Through Jesus, we can by His grace, enter in by faith into a place of unbroken fellowship and the place of fullness of His love. This is what the heart of God desired when He allowed Jesus to take our place in judgment. It wasn't simply the idea of forgiveness that we were to major on, but what He had now made available by His grace, because of our forgiveness.
By faith in His grace (unmerited favor and mercy), we were to be restored by Jesus to a place with the Father as though the fall in the Garden had never happened. Grace has made all of this possible to the child of God. Fear has kept us from accepting (by faith) what this great grace has now done for us. We're so unsure of the heart of the Father that we won't receive what His grace has made ours.
When we don't allow grace to come to a fullness in our lives, we haven't given the Father the joy in us that He bought by the Blood of Jesus. We have been taught for many years that we're still not righteous in our place with God. By our being reluctant to actually trust what God has done in Jesus, we've really robbed the Father of the joy of family He brought about by Jesus. Despite of what the Father went through (by sending Jesus to suffer and die) to once again be in relationship with us, we have drawn back because of unbelief and robbed the heart of our Father of the joy He sought through our Sacrifice Lamb.
We can see now more clearly what was being revealed in Hebrews 4:1-2 (Amplified) which says, "Therefore, While the promise of entering His rest still holds and is offered (today) let us be afraid (to distrust it) lest any of you should think he has come too late and has come short of (reaching) it." Verse 2 goes on, "For indeed we have had the glad tidings (Gospel of God) proclaimed to us just as truly as they (the Israelites of old did when the good news of deliverance from bondage came to them) but the message they heard did not benefit them, because it was not mixed with faith (with the leaning of the entire personality on God in absolute trust and confidence in His power, wisdom, and goodness) by those who heard it; neither were they united in faith with the ones (Joshua and Caleb) who heard (and did believe)."
You can see why faith is so important with the grace that has been given us by God. Those in the wilderness wouldn't put faith in what they had heard. We have been reluctant to put faith in what we have heard in the Word. Grace has restored God's lost family back to Him by the Blood of Jesus. We've heard the Good News, but have been afraid to trust what He said. When we don't put our faith and trust in Him, then we haven't only robbed ourselves of our deliverance, but we have robbed our Father from the joy of reconciliation with His children.
I know that we never intended to rob our Father of His joy, but in essence, that's what happens when we don't put faith in this grace. When we don't trust Him, then we don't enter into God's rest (or we don't rest in His grace). The thing that displeased God was that the Israelites didn't trust Him in His grace.
Until the Hebrew people were given the Law by Moses on Mt. Sinai, they walked in the grace of Abraham's covenant with God. This grace kept them fed, clothed, watered, healed, warm, protected and in the actual presence of God in their midst. No matter what God did by grace to provide for them, the Hebrew people still doubted when another need arose. All the while God was taking care of them, they continued to doubt He could feed them or then bring water to them. No matter what was made available, they still doubted at every turn.
This is why faith is so important to God. Hebrews 11:6 says that, "Without faith, it is impossible to please God." No matter what He provides for us, it requires faith to appropriate it. As new covenant people, we have received our forgiveness of sin by faith in His grace. Ephesians 2:8 tells us that it is "By Grace are we saved through Faith." Now, when it comes to believing that God also put our sickness and disease on Jesus, we become like the Israelites in the wilderness. Exodus 16:2 (Amplified) says, "And the whole congregation of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. After He had parted the Red Sea, brought water into the desert and destroyed Pharaoh's army, they still doubted at every new door of His grace.
We stumble at every new door of His grace in our lives. This gift of His righteousness is still debated in many Christian circles. We see what grace has provided in God's Word, yet we stumble at the great provision of it repeatedly. We still try finding ways to earn what grace has freely given. We fight in the family over prosperity, over healing, over sanctification, over the Holy Spirit, over the gifts of the Spirit, over justification and even over the love of God as though His love is determined by our performance.
Each thing we read in God's Word concerning the Church is a state of God's grace. Each part of God's grace must be believed and adhered to by faith to make it work even though salvation was, and is, for the whole world by God's grace. What about those people who never put faith in this grace to receive salvation? Ephesians 2:8 (Amplified) tells us that, "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."
This salvation is by God's free grace and is received by faith. Are those who have never applied their faith towards this free gift saved? No, although "God so loved the world that He gave Jesus." If we will not believe in this gift of grace (by faith), then you aren't saved. This applies to every other aspect of God's grace. It's available, it's ours through Jesus, it is God's will for us to have and it was paid for by the Blood of Jesus, but we must believe in it, and for it, in order to appropriate it. Jesus is God's grace in all things.
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