I doubt the real beauty of grace can be fully comprehended without fully grasping the ugliness of sin. I think sometimes I walk into the room of grace, stand amazed in the back, and don’t even realize I’m afraid to walk any further. Like anything involving change, salvation is a process, and a gruesome one at that, as tearing away the flesh (Galatians 5:16-21) is expected to be gruesome. It’s a constant revealing of God’s holiness and a constant unveiling of our own unholiness. And it’s here on this battlefield for proportion that I’m reminded of Jerry Bridges’ words, “Preach the gospel to yourself every day.”
Due to the nature of a blog, this thought will be slightly less expounded than it probably should be, so I’ll be counting a little more on you to connect the dots. Now surely I’m not the first person to feel the weight of his mistakes. What is the natural response of an unholy one who is suddenly made more aware of God’s holiness? For that, we can look to a man named Isaiah who lived during the 8th century B.C. in the Kingdom of Judah. “And I said, ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts!” (Isaiah 6:5). Here we see an awe for God and a woe for self. Nothing could be more natural in all of creation. But what happens when, amidst the collision of holy and unholy, grace is abandoned? By this I mean, even as believers who are still in the process of sanctification, we are often quick to exchange our view of sin for one more ugly. What if, in our transaction, we forget, or are even slow, to exchange our view of grace for one more beautiful? What if, at the altar, we forfeit an all sufficient grace that is larger than the sins of the world? For some, the result is self-righteousness by means of comparison. For others, the result is responding to our woes instead of responding to God, unable to forgive ourselves. “…Healthy people don’t need a doctor–sick people do. I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners,” (Mark 2;17).
As partakers of grace, we must understand that grace is a trait of love and love a trait of holiness. As worshipers, we must understand that worship is our response to worthiness. When we worship God, we are responding to His worth, as determined by His Holiness. If we are bent on responding to our woes, we can’t respond to God. We end up “worshiping” Him out of sheer politeness, out of courtesy, or some other sort of perceived deserving obligation (Isaiah 1). When we attempt to love God out of cordiality, we are not in love. We are in debt. This is why we are unable to forgive ourselves. This is why we carry guilt and shame much further than we should. We find ourselves attempting to climb up on the cross with Him, not out of some righteous desire to welcome persecution (Matthew 5:10), but out of guilt to make payment. With our good intentions, we offend God.
I’m going to briefly check back in with Isaiah in chapter 6 verses 6 and 7. “Then one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for.” The immediacy of this act is of no coincidence. 2 Corinthians 2:7 says, “so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow.” As we’ve already seen, if woefulness is not immediately followed up with grace, it often turns into feelings of disgrace towards oneself. And when we do things like attempting to add payment to Christ’s sacrifice to compensate, we only end up worshiping ourselves. We do this, either intentionally or unintentionally, by declaring our own worth; an act we are not qualified to do. We are worth nothing when we belong to ourselves. Only when someone is willing to pay for something is it deemed valuable, and we have no currency in the economy of mercy. Only when we belong to God do we have worth. Put simply, we have nothing to offer for ourselves. We must recognize this so that we can learn to accept His glorious grace.
1 Peter 1:18-19 says, “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” God is holy, we are not. Psalm 103:9 says, “He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever.” If God doesn’t keep His anger forever, why should we? Isaiah 43:25 reads, “I, I am he who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins.” If God doesn’t remember our sins, and He forgives us for His own benefit, for what purpose should we remember them? 1 Corinthians 13:5 says love keeps no record of wrongs. 2 Corinthians 7:10, perhaps the most relevant to this topic, says, “For godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death.” Godly grief is without regret.
One last time, I return to Isaiah in chapter 6 verse 8. “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, ‘Here am I. Send me!” A true comprehender of grace produces an eagerness to share it. A true understander of grace recognizes that the life of the redeemed has nothing to do with him/her. A true grasper of grace is with awe and without regret, because he/she has taken hold of a grace that is not equal to but more beautiful than his/her sin is ugly. That makes me want to worship Him way more than any debt, obligation, or guilt ever could.
Isaiah 1
Philippians 3:13-14, 1 John 1:9, Psalms 69:3
But a perfect score really wasn’t the idea of the outing. Some of us were meeting each other for only the second or third time. The objective was to get to know each other, enjoy one another’s company, and just be guys. And we succeeded. We gave each other a hard time, traded tips, and pulled a few pranks. That said, we did sincerely try to hit our marks. But when we walked away, we did not walk away with a ratio at the front our minds. We did not walk away thinking, “Man, I only hit two out of ten.” Nor did we think, “Man, Jimmy only hit 1 out of 10. I probably won’t be his friend.” Instead we were thinking, “That was fun. I can’t wait to hang out with these guys again.”
