This is the second in the series, Destination Grace, outlining how to get from where we are, to an experience of grace and a place of gracious living.
Saving Private Ryan is the story of 5-6 men led by a Captain Miller who went to the battlefields to seek and save a young Private Ryan. The reason they went on this search for Private Ryan, was not that he was such a great guy or that he had done something noble but rather because both of his brothers had been killed in the war. The U.S. State Department didn’t want the parents to lose all three of their sons in the war. So the mission was to reach Private Ryan before he was killed in action.
When the film starts, there’s a scene of an older Private Ryan, about 50 years after the war, and this older Mr. Ryan is shown rushing to a military cemetery looking for the grave of Captain Miller. The flashbacks of the war began. From then on, you see the events of the war and the rescue attempt by Captain Miller trying to save young Private Ryan.
Near the end of the film, Captain Miller was mortally wounded during the rescue attempt. He is shown slumped against a stone wall. Private Ryan, whom Miller had found and rescued, leaned over him and listened, hearing Captain Miller’s faint but final admonition. His last two words were, “Earn this.” Miller was saying, “I’ve died, trying to save you, now you’d better do something to earn all this.”
In the final scene of the film, 50 years later, the older Ryan is shown standing before Miller’s grave. It is obvious he is agonizing over Miller’s last words. Private Ryan is unable to resolve the tension so he turns to his wife and asks her, “Am I a good person?” Apparently, he had spent 50 years asking the question, “Am I deserving of what Captain Miller did for me?” In other words, “Have I done enough to earn and pay back his kindness?”
Our world understands “ungrace” but it does not understand grace. Private Ryan couldn’t accept the gracious act of Captain Miller. Along with Miller, he thought he had to earn the favor. The world’s mentality is ungrace: “Earn this.” The message of the gospel is the exact opposite. It’s a message of grace, receiving what we can’t earn.
In the previous article, I talked about S.I.N. which stood for “Still In Need.” You only appreciate grace when you see our desperate predicament. This week I talk about G.R.A.C.E. which stands for “God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense.”
YOU NEED GRACE
God is holy. Grace is necessary because God is holy, a fact that cannot be overstated. The Bible says God’s intense holiness is unapproachable. God is so holy that nothing sinful can come into his presence and survive.
We are sin-positive and incapable of meeting God’s standard. We must admit we’ve fallen short of God’s standards. The problem is: God is not happy with sinners. No matter how sincere we are or how sorry we are for our condition, we cannot please God. There is nothing we can do to change our unholy lives. None of us has the capacity to love, obey or even seek God. We like to think that we can but we can’t. Our efforts at goodness fall miserably short.
God is just. Not only is God holy, God is just and God’s justice can’t be overlooked. Our human thinking goes something like this. What’s the big deal about being sin-positive? Can’t God, who is kind and loving, simply forgive us? Can’t God say, “Oh well, I’ll overlook their faults and failures?” The answer is no!
A judge today is charged with upholding justice and we’re outraged when a judge ignores the law and lets a guilty person go free. In the same way God, the Eternal Judge, cannot merely let the guilty go free.
God has a dilemma. His holiness cannot be overstated; his justice cannot be overlooked. God wants to forgive but he must be consistent with his justice and holiness.
God loves us but he cannot just close his eyes to our condition. Thankfully, this is where grace comes into the picture.
YOU CAN EXPERIENCE GRACE
Suppose you are stopped by a police officer, receive a ticket for speeding in your car and are taken to court. You are clearly guilty and face the reality of a major fine or spending time in jail. You have no money to pay the fine. Then just before the judge sends you to jail, a friend interrupts the proceedings and offers to pay the fine. If your friend pays the fine for you, you do not need to pay and you do not need to go to jail. You are free. The demands of the law are met through the kindness of your friend.
What your friend did is an act of grace. You receive freely what you do not deserve.
Grace is God’s way of stepping into our situations and meeting our needs. He does it without violating his justice or holiness. Grace is the way God demonstrates his love and mercy while at the same time, maintaining his holy standard and meeting the demands of justice. Grace is Jesus paying the fine for us.
Grace is God’s Riches at Christ’s Expense. When Jesus died on the cross, he paid the full penalty for our sin, a penalty we could never pay. Since the demands of the law have been met, God can treat us as if we had never sinned.
Grace is not fair. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. (2 Corinthians 5:21). God made Jesus to be sin for us. Sin is so serious that God cannot simply acquit sinners and ignore evil. So Jesus was made to be sin instead of us.
That isn’t fair. The sinless Jesus became sin-filled, so that sinful people could become sin- free.
That’s a great deal for us but it isn’t fair for Jesus. But fairness could never foster forgiveness. Fairness demands retribution not redemption. Fairness calls for God to settle the score, not to grant salvation. Fairness requires retaliation, but we need acceptance.
Grace isn’t about being fair; it’s about God going to great lengths to find a way for us to be right with God. When we understand that, we begin to understand grace.
Grace is not free. Grace costs nothing to the recipient but everything to the giver. God’s grace cost Christ three things
It cost him his wealth. For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. (2 Corinthians 8:9).
He gave up a scepter for a stable. He gave up the worship of angels to associate with a bunch of hostile people. He did it so you could become an heir of God and so that all the grandeur of heaven would one day be yours. It’s hard for us to process this but Jesus gave up everything he had, so that you could have everything that he has.
It cost him his innocence. Innocence is a priceless thing. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. While Christ hung on the cross, all the sins of humanity were hung upon him. God treated his Son, Jesus, as a sinner, so he could treat us sinners, as his sons. While he was on the cross, for the first time, Jesus learned what it meant to be sinful. That was an incredible sacrifice. A sinless Jesus became sin-filled, so that sin-filled people could become sin-free.
It cost him his life. Jesus laid down his life. Peter said he personally carried away all our sins on the cross. A substitution was made. Jesus bore the eternal consequences of my sin and died my deserved death.
Think about it. God chose to kill his Son, because he couldn’t live without you. That level of love doesn’t compute for a parent. What person who would sacrifice his son for a stranger? But that’s the cost associated with grace.
The death of Christ was not accidental. Jesus didn’t just get caught up in the political machinery of the day. It was planned long before. God planted the tree that one day would become the cross. God placed the iron ore in the earth from which the nails would be forged. God placed the baby named Judas in the womb of a Jewish mother knowing that he would betray his son. God allowed Pilate to take hold of political power, knowing that one day, he wouldn’t care less about Jesus.
How does that make you feel? To know that Jesus would rather die than live without you is grace and it is fantastic.
Grace is fantastic. Grace rescues you from the power of evil. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves. (Colossians 1:13).
Each of us was once a card-carrying member of the kingdom of darkness. You were born that way and so was I, but God’s grace rescues us. God rescued us from darkness not because we were good or because we were smart. It was because of his grace. In grace he gives us what we don’t deserve.
Grace releases you from all future judgment. Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him. (Romans 4:8).
As a result of grace, you will never be judged for your sins again. You don’t have to be on the run any more. You don’t have to play games with God. God knows everything about you and all that you’ve done but he charged all the wrong stuff you’ve done to Christ’s account. Sin would have us put into prison, but Christ pays our bail. Sin would bind us with the words, “earn this” but Christ answers, “I earned it for you!” Sin would put us on death row, but your death has already occurred on the cross.
You don’t have to continue to live like a prisoner and you do not need to allow guilt to trouble you as if something else is needed to make up for what Christ didn’t do. There is nothing you can do to make God love you any more and there is nothing you can do to make God love you any less. When you receive his grace, you are released from all future judgment.
Grace provides you with a retirement program that is out of this world. We know that no matter who is in power in Washington, the American Social Security program is in trouble. Friend, grace provides you with something better than Social Security.
To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy. (Jude 1:24).
There is no shortage in God’s social security fund. It is secure, regardless of what happens in the economy.
YOU MUST RECEIVE GOD’S GRACE
God has provided a way for sin-filled people to become right with God. He shows grace to us by accepting what Jesus did on the cross for us.
All this must be received as a gift from God. Our efforts to impress God fall dismally short but it can all be ours, by receiving God’s gracious gift by faith. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith–and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God–not by works, so that no one can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9).
We need to grasp this. Grace comes to us through faith, not faith in ourselves but faith in what Christ did for us.
If we don’t understand grace, we will consistently feel like we must earn God’s favor. All other world religions are based on the notion that we must impress God and appease him with our efforts at being good so God won’t be angry with us. But Christianity is not like that. The gospel is based on grace; not what we do but what he did.
If you don’t get a grip on grace, you will spend your life on a performance treadmill with constant feelings that you are never quite good enough and the guilt will wear you down and leave you exhausted and broken.
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