The Ground Beneath Your Feet: Living in the Permanence of Grace

A Summary of the Katy Bible Sermon “Blessed Assurance Pt. 2”, preached by Matt Mancini on April 12th, 2026.

As a church family, we spent several weeks reflecting on the "bad news" in the opening chapters of Romans—the reality of our condemnation and our desperate need for a Savior. But now, as we turn to Romans 5, the tone shifts beautifully. We have entered a section of Scripture dedicated to the permanence of our justification. This message is uniquely for those who have been justified by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone. It reminds that the benefits of what Jesus accomplished are not just a past event—they are a present reality and a future hope.

A Peace That Is More Than a Feeling

The first "blessed assurance" Paul gives us is that we have peace with God. In our modern world, we often equate peace with a subjective feeling—a sense of tranquility or "warm fuzzies" that can come and go based on our circumstances. However, the peace Paul describes is objective and judicial. It is a matter of fact, regardless of how you feel when you wake up on any given day.

Before Christ, we were at enmity with God. We were His enemies, and He was, in a grave sense, ours. We actively suppressed the truth and loved our sin. Yet through Jesus’ propitiatory work—the full satisfaction of God’s holy wrath—this enmity was destroyed. If you are trusting in Jesus, you now can enjoy a relational peace. One that was achieved without your help and therefore unthreatened by your performance. The merit is all His, the glory is all His, but the assurance is all yours.

The Golden Scepter of Access

The second assurance is that we have obtained access or “introduction” to God through grace  We’ve been granted the right to approach and address God, directly. Within the context of American culture, the idea of needing to be granted "access" feels foreign—we assume everyone has a right to address anyone and speak freely. But that’s a largely contemporary, Western innovation. Throughout history and across culture, that has not been the norm.

You see a poignant illustration of that fact in the story of Queen Esther. She took her life in her hands to approach King Xerxes unbidden, knowing the law demanded her execution unless the King extended his golden scepter to her in pardon. Because he was pleased with her beauty, he did just that, resolving the great point of tension in her story. It was a profound moment of relief. 

But in Christ, we have something even more profound. We were not "beautiful" or "pleasing" in our sin; we were highly offensive to God. Yet God took the initiative in pardoning us. He did not wait for us to approach; He sought us while we were running in the opposite direction.

Through Jesus, the veil of separation between sinners and a holy God was removed - torn asunder from top to bottom. Priestly mediation has been made obsolete. You do not need a human mediator or a saint to speak for you. You have the right to approach the King of the Universe directly, with confidence, to find mercy and grace in your time of need.

Standing in the Sphere of Grace

Perhaps the most vital truth for our daily walk is that we stand in grace. Paul uses a specific Greek tense to show that this is something that happened in the past with ongoing consequences for the present. Grace is not just a gift; it is the anchor of our assurance.

Many of us struggle with anxiety over our salvation when we fail or when our faith feels fickle. We might think that while God started our salvation by grace, it is now up to us to maintain it through our own efforts. Paul has a word for that: foolishness. In Galatians, he asks, "Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?"

If your standing before God were dependent on your performance, even for a moment, you would be doomed. But you don't stand in your own strength. We don’t sing, "I will hold me fast"; we sing, "He will hold me fast."

Encouragement for the Week

When you stumble this week—and you will—do not let the enemy persuade you to run away from God in shame. That is a lie. Your failures do not threaten your access. Instead, let the assurance of your standing in grace

drive you to the throne

. You were saved by grace, you are being saved by grace, and you will be saved by grace. Stand firm on that ground today.