Amazed By Grace

Amazed by Grace

There’s a well known hymn that starts with these 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.”

But what is “grace”, and why is it “amazing”? There’s a definition of grace that describes it as God’s “unmerited favour” to mankind. That means that it is not an act of kindness that we have deserved or earned by our handsome looks, our hard work or our good behaviour. It is God’s compassion to us in spite of ourselves, in spite of our sinfulness, in spite of our failures and our shortcomings. It is God’s choosing to look at us through the filter of His Son’s holiness, and seeing us as worthy.

It’s grace we see illustrated in Exodus 33: 15 - 19, when God promises to be with the Israelites on their journey to the Promised Land.

Then Moses said to him, “If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us up from here. How will anyone know that you are pleased with me and with your people unless you go with us? What else will distinguish me and your people from all the other people on the face of the earth?”

And the Lord said to Moses, “I will do the very thing you have asked, because I am pleased with you and I know you by name.”

Then Moses said, “Now show me your glory.”

And the Lord said, “I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim my name, the Lord, in your presence. I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

Now what’s amazing here is that just before this portion of Scripture, the people had turned away from God and built a golden calf to worship in His place. Yet even though they deserved the full wrath of God, He freely and fully extends His mercy and grace to them.

The Gospels are full of similar stories of grace. Just think of Christ’s response to the woman caught in adultery, the parable of the prodigal son, the healing of the ten lepers, the resurrection of Lazarus, the meal He shared with Zaccheus, and so many more examples. Not one of them was worthy, not one had earned his healing or his redemption – but Jesus tenderly and lovingly extended His grace and mercy to anyone who genuinely and repentantly desired it.

The life of Paul is a perfect illustration of what grace can do in a person’s life. In 1 Corinthians 15: 9 – 10, he says this about himself: “For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.”

As a Pharisee, Paul had persecuted the early Christian church, rounding up early believers and sending them to their deaths. And yet in an encounter with the Lord, he was touched by grace, and changed from the church’s archenemy to its most loyal defender.

I know that that’s the kind of grace I needed in my life. I hadn’t actually murdered anybody before I got saved, but I had certainly done everything in my power to pull away from God, to offend Him, to ignore Him, to please myself and to get my own way.

And yet, even at my lowest and most disgusting, He never let go of me, and His Spirit never stopped calling out to mine. There’s a name for this – it’s called “prevenient grace”; it’s the grace of God that goes before us, the grace that is there for us even before we acknowledge Him, because of His great love and tender mercy for us.

And I am so thankful, and so amazed by this grace, that not a day goes past when I don’t say with Paul: “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace to me was not without effect.”

Anything I have achieved in my life, and anything good or useful you see in me today is a result of God’s grace and compassion for me, and nothing else.

I want to share another amazing story of grace with you. It’s a story taken from parts of 1 and 2 Samuel, and it’s a story about David and Jonathan. The story starts in 2 Samuel 4, when King Saul and his son Jonathan were killed in the battle against the Philistines, effectively making David King of Israel. At the time, it was the custom for the families of the defeated king to be slaughtered by the victorious leader.

If we skip ahead to 2 Samuel 9, we see David now ruling over all of Israel. He is a just king, and God has blessed his reign. While he is thinking about God’s blessing to him, he is reminded of a promise he made to his friend Jonathan back in 1 Samuel 20, verse 14 and 15: “But show me unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family—not even when the Lord has cut off every one of David’s enemies from the face of the earth.”

In 2 Samuel 9: 1, David asks his staff if there is anyone left of the house of Saul, to whom he can show kindness and so honour his vow to Jonathan. A servant tells the king about Jonathan’s son, who is living at the house of Makir son of Ammiel in Lo Debar. David immediately sends for Mephibosheth to come to the royal court.

Here is Jonathan’s son, now a grown man, living in the town of Lo Debar, a name meaning “no pasture” – in other words a barren, desolate place. Expecting that the death he was spared when his father died has now come to him, he falls on his face before David.

But in 2 Samuel 9: 7, David tells him: “Don’t be afraid, for I will surely show you kindness for the sake of your father Jonathan. I will restore to you all the land that belonged to your grandfather Saul, and you will always eat at my table.”

The words Mephibosheth hears the king speak are not words of condemnation but of mercy. And David’s kindness is completely undeserved and unconditional – it’s not because of anything Mephibosheth has done – otherwise it wouldn’t be grace. It is the king himself who lifts him up and seats him at the royal table, and makes him equal to his own sons.

Let’s look at some of the parallels between this story and the story of God’s grace to us:

· Out of unconditional love for his friend Jonathan, David looked for anyone he could extend grace to. In the same way, because of His unconditional love for His Son, God continues to seek out anyone He can extend His grace to.

· When the king called for him, Mephibosheth was destitute and undeserving – all he could do was accept the king’s favour, without any hope of repaying him. So we as sinners are unworthy and without hope, and yet all we need do is accept our King’s favour!

· David took Mephibosheth from the barren wasteland of Lo Debar and seated him at the royal banquet table. God does the same for us – He takes us from a spiritual, moral wasteland and seats us in a place of spiritual nourishment and intimacy with Him.

· David adopted Mephibosheth into his family, providing him with every blessing the royal palace had to offer. One of my favourite Scriptures, Ephesians 5: 1, tells us that we are adopted as God’s sons and daughters through Jesus Christ.

My hope is that you, like me, will be completely and utterly amazed by this thing called grace. And then I hope that you, like Mephibosheth, will accept the gift that is freely offered today.

Like Paul, I pray that you will experience the transformation and liberation that comes from an encounter with the Holy One, so that you will never be the same again.

And I pray that you will never again allow your past, your fear or your self-reliance to hold you back from accepting all that Christ wishes to pour over you as a healing balm.

Find your rest, your hope and your salvation in His mercy, grace and redemption – it is found nowhere else.