The measure of God’s grace
How great is the grace of God?
The measure of God’s grace is the distance between our predicament and God’s provision. That’s why, when Paul wants to emphasize the power of the gospel and silence all human boasting, he does so first by humbling us (Ephesians 2.1-3) and then by showing us how much the gospel helps us (Ephesians 2.4-7).
The more we are humbled and the more we are helped, the more we will magnify the grace of God.
There are two stories that illustrate powerfully the magnitude of grace.
The first is a short story by Wendell Berry. The story is about a young lawyer in Kentucky, Wheeler Catlett, whose aging uncle, Uncle Peach, is a drunk. The entire story consists of one episode – Wheeler gets a phone call that Uncle Peach is drunk out of his mind again, in a hotel in Louisville, isn’t sober enough to leave his hotel room and can’t pay his hotel bill. So, Wheeler takes a day off work and takes the train to Louisville. He goes to the seedy dive of a hotel where his uncle is staying – a place he would never otherwise go. He walks up to his uncle’s room, which is an absolute mess (‘it was as much a shambles as one man could have made it without the use of tools’), furniture and clothes flung everywhere, vomit on the floor. Uncle Peach is lying under a blanket howling like a maniac.
That is a powerful picture of God’s grace. Grace enters into our brokenness, our futility, our vomit-covered room. It comes to us. It doesn’t wait for us to come to it. And grace doesn’t stop there.
Wheeler Catlett pays his uncle’s hotel bill from his own slender resources, he gets his uncle washed and clothed, he helps his uncle onto the train, takes him back to his home, feeds him and cares for him through the night as he sobers up. That is God’s grace. God’s grace takes us from our brokenness and brings us to a place of safety and blessing.
God’s grace is like the most honest, loving friend you have. It doesn’t tell you you’re a snowflake. It tells you you’re a mess. But then it cleans you up and walks with you on the road to heaven.
The second story was told by Jesus (Luke 7). It is very short, very simple, but incredibly powerful. Jesus told this story to a man named Simon, who was a Pharisee. Jesus was eating at Simon’s house and a sinful woman came to the table, anointed Jesus’ feet with ointment, wiped his feet with her hair, and wept. Simon was scandalized that Jesus would allow such a woman to do this. In response, Jesus told Simon this story. ‘A certain moneylender had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii, and the other fifty. When they could not pay, he cancelled the debt of both. Now which of them will love him more?’ Simon answered. ‘The one, I suppose, for whom he cancelled the larger debt.’ And he said to him, ‘You have judged rightly.’
The gospel tells us of our predicament and God’s provision. It humbles and helps us. And by doing so it magnifies the awesome grace of God (Ephesians 2.8-10).
Posted by Stephen Witmer on Feb 20, 07:43 PM