The Overflow Of God’s Love

David says the same thing when he speaks of the blessedness of the one to whom God credits righteousness apart from works: “Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven”.
Romans 4:6-7

Imagine you owe a vast sum of money … but then the debt is totally forgiven. How do you react?

Imagine you face a death-row execution … but then you receive a full pardon. How do you feel?

Joyful. Happy. Relieved beyond measure. A future previously fearful now brims with expectancy.

Getting right with God is cause for unspeakable joy—a joy that David extols in Psalm 32 when he wrote of forgiveness.

C. S. Lewis, who wrote often of his own joyful conversion, provides this analysis of the gift that seems too good to be true.

WALK WITH C. S. LEWIS
“The man who has experienced conversion feels like one who has awakened from nightmare into ecstasy.

“He feels that he has done nothing, and never could have done anything, to deserve such astonishing happiness.

“All the initiative has been on God’s side; all has been free, unbounded grace.

“His own puny efforts would be as helpless to retain the joy as they would have been to attain it in the first place. Fortunately, they need not. Bliss is not for sale; it cannot be earned.

“Works have no merit, though of course faith inevitably flows out into works of love. He is not saved because he does works of love; he does works of love because he is saved.

“It is faith alone that has saved him: faith bestowed as the sheer gift of God.”

WALK CLOSER TO GOD
Joy—the by-product of God’s inexpressible gift.

Joy—the overflow of God’s inexhaustible love.

Have you experienced God’s grace at work in your life? If so, no one needs to tell you that “the God of hope [can] fill you with all joy” (Romans 15:13).