GRACE.
It’s perhaps the most beautiful word ever spoken. Yes, some may think our most beautiful word is “love.” Yet grace blends love, forgiveness, redemption, and acceptance into a single gorgeous gift.
1 John 4:19 says
“We love because God first loved us.”
Meaning that while our love is reactive or reciprocal, God’s love is preemptive. Grace is God’s preemptive love that is offered to us when we neither deserve nor recognize it. It’s God’s way of loving us through whatever foolish, mean, prideful, or fearful choices we’ve made.
I believe that the most influential and powerful force to ever emerge from mankind is one’s gratitude for grace.
Think about it.
Why would one accept Jesus as Lord and Savior if not motivated by personal gratitude for God’s grace?
Why would one put others first or lay down his life for another?
Why would we give to others?
Why serve others?
Again, you could push back and say love motivates those actions. But since our love is reciprocal, it’s not sustainable if not anchored in our sense of being loved. That’s why it’s so easy to be disappointed and discouraged when our love for others is based on being loved by others. In other words, if our love is based on receiving love from others, there’s an endless list of distractions and misunderstandings that will inevitably shake, rattle, and roll our willingness to put love into action.
It's our personal recognition and gratitude for God’s grace for us that empowers a deep, sustaining, unshakable love within us that can change the world. Grace is God’s greatest gift to us.
But how do so many people miss the beauty of grace?
How is it that they can throw the word grace around with no more appreciation or value than any other word, and without any evidence that grace has significantly changed them?
To answer, we must go back to the preemptive nature of grace. To grasp grace, one must understand that it’s God’s love for undeserving people. His love cannot be earned, and it’s never a response to our love. Grace is God’s eagerness to love, forgive, accept, and redeem us on our worst days. It’s God’s uncompromising commitment to love and accept us while we are at our worst. It’s God knowing our guilt and loving us any way.
So, what could prevent us from being so grateful for grace that it leads us to life-changing repentance and world-changing love?
To answer, allow me to tell you about two conversations.
The first took place in a prison gymnasium. With tears streaming down his face, a young man was telling me about the despicable acts he did before he was arrested. He said that he had no interest in God or meaningful relationships. He routinely manipulated and hurt people. He never felt guilty, because he justified what he was doing by blaming everyone and everything – his absentee father, the other gangs, the cops, the system… Then he was arrested and convicted. Eight years in prison had given him time to reflect and reconsider. He accepted responsibility for who he was and what he’d done. He recognized the depth of his guilt. Then he accepted Jesus. He told me that it never would have happened apart from a deep inner conviction. When someone presented God’s grace to him, it resonated because his awareness of his guilt made him aware of his need for grace. Then he was overwhelmed by his gratitude for God’s grace. His gratitude for God’s grace was unmistakable in his relentless efforts to share God’s grace with other inmates.
The second conversation was with a “really good guy.” I know, because he told me that he was a “really good guy.” He accepted Jesus as a ten-year-old, waited until marriage to have sex, had never gotten drunk or high, or committed a crime. But he was flat, apathetic, and compassionless. He served at his church, trying to help people who needed God, and they had let him down. He thought he’d be fulfilled by their gratitude for his efforts. But they were ungrateful, and their ungratefulness had soured him. It was clear that he had never developed a prayer life, and genuinely thought God would honor his commitment and bless his efforts because he was a good guy. It was just as clear that he viewed God’s grace as a reward earned rather than a gift given. Gratitude is always minimal when one thinks he’s earned what he receives. So, he lacked the life-changing gratitude for God’s grace that empowers a deep, sustaining, unshakable love that could change the world. Without a personal recognition of his own guilt, like the older brother in the story of the prodigal son, he had no recognition of his need for grace. Without it, his love for others was unsustainable.
A true recognition of one’s own guilt is a gift because it positions one’s heart to receive and value grace.
It’s easy for most of us to compare ourselves with someone like this inmate, and think we’re pretty good, at least we’re not that bad. But Paul says that not even one of us are not that bad, but that WE ALL ARE DEAD WITHOUT GRACE:
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. – Ephesians 2:1-9
So, in Genesis 42, when Joseph puts his brothers in a situation where they reflected on what they had done to him, were convicted by their guilt, and humbly confessed what they had done, God was using Joseph to give his brothers the gift of guilt.
In 2 Samuel 12, when Nathan infuriates David with the story of a rich man taking the lamb of a poor man, then told David that he was that rich man who had taken the wife and the life of Uriah, God was using Nathan to give David the gift of guilt.
It’s Joseph’s brothers’ and David’s recognition of guilt that opened their eyes to their need for God’s grace.
You may struggle with my suggesting that God gave the gift of guilt. But I am neither suggesting that he caused them to sin nor referring to condemnation or judgement as a gift. Quite the contrary. We’ve each sinned. We’re already guilty. According to Paul, we are dead apart from recognizing our own sin and need for grace. By the gift of guilt, I mean that God may use others or put us in circumstances where we cannot deny our guilt, where we’re as overwhelmed by personal conviction as David or Joseph’s brothers. Rather than assume that this conviction is punishment or simply consequence, perhaps we might consider that it is indeed a gift. For if our recognition for God’s undeserved and unending grace brings forth a gratitude for God’s grace that leads to life-changing repentance and empowers a deep, sustaining, unshakable love for others within us, is that awareness of guilt not a gift?
