“In the same way, the gospel is bearing fruit and growing throughout the whole world—just as it has been doing among you since the day you heard it and truly understood God’s grace” (Colossians 1:6).

God wants us to understand His grace, not just because of someone else’s testimony but because we’ve experienced it. It may be someone else’s testimony that brings us to Him but it’s our receiving God’s grace for ourselves that God desires.

The fact that Paul encourages us to truly understand God’s grace means that it can be misunderstood. Sadly, it often is. Some Christians think that our salvation depends on what Jesus did plus what we add to that. Grace means that what Jesus did is enough and all God asks of us is to believe in Him.

Paul was a messenger of the grace of God. His life had been totally changed by God’s gracious intervention and he believed that experiencing God’s grace was the only way a person could change. He taught that the righteousness of God is a gift that can only be received by faith. That gift was only available by believing that Jesus did for us what we could not do for ourselves.

It is difficult for us to understand God’s grace when we have grown up in a world that believes you get what you earn or what you deserve. Grace means we get from God what we can’t earn and what we don’t deserve.