1 - Introduction - Living like a real Christian The Colours of Grace - Week 1 | Page 5

who He is. Humanly speaking this kind of love seems unreal because we cannot
comprehend the fact of someone being able to love to that extent. I am personally
convinced that the depth of your relationship with God and your spiritual walk with Him,
will be determined by the depth of your understanding of His character and will be
directly proportional to your comprehension of the love God has for you. One of the
reasons that we live in spiritual hunger, even though we have received salvation, is
because we have failed to recognise the magnificence of this truth.
My prayer for us as a church is that we will comprehend to a greater degree the truth
of Romans 8 v 35 – 39, which says, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?
Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?
As it is written: ‘For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep
to be slaughtered.’ No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him
who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor
demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth,
nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is
in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Prayer Thought: Take some time today to reflect on the beauty of these verses and to
do the best you can to personalise the truth of this passage.

WEDNESDAY
Matthew 18 v 21 – 35 / Luke 10 v 25 – 37 / Matthew 22 v 1 – 14
I’d like to spend one more day contemplating the Design of Grace. We said yesterday
that God’s absolute attribute of His love takes on the relative form for us as seen in His
grace, mercy and forgiveness. These three things are all the same but are different. In
order to understand the true meaning of these words, we may need to do a
comparative word study to determine a better picture.
One: Let’s compare Forgiveness and Mercy. Forgiveness is very simply one of the
expressions of mercy. Jesus, in Matthew 18, told the parable of the king who forgave
his servant an enormous debt because he had mercy on him. The person who could
not repay the debt pleaded for mercy and forgiveness which was subsequently given.
Forgiveness therefore is the fruit of mercy.
Two: Mercy and Grace. The difference between these two is that mercy deals with the
elements of distress, i.e. pain and misery, whereas grace deals with the problem, i.e.
sin. Mercy offers relief from the symptoms, whereas grace offers pardon for the crime.
Mercy deals with the pain, whereas grace deals with the problem. Mercy relieves the
pain, whereas grace gives a better position. A great illustration of the difference
between these two is seen in the story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10). When the
Samaritan found the man in pain, it moved him to show mercy which got him into the
ditch with the injured man. It was grace, however, that went beyond dealing with his
pain to creating a better position for the wounded man and it was therefore grace that