Stay on Mission

1. Grace is Amazing!

But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law muttered, “This man welcomes sinners and eats with them.” Luke 15:2

It has to be one of the most loved hymn across the world! It begins with words that many Christians can recite without looking at the hymn book or large screen!

‘Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me’ and then the next line:
‘I once was lost, but now am found, was blind but now I see’.

While many of us know these words by heart, it is so easy for us to forget how amazing grace really is.
In his letter to the church at Ephesus, Paul writes:

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. Ephesians 2:1-5

Grace is amazing because people who are deserving of wrath are made alive and this is because of God’s great love and mercy – we deserve wrath but receive life!

The aspect of grace that we seem to most easily ‘forget’ is that the great gift of eternal life we have received is only because of God’s mercy and not as a result of anything we have done, as Paul says a little later to the Ephesians: ‘For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast.’ Ephesians 2:8,9.

What we can ‘forget’ is that the most sinful person imaginable is no more or less in need of grace than we are. We can begin to ‘boast’ in the fact that we are no longer like the people in society who do bad things and we can begin to see them as those who are deserving of God’s wrath. It is true that they are deserving of God’s wrath – just as we are!

If we are to stay on mission with Jesus we must constantly reflect upon the truth that we are recipients of an amazing gift that, far from causing us to be disapproving of others, should ignite in us a desire to share with them the ‘good news’ that God is rich in mercy and can give them a gift they don’t deserve. We have received the greatest of all gifts and we don’t deserve it, the same gift is available to them!

This week I encourage you to take some time to reflect on the amazing grace of God, to thank Him for the gift you have received, and to ask Him to fill you with His passion for those that you know who have not received this gift.

Dennis