A Marvelous Light

“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” (1 Peter 2:9 ESV)

Do you ever reflect on who you were before you met Christ? Where were you headed? What were you doing with your life? Do you remember that you were stumbling around in darkness? By that I mean you were thinking that you could be good enough, do enough good things to make up for the bad things you had done. You thought you could just about balance the scale of God’s justice on your own. After all, you said, I’ve done a lot of good things. I attend church twice a year, give money to the Salvation Army at Christmas time, and I work and keep my family fed. All in all, I’ve been a pretty good person.

Then, one day, someone shared with you that God is a perfect God, a holy and righteous God who demands perfection to gain salvation. The light started to come on; you could see a shadow of the God of the universe. Then you heard that no one that has ever breathed air on this earth, except for Jesus, was good enough on their own to be able to stand in the presence of God, much less spend eternity with Him.

Do you remember the despair, the hopelessness you felt as you looked around, and all you saw was darkness? Do you remember realizing that you could not be good enough on your own? That any good that you might do was not good enough to impress a pure, holy, righteous, and just God. Do you remember the feeling that all is lost as the darkness of despair starts to close in around you?

Then, someone shared the glorious gospel of God’s grace with you! The marvelous light of God’s grace started breaking through the darkness you were living in, and you understood God’s love, how He reached out to you through His Son, the Lord Jesus, who died for your sins because He had no sins of His own. He was sinless, guiltless, the perfect, sinless sacrifice that was willing to die on the cross so you would not have to. He would pay the debt of your sins so you could have eternal life with Him, the Father, and the Holy Spirit.

You repented (changed your mind) from your way of thinking of trying to please God on your own and realized that you could never do that. Your own is never good enough, but by accepting the gift of God’s grace and trusting that Jesus was good enough and was offering you a gift of eternal salvation from darkness into His marvelous light! You put your trust in Jesus’ finished work, and you accepted God’s gift. You no longer believed in what you had been believing in, being good enough is enough, but now you believed that only Jesus is good enough.

The marvelous light of God’s grace flooded your soul, and you experienced and understood what Peter meant when he said, “that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” His marvelous light has become your marvelous light because He has given it to you, and you, along with all the saints, can “proclaim the excellence of Him who has called you.”

1 Peter 2:9 is now talking about you, not just those saints that lived in the early 60s A.D., but you, right here and right now. Because we are no longer walking in darkness, but we are living in His marvelous light, we can live our lives to bring honor and glory to our Risen Savior. Are you starting to understand the full power of the Gospel of Grace? God’s grace doesn’t just save us from the punishment we deserve; it builds us up, encourages us, strengthens us as we battle against the evil one, and keeps us focused on the author and perfecter of our faith, the Lord Jesus.

"Living in Grace is not about what I can do, but about what Jesus has already done!"