About a year ago I stood in the shower and contemplated the blessings of my life. I mean, I often (like you) think about all the good things that God has given me. I, perhaps like you, live in fair comfort. I have lived in significant want, and I have no doubt (nor do I have fear) that I might likely live in great want again in my lifetime. However, that day... that day I was faced with one truth: God has always been just as good as I know He is today, and I didn't even know it. I had been completely unaware of how gracious He was to the undeserving wretch - me.
If I have done anything right in my life, it has been rare. I have seen in myself those who spit in the face of an anguished Savior... with no remorse. I have been wrong so much more than I've been right. I have hated God with my actions, and I have defamed His name carelessly. Yet...
Yet... that was the moment when the tears came so effortlessly... so painfully... so gratefully. I had heard tell of God's grace for sinners, but what about His grace for saved ones? What about that grace? This was the grace that plucked me out of desperation and sin and death (yes, even when I was redeemed) and placed me in a wide open space... a green pasture - so lush and wide in its scope that I could not dare have dreamt it for fear of waking up in a dung heap again.
The deepest pain I felt at this realization that God did not take into account my past when He was planning my future was this: I had spent 34 years being taught of God and His love for His lost and had totally missed His character toward and love for His FOUND. Had I known, how different my life might have looked.
This morning I talked to a dear friend, and she shared with me that she had recently listened to a sermon series on grace and law. The speaker had touched on a truth so simplistic and yet so deep that I had to go back into my mental curio cabinet and open it - just to touch that truth - just to make sure it was really mine now. This is how it went:
The grace of which Christians so easily speak - which rolls off our tongues with great passion and fervor when we encourage the non-Christian that Jesus loves him or her lavishly (which is true but only half of the truth). The speaker had announced that such grace (the kind of which we speak so poignantly about to the unsaved) is not truly meant for them at all yet but that it is meant for Christians - those who are "in Christ". In turn, the law is for non-Christians. The law is for the purpose of showing non-Christians their desperate need to be saved from their own nature for the purpose of encouraging them to become a recipient of the same grace. After they come to know Christ's saving power then they are under the same "Amazing Grace" that we are. We Christians tend to mix this up. We tell the sinner, "God is gracious. Come to Christ and He will take you as you are - no strings attached. He loves you." Then as soon as they come to know Christ (by His revelation at work within them) then we start to pummel them with all of their sins and give them the law (the do's and don't's), because that's how a Christian should act. We tell them they're graced and should come to the gracious Christ, but then we sic the law on them as soon as they step foot in the church door. We thrash other Christians for their sins... or because they still sin (gasp) even after salvation. Where is the message of God's grace then? Nowhere to be found.
I submit to you that the opposite should be happening - we should be loving and living as the graced people we are - fully accepted in Christ and sure in that identity and making sure the world understands that they are subject to God's wrath as a result of their own sin (just as we once were) and that they would love being under grace - just as we do. We should share hope. What I see all over Facebook and all over Christian magazines and websites is Christians destroying Christians for their perceived faults. Who in his right mind would want any part of a people that give each other NO grace... only criticizing one anothers' feeble attempts (as all of our earthly attempts are) at living out Christ's example on earth. Half the time I want out of this whole thing myself. We don't show the world the beautiful grace of which we are undeserving recipients, because we haven't believed it's true. We haven't trusted God is truly good and that He truly has dowsed our paths in the richest scents of His grace - so deep that we are dripping of it. We don't even know it... and thus we can't give it to others - Christian or non-Christian. Well, we are under grace, because our lover (Christ) wants a bride who is lavishly loved and free to give him the same unconditional love in return. What a gracious God we serve. What a blessing to be His bride, and how lovely to bask in the grace that is ours because we are in Christ and, better yet, give that hope and that grace to one another.
If I have done anything right in my life, it has been rare. I have seen in myself those who spit in the face of an anguished Savior... with no remorse. I have been wrong so much more than I've been right. I have hated God with my actions, and I have defamed His name carelessly. Yet...
Yet... that was the moment when the tears came so effortlessly... so painfully... so gratefully. I had heard tell of God's grace for sinners, but what about His grace for saved ones? What about that grace? This was the grace that plucked me out of desperation and sin and death (yes, even when I was redeemed) and placed me in a wide open space... a green pasture - so lush and wide in its scope that I could not dare have dreamt it for fear of waking up in a dung heap again.
The deepest pain I felt at this realization that God did not take into account my past when He was planning my future was this: I had spent 34 years being taught of God and His love for His lost and had totally missed His character toward and love for His FOUND. Had I known, how different my life might have looked.
This morning I talked to a dear friend, and she shared with me that she had recently listened to a sermon series on grace and law. The speaker had touched on a truth so simplistic and yet so deep that I had to go back into my mental curio cabinet and open it - just to touch that truth - just to make sure it was really mine now. This is how it went:
The grace of which Christians so easily speak - which rolls off our tongues with great passion and fervor when we encourage the non-Christian that Jesus loves him or her lavishly (which is true but only half of the truth). The speaker had announced that such grace (the kind of which we speak so poignantly about to the unsaved) is not truly meant for them at all yet but that it is meant for Christians - those who are "in Christ". In turn, the law is for non-Christians. The law is for the purpose of showing non-Christians their desperate need to be saved from their own nature for the purpose of encouraging them to become a recipient of the same grace. After they come to know Christ's saving power then they are under the same "Amazing Grace" that we are. We Christians tend to mix this up. We tell the sinner, "God is gracious. Come to Christ and He will take you as you are - no strings attached. He loves you." Then as soon as they come to know Christ (by His revelation at work within them) then we start to pummel them with all of their sins and give them the law (the do's and don't's), because that's how a Christian should act. We tell them they're graced and should come to the gracious Christ, but then we sic the law on them as soon as they step foot in the church door. We thrash other Christians for their sins... or because they still sin (gasp) even after salvation. Where is the message of God's grace then? Nowhere to be found.
I submit to you that the opposite should be happening - we should be loving and living as the graced people we are - fully accepted in Christ and sure in that identity and making sure the world understands that they are subject to God's wrath as a result of their own sin (just as we once were) and that they would love being under grace - just as we do. We should share hope. What I see all over Facebook and all over Christian magazines and websites is Christians destroying Christians for their perceived faults. Who in his right mind would want any part of a people that give each other NO grace... only criticizing one anothers' feeble attempts (as all of our earthly attempts are) at living out Christ's example on earth. Half the time I want out of this whole thing myself. We don't show the world the beautiful grace of which we are undeserving recipients, because we haven't believed it's true. We haven't trusted God is truly good and that He truly has dowsed our paths in the richest scents of His grace - so deep that we are dripping of it. We don't even know it... and thus we can't give it to others - Christian or non-Christian. Well, we are under grace, because our lover (Christ) wants a bride who is lavishly loved and free to give him the same unconditional love in return. What a gracious God we serve. What a blessing to be His bride, and how lovely to bask in the grace that is ours because we are in Christ and, better yet, give that hope and that grace to one another.
