I know nothing, except what everyone knows - if there when Grace dances, I should dance. - W.H. Auden.
I have recently been reading a book by Phillip Yancey, What’s So Amazing About Grace?
He vividly explained how there’s nothing we can do to make God love us more and nothing we can do to make Him love us less. A scene in the movie series Prison Break comes to mind, let me summarise it. One of the “Fox River 8”, Sucre, on his way to Ixtapa to meet his beloved robs an old man of his car, the local policemen takes him back to the old man with the car explaining they recognised the car but not Sucre. The old man, says “I’m glad you brought him back.” Then he adds this line, “I didn’t get a chance to give him gas money.” Sucre tries to apologise and the old man says, “Find your girl, then find grace.”
He allowed him take his car away and not just that, he gave him money and let him go unpunished.
Grace has nothing to do with what we deserve or what we do not deserve. It’s about a lovesick Father who loves us, irrespective of what we have or have not done, and runs to embrace us each time we return to Him. He asks nothing of us but to love Him in return. That’s the difference between the Christian faith and the religions of the world, salvation is absolutely free!
The church (you and I), however, finds that hard to comprehend. We try to earn God’s approval through our acts of service, we set up codes and rules by which we try to abide but fail to live up to. There is nothing inherently wrong with our acts of service, the ill is in our thinking God’s love or favour can be earned.
Having received grace from God, do we show grace to mankind? It’s so easy for us to condemn and judge others we think are undeserving of grace. Phillip Yancey told a story about a prostitute, who also had rented her daughter to men. She was asked why she had not sought help from the church and she exclaimed, “church! Why would I ever go there? I was already feeling terrible about myself. They’d just make me feel worse.”
Sit back and meditate on it, is that the church Christ is coming back for?
