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.
God’s grace is, indeed, amazing. In fact, it’s absolutely unfathomable that God would choose to take on human form, come to earth, live among us, then sacrifice Himself in one of the most gruesome methods of execution ever devised, all so that He could save…well…sinners like us.
We possess no merit in ourselves whatsoever that would make us worthy of being saved. To say, “Well, of course God would choose to save me. Just look at me!” would rightly be condemned by us as the height (or perhaps the depth) of spiritual arrogance. As Christians, we acknowledge that our salvation came about only as a result of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, and not because of anything we ourselves contributed. In other words, His merit, not our own, secured our salvation.
Amazing grace, indeed.
But have we ever really realized just how amazing it is? And do we realize, now that our eternal destiny is assured, how much we continue to need it?
I don’t think we do. Because despite the fact that we intellectually assent to being a “wretch” who didn’t deserve salvation and still doesn’t, when it comes right down to it, we don’t believe we’re all that bad.
Let me prove it to you.
Most of us (myself included), when we have had a bad day, will describe it more or less like this: “I was so tired when I got up this morning. My daughter woke me up when she had a nightmare, and I never really got back to sleep. Then my husband was running late to work, so he didn’t have time to take the garbage out, and he dumped that chore on me on his way out the door. So I took the garbage out myself, and when I got back inside, I found out I couldn’t put a new plastic bag in the can because we were out of plastic bags. So then, I had to get my oldest daughter out the door to school and load up my preschooler and the baby so we could make an unexpected trip to the store for trash bags. By the time I got home, I was way behind on everything I had planned for that day.”
Sound familiar? We’ve all had days where we felt like we were entitled to a heaping portion of sympathy. But I wonder why, in describing the day above, we leave out significant details. I wonder why we don’t describe the day like this: “I spent this morning choosing to overreact to perceived slights and verbally punishing people with harsh words, tone, and gestures when they failed to please me. I took out my anger on others who were not capable of defending themselves against me; I elevated my desires over everyone else’s; and I refused to serve my family while at the same time demanding that they serve me willingly. To top it all off, I blamed others for my sin and punished them for provoking me.”
Actually, I know exactly why we would describe the same day in the first way but not the second. It’s because we are so oblivious to the wretchedness of our own sin that we don’t even realize what miserable offenders we are.
We hear Bible stories about King Ahab, who approved of Naboth’s murder but later repented and received grace, and we think, “That was awful! He deserved punishment!” We identify with righteous Naboth and rail against the injustice done to him, never realizing that God intends for us to realize that we are Ahab.
Or we hear Jesus telling the story of the Prodigal Son and identify with the son who has finally come to his senses, not realizing that Jesus meant for us to realize that we are the unloving, ungracious older brother.
If only we would look directly at our sin long enough and honestly enough to see it for the horrific, destructive weapon that it is. If only we would contemplate the wounds we’ve inflicted on others until the awfulness of what we’ve done breaks our heart and drives us to our knees. If only we would ever feel tears rolling down our cheeks as we fall to our knees and wail, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!”
Because if we ever did those things, Grace Himself would meet us there in the moment of our deepest pain and most desperate unworthiness. And as He poured Himself into our lives and filled our spirit to overflowing, we would begin to taste how magnificent His grace truly is.
Oh, God, be merciful to us, sinners, for Your glory, and that we may receive Your grace.
Luke 18:13—“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’” (NIV)