Allow me to explain. As I was studying Romans 1, I was trying to wrap my head around the fact that God is the giver of all things. I was trying to visualize the doctrines of salvation, grace, mercy, love, faith, and how life fits into all of this. As I struggled to do so, God gave me this visual image.
Lets begin with God. The outer circle is God...Eternal, with no beginning and no end. As He looked down on creation, He loved us in His mercy (pity for the consequences of our sin) and gave us His Son. Through Christ's obedience in life and death on the cross, Grace was obtained for us. God then gave us the faith that we needed to accept His grace in order to do four things (according to this chart): Through the Grace that was obtained by Christ on the cross and the faith that was given to us by God, we believed unto salvation. By that same grace we are enabled to obey God, serve God, and by the same grace God holds our salvation until He comes back to take us home. As a result of God loving us in Mercy, giving us His Son, obtained grace for us, giving us grace through the faith that he also gave us, and through the grace that saves, preserves, enables for obedience and ministry, God (as the giver of all) gets the glory. There is no room for us to even pretend that we are due glory. The mercy, grace, and faith for salvation, obedience, ministry, and that secures us all comes from God. In this way, God and God alone gets the glory. My prayer is that we never forget this. My prayer is that we never take this for granted.
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