God’s Grace - Jeremiah's Vow

Lent 2022 | 4th Sunday in Lent: Celebrate!

Today we celebrate the magnitude of God’s grace.

On these Sundays in Lent, we have been exploring the grace of God. We have been trying to look at various aspects of God’s grace. In the process, my hope has been to give us a greater appreciation of what God has given to us as a gift.

One of the challenges that I have when trying to describe the grace of God has to do with its scope. What that means is understanding what exactly God’s grace covers. This is what I had in mind when I considered the focus for this aspect of God’s grace. The magnitude of God’s grace is greater and more far-reaching than we truly understand. Because of the scale of what we’re talking about it can be difficult to truly appreciate what God has done.

God’s grace is the outpouring of his love on those who have offended against God’s holiness. The seriousness of the situation can oftentimes be minimized in unhelpful ways. We do not have a means of measuring how truly offensive our sin is to God’s holy character. The only indication we have of how awful our sin is is to consider the lengths to which God went to remedy our sin.

The sacrifice of Jesus upon the cross is the price God said would satisfy the offense. From a theological standpoint, the fact God entered into the world and chose to die so sinners might have access to God’s grace cannot be understated. No other man or woman was worthy enough to stand as a representative for the rest of mankind. So God chose to become like those who had offended him and offered himself in the life and person of Jesus Christ for the sake of those who could not restore the relationship to where it needed to be. So, what we could not do and what needed to be done God did for us.

The miracle of salvation is grounded in the reality that God must be true to himself at all times. And by virtue of what we find in Scripture, we can see that God’s love for his people had to find expression in spite of our sin. But that God’s holiness had to be upheld because of it. So how would God find a solution to this problem? He did it in Jesus.

Even in those moments when I find myself wondering why would God do such a thing for me, I must fight back the temptation to make myself the exception from God’s grace. The magnitude of God’s grace helps us to see the fullness of God’s love for sinners. Even for those who ultimately reject the grace he has freely offered to them. God’s grace is better than any person could describe. Better than the wildest imagination could conceive. God’s grace is better than our deepest fears.

So as we celebrate today the magnitude of God’s grace let us look forward with anticipation to Easter morning. That will be another opportunity for us to look back over our lives and see how much more God’s grace has been present than we had perceived in those moments we felt most distant.

Lent 2022 | 2nd Sunday in Lent: Celebrate!

Every Sunday in Lent gives us an opportunity to look back over where we have been in the previous week. Throughout this series, each Sunday will focus on a particular aspect of the grace of God. It can be easy for us to think about God’s grace, and think that we understand it. The truth is God’s grace is always more profound than we can imagine.

Therefore, each of the Sundays we’re striving to make sense of one characteristic of God’s grace. By focusing in this way maybe we can deepen our appreciation for what God has provided for us. The sacrifice of Jesus is more than just a “get out of hell free” card. The redemption purchased by the shed blood of Christ is the restoration of our relationship with God himself.

Today we’re going to focus on the wonder of God’s grace.

I think it’s helpful to take the time and ask: what does the word wonder mean?

The sacrifice of Jesus is more than just a “get out of hell free” card. The redemption purchased by the shed blood of Christ is the restoration of our relationship with God himself.
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A cursory search for a definition of the word wonder provides this from Merriam-Webster’s dictionary.

1. “A cause of astonishment or admiration: Marvel”; miracle.

2. The quality of exciting amazed admiration.

3. A. Rapt attention or astonishment at something awesomely mysterious or new to one’s experience; B. A feeling of doubt or uncertainty.

These are interesting flavors of the word wonder. The one that stands out as being most closely described in Scripture is the second one. “The quality of exciting amazed admiration.”

When we think about God’s grace, it should elicit in us excitement, amazement, and admiration. Not in some sequential way but all at once. Like the crashing of a wave on the shore. Were sound and effect occur at the same time.

God’s grace is something that cannot be adequately defined. There are many who have tried. And at best those could be described as approximations of the truth. That is not to say those attempts have no value. As a matter of fact, they help us to get closer to what we should know and understand about God’s grace.

What I think is challenging when we try to define God’s grace is that we try to make a connection between what grace is and what we have learned through our experiences in life. And again, there is nothing inherently wrong with that. But these attempts only give us the impression that we know what God’s grace is.

In recent years, instead of trying to describe grace as something we can know, I’ve done my best to talk about it as something we must experience. It’s not something that can be simulated. It’s not something that can be shared with others through words or images. It’s not something that we can approximate.

The best we can do is invite them to journey with God just as we are doing. And to trust that God will remain faithful, not only to his word and promises but also to those who come to him honestly and with a genuine desire to find him.

The longer we live, the longer we walk with the Lord, the less concerned we should be with convincing others of the wonder of God’s grace. We should do all we can to live our lives according to what we claim to have experienced of God’s grace.

In this season of Lent let us rejoice not only in God’s grace but also in that he has been gracious to us.

Series Page

God’s Love Trump Your Past

Came across this quotation from Pastor Erwin W. Lutzer:

“The thief’s forgiveness reminds us that there is more grace in God’s heart than sin in our past.”

Amen to that!

Romans Series (Pt. 12) – Romans 3:27-30a

No reason to Boast (3:27-30a)
Paul closes this chapter by asking some questions, and providing some conclusions about what he said at the beginning of the chapter regarding God’s faithfulness and our failure to remain faithful. There is no room for boasting. There is nothing that we can do to merit God’s grace, love or mercy. God gives it out of His good pleasure and for His glory.

Faith causes all boasting in temporal things to become nothing, leaving us with only one thing—the law of faith. It is this law that supersedes all others because it is the reason that all other laws are upheld. Paul’s concluding remarks put into a simplified form what he has being defining theologically. Paul also gives us a brief statement of God’s unique nature when he says that because God is one, because God is not divided within himself, all that come to Him must come to Him by faith alone just as God has commanded.

God is consistent in his demands of all men. He does not favor any man over another. He seeks faith from all. Jew and Gentile find even ground at the foot of the Cross. God is both the God of the Jew and the Gentile because both are faced with the same dilemma to resolve, that of personal sin.