The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Life!

November 14, 2008

Just how much grace is really amazing?

Inside Out column

By Bev Davis

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.” Those lyrics are sung the world over to a hauntingly beautiful melody that stirs the heart.

But I wonder how much we actually believe that song.

Grace can be defined as favor we don’t deserve. Wretch carries the idea of the worst of the worst or someone desperately in need of pity, not scorn.

How much grace should every person be allotted?

That question came to me when I read what is said to be a true story about a young woman in a small rural church. At one time she had lived a life of debauchery, with a long list of sins to her credit. However, she accepted the grace of God, repented and had lived an exemplary life for several years.

The pastor’s son took a liking to her, and knowing her past, still wanted to marry her.

Members of his father’s congregation, however, thought differently.

They believed it wasn’t wise for a pastor’s son who had intentions of entering the ministry himself to be married to a woman with such a wretched past.

The matter came to a public forum in which insults were leveled at the young woman who was reduced to tears by the tirade.

As her fiancé stood up, the crowd fell silent.

“What you are slandering, my friends, is not my fiancée. You are slandering the grace of God and the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ!”

Outraged, the crowd burst out in angry contention.

The young man stood his ground, and when his beloved’s enemies became quiet again, the pastor’s son calmly asked, “How many of you here have been saved by the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ?” Virtually everyone raised a hand.

“Do you not realize if the grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ were not sufficient to save my fiancée, they are not sufficient for any of you?”

Why are all of us so willing to depend on the grace of God for ourselves but so quick to deny others the right to that same loving favor?

Romans 8:38-39 says absolutely nothing can separate us from the love of God, and when we fail miserably, we cling tenaciously to that promise. In the next moment, we’re pointing fingers and telling stories about someone else’s past. When we do that, we are saying, in effect, God’s grace works for me, but not for others.

How much of the grace of God should another person be allowed?

Enough to shut our critical mouths and make us grateful that in spite of all the grace He has used up on them, He still has more than enough left to deal mercifully with us.

— E-mail: bdavis@register-herald.com

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