Grace!
Have you ever been pulled over for speeding but the officer let you off with a warning? If it’s ever happened to you it’s shocking. You know you were speeding, so you’re just waiting for the officer to hand you the ticket. There is no excuse or reason you could possibly give that would get you out of the ticket. However, when the officer walks up to your window he doesn’t hand you a ticket, he says, “I’m going to let you off with a warning and slow down.” If that has ever happened to you what typically follows is an increased awareness of your speed… at least for a little while! As time passes so does our reminder of our encounter with the officer and before we know it our driving habits have gone back to what they were before we were pulled over.
I’ve heard mercy defined as not getting what we deserve and grace as getting what we do not deserve. Grace is shocking, and because it’s unexpected I think it has a powerful impact on our actions. When someone withholds from us a punishment we deserve or gives us something we do not deserve we want to honor that with appropriate behavior. The problem is we forget and tend to return to the state we were in before we were shown mercy or grace.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]”The LORD is gracious and merciful; Slow to anger and great in lovingkindness.” – Psalm 145:8[/perfectpullquote]One of the things I think we struggle with is trying to understand how all of God’s attributes work together. How can God be both just and gracious? How can God at the same time act as judge for our transgressions and offer us grace? When we are in times where we are paying for the consequences for our poor decisions we tend to look up at God and say where is your mercy now. From time to time what I imagine God saying is, “have you forgotten the mercy I have already shown to you.”
I encourage you to read Ephesians 2:1-10. It is a great passage, and in the middle of it we find these words, “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—” (Ephesians 2:4-5)
Christ on the cross is the picture of how God’s justice and graciousness can coexist. We were dead in our sin, there was nowhere to go, and we were going to have to pay the penalty for those sins, but God because of his great love for us, offered his son up as payment for those sins, so that we could be forgiven and enjoy a restored relationship with God. It’s important for us to remember that gift that God gave us. We did not earn our salvation, it was a gift of grace that was an outpouring of love from our heavenly Father. May we seek to honor that grace with our lives and not forget that it is by grace that we have been saved.
-Adam Deering
;