Thursday, October 14, 2021

A Note from Pastor Al - Grace

 GRACE

What is grace? By classic biblical definition, grace is “underserved love.” What does that mean in practical terms? It means that God is intent on providing gifts for a world full of humans who do not or could not ever deserve his intricate and patient attention.


Grace is complicated for several reasons. One, we don’t typically operate on the principle of grace in our world so we are startled by its presence; we may not even know how to accept it. In our world, life operates on the dictum of receiving what you deserve. You wander into a store and see something you would like, you can only deserve to have it if you put enough dollar bills on the counter or swipe your credit card.  If you simply walk out without paying, you don’t deserve to have that item and you may even be charged with theft. Grace does not govern the exceeding majority of our life.


Another rationale for expressing that grace is complicated relates to our view of self.  We don’t like to think that we don’t deserve things. On the contrary, we intuit the notion that we deserve to be treated well when going into a restaurant. We deserve to be treated like a normal, decent human being. The assumption is that something about us or in us is worthy of proper treatment. But is that completely true as God views His world and our place in it? 


When we work hard on a project, it is natural to believe that we deserve proper recognition for that work. How many of us might express some form of this statement: “I don’t deserve an ounce of credit for the 85 hours of work that I put into building this report”? That much time and effort deserves proper acknowledgment. But what do we really deserve? 


In God’s world, according to God’s way of calculating our level of “deservedness” we must start from the premise of origin, ownership, and performance. 


Origin

Our origin is not from our own intent. We exist because God is the starting point. God made the effort to call every human being into existence. Even from that viewpoint, God is the first cause of anything good we do; we are not the first cause. 


Ownership

God is the origin and God is the owner of all our resources, all our ability, all our time. If he owns our life, ability and all our resources, then every effort we ever make must point back to him. He deserves the credit for anything good that comes out of our life because it is not really our life but his.


Performance

Or to go further with this. How did each of us develop into the person we are today? Two human parents are to be credited with this achievement. We are the result because they gave us life. This means that our financial situation, our educational opportunities, our athletic prowess [or lack of] is attributed to someone other than ourselves. A coach refined and drove the human spirit to accomplish more. This is at least part of the reason great athletes, actors, scientists, etc. give credit to parents, previous teachers, professors, coaches and more when receiving career accolades. Even humanly speaking, we see that the good we pour out is, in part, attributed to those who came before us and to those who nudged us along.


But let’s take this one step further and uncover the spiritual side of this point. We don’t deserve anything good from God because of sin.  “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).  Sin disqualifies us from deserving anything good. The opposite is actually true: “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). What we deserve is not what we might think we deserve. 


This is why we need God’s Spirit to enter our thinking through the power of His Word. When God’s living and holy Word enters our minds, it fights to erase our entitlement and secures our understanding of God’s charity. It asks us to examine the truth of our fallen state and then, at the moment of humble acceptance, it lifts us out of any worthless gloom to see that God still desires our good.


In the hymn, Before the Throne of God Above, there is a verse that states how grace is displayed at the cross:


Because the sinless Savior died,

My sinful soul is counted free;

For God, the Just, is satisfied

To look on Him and pardon me.


God the Just is satisfied with the death that we all deserved because the sinless Savior died in our place. May God let that grace-filled truth erase our complacency, reduce our reticence to his compassion and empower us to praise the One who set us free. Jesus deserves our praise!

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