It's all done…finished. If He is speaking to you right now, will you come to Him?
Fighting the war against self, sin, and Satan can be rough. We can be on the “hit list” and find it difficult to go on. Some years ago, after teaching Bible for at least 15 years, I stood in my living room and said out loud:
"If this is what You honor, I want out. I want out of this church. I want out of Christianity. And I want out of the relationship with Jesus." Well, God moved me out of the church where we were, and I saw the end of "religion" in my life, but the bond with Christ could and cannot be broken. It is a bond in Blood. Jesus loves with a commitment that carries us out of sin and through the pains and struggles of life. It is an everlasting love that carries us out and through and up into the glory of His presence.
The secret is in Christ’s invitation to come and die. The call of the Father is to look and live. Look to Jesus and live. The call of Christ is to come and die. Die to self, to the world, to our dreams, to our ways, to all that corrupts, to all that offends God. Come before the cross of Christ and join Him there. The call of the Holy Spirit is to rise and reign.
Jesus rose from the dead and ascended into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Almighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, Ruler over the kings of this earth. He is coming again.

That is the gospel. With Him we died. In Him we live. By Him we love. Through Him, we come boldly to the throne of grace. Through Him we persevere and overcome. The One who calls us is faithful, and He also will do it.