What's so Amazing about Grace?

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind but now I see.

Wherever the words are sung, or the tune played to this old hymn, everyone sings because everyone knows this song. It is the most sung Christian hymn in the world. We sing the words and hear the tune, but do we ever stop to think about the meaning? 

What is the idea behind this amazing grace that we sing about?

To capture a deeper understanding of this amazing grace we sing about, we have to go to what has been called the magna carta of God’s grace, Ephesians 2:1-10. In this passage of Scripture, the Apostle Paul reminds the Ephesians of the great work God has done in their lives. Listen to what Paul has to say to the church at Ephesus. 

Ephesians 2:1-10 1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 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— 3 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. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— 6 and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Paul’s words tell us that grace is the centerpiece of God’s salvation. There are five words that are key to understanding the Christian gospel. They are grace, truth, faith, love, and hope. Paul says that grace is the key ingredient. God’s salvation for us begins in grace. Everything else in the gospel flows from and builds upon our understanding of grace.

So what is grace? Webster defines grace with such words as “unmerited divine assistance, approval, favor, mercy, pardon, and privilege.” Those are all nice words, but it doesn’t quite ring the same when we say “we are saved by God’s divine assistance,” and it leaves something left unsaid, because if we are saved simply by God’s assistance, that communicates that we help God in the saving act, but that is exactly what Paul says isn’t the case. He says that God is the actor—it is all God. Grace as Paul shares the concept means the completely undeserved, loving commitment of God to us. For some unknown reason that is rooted in the nature of who God is, God gives himself to us, attaches himself to us, and acts to rescue us. Because of His mercy and love, God saves us, and that saving is a result of God’s grace. Paul is clear—wrath should have come, but grace comes instead.

            Charles Spurgeon and Joseph Parker both had churches in London in the 19th century. On one occasion, Parker commented on the poor condition of children admitted to Spurgeon’s orphanage. It was reported to Spurgeon however, that Parker had criticized the orphanage itself. Spurgeon blasted Parker the next week from the pulpit. The attack was printed in the newspapers and became the talk of the town. People flocked to Parker’s church the next Sunday to hear his rebuttal. "I understand Dr. Spurgeon is not in his pulpit today, and this is the Sunday they use to take an offering for the orphanage. I suggest we take a love offering here instead." The crowd was delighted. The ushers had to empty the collection plates 3 times. Later that week there was a knock at Parker’s study. It was Charles Spurgeon. “You know Parker, you have practiced grace on me. You have given me not what I deserved, you have given me what I needed.” Grace is so amazing, and sounds so sweet because with God’s grace we don’t get what we deserve. We get what we need—God’s salvation.

Not only is grace undeserved; but it is also amazing and sweet is because of –its cost. Grace is a gift from God that we can’t pay for. The Greek word for this kind of gift is “doron”; it’s the kind of gift that was offered as an expression of honor, and in Scripture this word is used when someone offers a gift or sacrifice to God and was also used the gifts people put into the temple treasury. Paul says that God’s grace is God’s “doron”, his gift to us. God is honoring us with his grace. Even when we are disobedient, when we fall short of loving as we should; God still bestows His grace upon us anyway!

If we look at verse 9, Paul is telling us expressly that grace is a gift; We haven’t earned it. As a matter of fact we can’t earn it. When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day’s pay for his time that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service or high achievements that is an award. But when a person is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award--yet receives such a gift anyway--that is a good picture of God’s special favor. This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.

            

We often take gifts for granted; and we do this with God’s grace also. How we treat a gift is dependent, largely on two variables: 1) the value of the gift received, and 2) our relationship to the giver. If the gift is very valuable, we tend to cherish it more, to put it up on the mantle, or in a safe place because we don’t want the gift to get broken or lost. Parents know that when your children have created artistic masterpieces in Sunday school, or for some school project, and they present them to you on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, that those gifts may have little value in terms of the actual gift itself, after all, it is just a colored paper, or some rocks glued to a piece of glass. But that gift has a depth of meaning because of the time and love involved in making it, and the relationship we have to the little one who created it. So the gift goes in a special place. One of my favorite necklaces that I own was made for me by a student. It’s made of glass beads and fishing line. But it serves to remind me of my time as an educator and the difference I made in that child’s life. 

            

But what do we do with God’s gift of grace? Do we cherish it? Or do we take it for granted that it will be there and never offer our thanks to God? Or do we see God’s grace as cheap grace; and therefore have a do-nothing religion? Like the church in Rome, “They liked to sin, God liked to forgiving them and everyone was happy, right? Paul told the roman Christians, “may it never be!”  Paul would tell the Corinthian Christians that it was grace that put him to work (1 Cor. 15:10). When our hearts are touched by grace, we move out in service in gratitude for the wonderful gift. Service is the way we cherish the gift of God in Jesus Christ.

           

That brings me to the third reason that grace is so amazing and sounds so sweet—grace works in our lives to transform us from what we are to what Christ calls us to be.

            

As you all know I am going through the Candidacy process in the UMC and one of the meetings I had to have was with our District Superintendent, during our meeting, I was asked “Rachel, of all the things that you learned in church growing up and even at Liberty University, what makes our beliefs about grace different?” My answer to that question was “Grace isn’t a onetime event or a onetime offering on God’s part. We speak about being saved, or we make the statements “I got saved on…” or “When I was saved…,” but salvation didn’t start, nor did it end when we said “yes” to God’s saving grace. We must think of grace as a journey that continues throughout our lives.” Or as a teacher I worked with used to say “Grace isn’t a prayer before a meal, it is a way of life.”

            

I suspect that John Newton knew the sweet sound of amazing grace in a mighty way, else how could he have penned such enduring words? They are autobiographical words, you see John Newton, felt like a wretch, he was born into a respectable family with an early Christian upbringing, but by the time he was 11 he was sailing the high seas with his father and by 17 he had laid aside every religious principle and abandoned himself to the service of the devil. He became a deserter, and was arrested as a common felon and at various times in his life he contemplated suicide. He began service among the slave traders of Sierra Leone, and the shame of his actions drove him to “hide myself in the woods from the site of strangers,” and he believed that “my conduct, principles and heart were still darker than my outward condition.”

            

Then on March 10, 1748, during a violent storm on a slaver to England, a storm as violent as the night’s, broke across his soul. That date became Newton’s spiritual birthday. Newton would write, “I cried to the Lord with a cry like that of the ravens which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear. And I remembered Jesus whom I had so often derided.”

            

Sixteen years later, Newton was ordained a priest in the Church of England at Olney, England. It was there, in collaboration with the great hymn writer William Cowper, that they published a hymnal they called Olney Hymns. Number forty-one, of Book I, contained these words:

Amazing grace! How sweet the sound!

That saved a wretch like me!

I once was lost, but now am found;

Was blind but now I see.

            

Newton, writing his own epitaph before his death on December 21, 1807, at the age of eighty-two, reveals how far God’s amazing grace had brought him:

JOHN NEWTON, Clerk

Once an infidel and libertine; A servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Savior JESUS CHRIST, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the Gospel which he had long labored to destroy. He ministered, near sixteen years in Olney, and twenty-eight years in this Church.

           

Grace never stops working; for the grace of God finds us (we call that prevenient grace), and that same grace reconciles us (we call that justifying grace), and that same grace transforms us (we call that sanctifying grace), and in the words of John Newton, it is that “grace will lead me home”.