God’s Mercy And Grace Are New Every Morning
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17)
There were times when the Apostle Paul must have looked at himself in the mirror and wondered what in the world had happened to him. He knew that salvation from the inside is much more difficult to understand than it is from the outside. When Paul wrote to the Church at Corinth that “old things have passed away” and “all things have become new,” he had come full circle in the realization that he was no longer the man he once knew himself to be. That’s why he once urged us to move beyond our past, “forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead.” (Philippians 3:13)
Paul also understood that our spiritual walk is a journey, one that is fraught with disappointment and failure as much as it is with success and victory. The truth is it doesn’t matter how long we have been saved, we will always have those days when we come home and wish we could take back something we said or did.
There is a wonderful passage in the Apostle Paul’s letter to the Church at Rome that has always been a source of comfort to me, especially when I have had one of those days when I didn’t feel that I acted or very much resembled the Christian I claim to be. In fact, I believe Paul had one of those days when he sat down and wrote, “It seems to be a fact of life that when I want to do what is right, I inevitably do what is wrong. I love to do God’s will so far as my new nature is concerned; but there is something else deep within me, in my lower nature, that is at war with my mind and wins the fight and makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. In my mind I want to be God’s willing servant, but instead I find myself still enslaved to sin. So you see how it is: my new life tells me to do right, but the old nature that is still inside me loves to sin.” (Romans 7:21-25, TLB)
The comfort I get from that passage is not just in what the Apostle Paul said; it’s also in the fact that he wrote it twenty-four years after he was saved. In other words, while we all mature as Christians, all of us will inevitably stumble along the way, saying and doing things that are not consistent with the new life we claim to have.
As Christians, we must remember that we will never measure up to God’s standards, at least not every day. That is exactly why Christ was given to us, as a propitiation for our sins. In other words, salvation is not just about forgiving sin in our lives. That’s only one side of the coin. It’s God’s mercy and grace that convinces us to get back up the next day and try to live it differently.
Going to San Francisco, Grace Slick, and finding Somebody to love (Jesus Christ)
Was I forty years too late when I finally got to Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, when my wife and I went out there to celebrate our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary and attend the annual ETS conference a week or so ago? Well, the providence of God is never too late!
Probably glad in some ways not to have gotten there at the height of those tumultuous years of the counter-culture (which is now mainstream!). It was fascinating to do San Francisco—including Haight-Ashbury, though to be honest, it was somewhat grungy. I guess I expected something like current-day Yorkville in Toronto, which I did do in the height of the sixties.
But experiencing Haight-Ashbury reminded me of the heartbeat/aching void of my generation, well summed up by the song popularized by San Francisco psychedelic rocker Grace Slick (though the song was actually written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick):
“When the truth is found to be lies
And all the joy within you dies
“Don’t you want somebody to love
Don’t you need somebody to love
Wouldn’t you love somebody to love
You better find somebody to love.”
A good part of the truths that the mainstream culture of the 1960s pushed were indeed lies, sure to dry up all of the wellsprings of joy. But the truths of my generation, the counter-culture, were not a deep enough corrective. Like the culture they were protesting against, they simply did not go deep enough. What an indictment on a generation that was rooted in interiority. But there was the need of a Guide to navigate the depths of the human heart. And hey: in Jesus, Lord and Christ, I found that Guide and that Somebody Grace Slick urged me to find to love–and His love has proven to be the Sweetest of Joys and the Truth!
Glory and Grace
Do you find grace hard to accept? Talk to a mentor.
“He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities; the chastisement [needful to obtain] peace and well-being for us was upon Him, and with the stripes [that wounded] Him we are healed and made whole” (Isaiah 53:5, Amplified Bible).
A child called to the principal’s office. A teenager past curfew standing before his parents. An offender in the presence of the judge. You and me before God. In all these instances grace is not the expected verdict.
Because we stand before a God who is full of glory, a majestic king, the ultimate sovereign, we are schooled to expect, at the least, reproach or reprimand, at the most, penalty or punishment. Certainly there will be no glory, no recognition or tribute. But because of Christ on the cross, because “He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our guilt and iniquities, we can experience the ultimate incongruity of both glory and grace.
Poet Charitie Lees Smith Bancroft says it best:
Before the throne of God above
I have a strong and perfect plea,
A great high Priest whose Name is Love,
Whoever lives and pleads for me.
My name is graven on His hands,
My name is written on His heart.
I know that while in Heaven He stands
No tongue can bid me to depart.
When Satan tempts me to despair
And tells me of the guilt within,
Upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end of all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died
My sinful soul is counted free.
For God the just is satisfied
To look on Him and pardon me.
Behold Him there the risen Lamb,
My perfect spotless righteousness,
The great unchangeable I AM,
The King of glory and of grace.
Questions: Have you accepted God’s grace fully? How do you translate that into everyday living?