{"id":468,"date":"2011-11-22T13:21:14","date_gmt":"2011-11-22T13:21:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/?p=468"},"modified":"2011-11-22T13:23:55","modified_gmt":"2011-11-22T13:23:55","slug":"grace-love-mercy-and-justice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/?p=468","title":{"rendered":"Grace, Love, Mercy, and Justice"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/never-stop-loving.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/never-stop-loving-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"Never stop loving!\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-478\" srcset=\"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/never-stop-loving-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/11\/never-stop-loving.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>Our God never changes. He is the truth! While we are in Him, His truth always guides, directs, and corrects us. <\/p>\n<p>He is our God of justice. He is our God of Mercy. He is our God of Grace. I have heard these 3 true characteristics of our God define this way:<br \/>\nJustice is defined as \u201cgetting what you deserve.\u201d (i.e. \u201cYou shall reap what you sow in this life.\u201d Death, Sodom and Gomorrah)<br \/>\nMercy is defined as \u201cwe don\u2019t get what we deserve.\u201d  \u201cWe deserve death, but Christ gave His life for our forgiveness that we may live in God&#8217;s sight.\u201d<br \/>\nGrace is defined as \u201cgetting what we don\u2019t deserve.\u201d  \u201cOur reward for believing in Christ is Eternal life with Jesus, no more fear, death, pain, sorrow, and suffering \u2013 Hallelujah! Praise God!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Since we should be constantly changing (evolving) into the likeness of Christ, these become part of our defining characteristics.<\/p>\n<p>Are you an instrument of His grace? Do you show the fruit of the Holy Spirit when adverse conditions are applied to your life?  Is Grace an attribute that describes you? Are you giving people what they don\u2019t deserve?  Mercy and Justice are easily given, but Grace is hard.<\/p>\n<p>Some people are hard to love. Some situations make us hard to love. But we are commanded to love anyway. I am positive that we were hard to love as Jesus look at us when He hung from the cross and said \u201cFather, Forgive them for they know not what they do.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Be blessed in His justice, His mercy, His grace, but most of all, His great love!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our God never changes. He is the truth! While we are in Him, His truth always guides, directs, and corrects us. He is our God of justice. He is our God of Mercy. He is our God of Grace. I have heard these 3 true characteristics of our God define this way: Justice is defined [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,81,53,70],"class_list":["post-468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-worship","tag-grace","tag-justice","tag-love","tag-mercy"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pfZYJd-7y","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=468"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":480,"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/468\/revisions\/480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sing2jesus.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}