Sola Gratia

Oct 22, 2017 By: Pastor Joseph LoSardo Series: Messiah in Matthew Scripture: Matthew 15:29-39
Time and again in the Gospel accounts, no sooner are the sick laid at Jesus’ feet than, in compassionate grace, He reaches out and heals them. With their loved ones healed, the crowds happily stay with Jesus and hear Him teaching for three days, glorifying God as they do. But while man does not live by bread alone, neither does he live without bread at all, and after three days, these happy people were likely beginning to starve. So again in compassionate grace, Jesus again uses His faithless disciples to multiply and distribute a mere “seven loaves and a few fish,” to fully satisfy a crowd of upwards of 10,000 people, with a huge supply of leftovers! In both the healing of great crowds, as well as the feeding of the four-thousand, we find the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ demonstrated. In both of the stories in our text, Jesus saves, heals, and provides on the basis of grace alone, apart from all merit on the part of both those receiving the benefits of grace and those being used as a means of grace. The grace of God is no more clearly revealed than in the salvation of God’s elect, where according to Romans 5:8, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” Sola Gratia is important because it accurately conveys the fact that God saves people because of His mercy and goodness and not because of anything that makes them desirable to God or worthy to be saved.