Sanctifying grace is God meeting you at every corner. Justifying grace is God reaching out to you with love. When you say yes to the invitation of justifying grace, you turn a corner in your faith journey. One of the most controversial teachings of the early Methodist movement was that it is possible for us to realize Christian perfection in this life-perfect love, loving perfectly. John Wesley called this process “going on to Christian perfection,” or sanctifying grace. Sanctifying grace led believers to go deeper in the faith, to love the world more energetically, and to keep growing in the knowledge and love of God. For John Wesley, God’s sanctifying grace led believers to have their hearts “habitually filled with the love of God and neighbor. For you, this might mean coming to understand your life as more and more focused on living by faith. Faith becomes the center out of which you live. Little by little, God’s sanctifying grace uncovers more and more of God’s image in you. As one who has been forgiven, you become more forgiving. As one who is loved, you become more loving. John Wesley emphasized that as we are continually filled with God’s love, we are led more fully to acts of mercy and works of justice. Perhaps we are so thoroughly surrounded by God’s grace each day we fail to even recognize it. We are saved not by any effort of our own; there is no way to earn our salvation. We are saved by the unbidden grace of God, which is near to hand, overhead and underfoot, in the eyes of strangers and friends, heard as laughter sometimes and other times as tears and Thank God for that.
But God shows his great love for us in this way, Christ died for us while we were still sinners. (Romans 5:8) As followers of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ we begin to have a hungry within the depth of our soul, to be able to understand who God is and his unconditional love for us. As we are in this spiritual journey with our Risen Lord we begin to realize how we are changing from the inside out, and for the better. We understand what it is to care and love another human being and more important we understand what it is to forgive others especially ourselves. When we have Jesus Christ as our role model we are changing and when we change one person at a time, the in time we can have Peace on earth for all of mankind.
Grace and Peace to you My Friends
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