The Presence of Grace

Where would you be without God’s grace in your life?

Our pastor, Justin Curtis, asked us this question a few weeks ago.  I imagine a majority of us would say we would be without our eternal inheritance in Heaven, we would lose some of our spiritual blessings such as joy in sufferings, and we lose our forgiveness for our sins.  But how many would continue on?

Most of us tend to look at non-Christians and assume that whatever they have would be what would we have without God’s grace.  What we do not realize is that they, too, are inheritors of God’s grace and mercy in their lives.  Everything in this world, from our possessions to the very air we breathe belongs to the Creator.  It does not just become His once we trust in Him. 

I used to read the story of Job and feel like he was getting the shaft when the Lord allowed Satan to take stuff away.  Whether it was his health, his livestock, or his family, it seemed as though Job did nothing to deserve this punishment.  Yet, in reality, Job never did anything to deserve those gifts in the first place, they were merely a gift of God through His grace to Job.  In fact, Job, though he was considered a righteous man, still did more by his sinful nature to deserve the punishments more than the gifts.  He should have never had anything to take away in the first place.  Neither should we.

It is with this perspective then, that I have reflective on Justin’s question.  As I reflected on this question, the only answer I was able to keep coming back to was simply this: Hell. 

Without the Lord’s grace forgiving my sins daily, without Christ’s graceful death on the cross to forgive those sins, without the graceful presence of the Holy Spirit in my life turning me towards my need for God, I would be in Hell.  My sinfulness has deserved that and so much worse. 

Yet, offer us grace through Jesus is just what our Father did.  He sent His beloved, cherished, beautiful, perfect Son into a world to be rejected, humiliated, tortured, beaten, mocked, and crucified.  He allowed Him to be whipped, stricken, stripped, and pierced.  Then, in Christ’s greatest moment of need, God the Father abandoned him, turning away his face and removing his love, not because of what Jesus did, but because of what we did.  He experienced the absence of God’s everlasting love, so we would never have to.

He didn’t have to, but he did.

Ask most any Christian if they deserve life in prison or the electric chair and they will say no.  They would be right.  We deserve much worse.

We deserve what our Savior endured, but not just for three days.  We deserve it for eternity.  Any argument for the contrary derives from a significant lack of understanding of either God’s holiness or the depth of our sinfulness.  We deserve hell.  Anything else is grace.

It is easy to understand grace in terms of heaven, forgiveness, and mercy. These are things we want and desire, but often feel we are undeserving of. 

It is a bit harder to understand grace in terms of a house, job promotion, and food.  These are things we believe to some extent we have earned.  Yet, from time to time, the Lord humbles us to the point where we realize it is only through Him we have these possessions.

It is extremely hard to understand grace in terms of sickness, suffering, and death.  Surely if the Lord were “good” He would prevent us from experiencing these.  Yet he had Jesus endure all of these for our good.  His sacrifice made grace possible for us.  However, taking it a step further, considering we deserve hell, the fact that we should even be allowed instead to suffer in this world should be counted as a significant blessing. 

Every moment it is His grace that sustains us.  It is His grace that provides the patience to deal with our sin and the forgiveness once we repent.  It is His grace that gives and His grace that takes away.  It is His grace that loves us when we are sinful and His grace that loves us when we are faithful.  It convicts, it humbles, it loves, it hopes, it redeems.

By grace, through grace, and in grace we live.  Our circumstances do not determine whether grace is present or not.  Grace determines our circumstances. 

It is when we rest in this grace that we will be the greatest asset to His kingdom.  When we recognize our sinfulness, we will offer more grace to those who are sinful.  When we realize we have had nothing taken away that was not gracefully given to us, we will more freely give to those in need.  When we witness how Christ served us, we will gracefully serve those around us. 

Therefore, the question I leave you with is this:

What will you do with God’s grace?