During the spring of this year, there were some weeks when that grand old hymn “Amazing Grace” was among the top ten songs heard on radio across the nation. This was in itself an illustration of the grace of God, for through the secular medium of hundreds of radio stations, the story of God’s redeeming love was heard by tens of thousands who otherwise might never have heard it.
The more one grows in Christian understanding and experience, the more amazing and precious the grace of God becomes.
We are saved by grace and kept by grace, but few of us realize this marvelous fact. We are confronted with an ever recurring temptation to attribute our salvation and any growth in Christian maturity to our own efforts and accomplishments.
The pride of self-accomplishment is a deadly sin. It stands between many people and a saving experience with Jesus Christ. Our salvation depends solely on the grace of God, and our continuing peace with him has been bought by our Saviour at unbelievable cost.
Without an understanding of this saving and keeping grace from God, we are engaged in an unending struggle to attain. But when we come to realize that everything we are or hope to be is the result of God’s unmerited favor, then our hearts are filled with love and gratitude toward the One who has made this possible.
As we deepen in our Christian faith and experience, we become increasingly aware of the innate sinfulness of the human heart. The knowledge that our salvation is a fact, despite repeated failures, comes from an understanding of the implications of divine grace.
The grace is an attitude on the part of God toward sinners that can in no sense be deserved. It rests entirely on the merits of Jesus Christ, and, so far as mankind is concerned, it is made operative through faith alone.
The mercy and forgiveness of God are received completely apart from human endeavor, and the faith by which we receive this is in itself a work of the Holy Spirit—a matter of divine grace.
Grace means exemption from a penalty that we deserve, forgiveness where punishment is justified. It is divinely given assistance to the weak.
Not only are we saved by grace through faith, but we are kept by the continuing grace of the One who has begun a good work in our hearts.
For some of us who have been brought up in Christian homes and who have enjoyed the blessings of a godly heritage, conversion came as a gentle breeze—a change so quiet that we cannot remember the day when we said in our hearts a conscious and final “yes” to the Saviour. Because we have grown up in the church, we are inclined to feel that our own goodness is woven into the warp and woof of Christian experience. We forget the most vital and precious truth, that the finest Christian is just a sinner saved by grace.
Others have traveled a different road to the Cross. They have tasted the depths of human depravity and have known the misery of conscious separation from God. Seeing themselves in the light of God’s holiness, these persons have recognized both the fact and the wages of sin. Conversion to them has been a climactic experience, and the loving grace of God a wonderful thing.
John Newton, author of the hymn “Amazing Grace,” had experienced the soul-searing effects of sin in the flesh. But when he came to know the precious truth that God had descended in human form and had taken that sin on his own sinless body, he gave expression to his wonder in the words:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
No matter how cultured, educated, and sophisticated a man may be, he needs to realize this saving grace as much as any criminal on death row in Sing Sing, or ignorant savage in the jungles of Ecuador.
How dangerous then is self-satisfaction, which is an offense to a holy God and a barrier to our becoming acceptable to him through the work of the Spirit.
Grace is a matter of God’s forgiving and cleansing undeserving sinners. But it is more than that. By God’s grace we can continue to be his children after we have been redeemed.
A quiet examination of our own lives shows us how far short we come of fulfilling God’s will after we have received salvation. Day after day we continue to be guilty of sins of the flesh and of the spirit, sins of omission and commission. Except for the grace of God we could never remain his children. Were it not for this unmerited favor, we would still find ourselves standing condemned to judgment before him.
What a difference grace makes! The Christian is but a sinner over whom the spotless robe of the altogether lovely One has been cast. The Chinese character for “righteousness” is most interesting. It is composed of two separate characters—one standing for a lamb, the other for “me.” When “lamb” is placed directly above “me,” a new character—“righteousness”—is formed.
This is a true illustration of the grace of God. Between me, the sinner, and God, the Holy One, there is interposed by faith the Lamb of God; and by virtue of his sacrifice, he has received me on the ground of faith and I have become righteous in his sight.
In his hymn of praise, John Newton continued:
‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!
Many of us fail to appreciate the grace of God because we do not perceive the awfulness of sin as it must appear in the eyes of a holy God.
An often neglected theological truth is that even the ability to come to Christ is a gift of God’s grace. Our Lord said: “No man can come unto me except the Father which has sent me draw him.” We are all familiar with Paul’s words, “By grace are you saved through faith: and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.” Any boasting of our own achievements is an offense to God and is a denial of his grace.
Paul, in writing to the Roman Christians, said, “Where is boasting then? It is excluded. By what law? Of works? Nay; but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.”
This justification is an act of God’s grace, and the faith to believe is also his gracious gift.
In these days when serenity of mind and security of heart are so hard to find, we need only turn to the grace of God. There we can find everything necessary for our lives—now and for eternity.
