Grace

I was listening to a preacher. He gave an example of a person who desired to be prayed for something, but the preacher said it was revealed to him, that that which she desired was to be given by someone who she had rebelled against, and so the preacher didn’t pray for her.

At that moment, I felt guilty for a same scenario I was part of in the past. I felt so, so bad. My day became gloomy. I asked God if He was going to punish me the same way. He quickly hushed me, saying, ‘Simon, even Abraham messed up…’

I immediately was rescued from my self-pity. He meant to say, that even if God had promised a son through Sarah, the couple devised other means when God seemed to be taking his time!

That, I believe would have been sin after the law had been passed. Heck, some people can confidently use that example and say ‘Abraham did not trust God with all his heart. He leaned on his own understanding!’

Yes yes, I’d side with them, but who are we to judge! If God defines things, and called Abraham faithful, then your opinion matters not, whether he screwed up or not.

Many christians in the church have done some pretty nasty stuff. I know ‘pretty’ and ‘nasty’ don’t rhyme together, but who are you to judge me (ha-ha). The problem why many have fallen away is not because some brethren within were brutal in their judgement or backlash, but that neither the victim nor the judge understood grace.

See, God showed grace to the snakes despite their ancestor’s role in the fall of man saga. How much more then, would He provide grace for a creature made in His own image?

A preacher said, ‘Mercy is when a bank robber who owes the bank a hundred million is caught but forgiven. Grace goes beyond that, and gives him or her the biggest share percentage in the bank.’ Isn’t that just astounding! Tell me if that person will think of robbing again—I see not how!

Jesus made it possible, for all of us to receive shares in God’s treasuries, but do we all know it? Do we all understand what that means?

Grace is not just for the sinner. The saint needs it.

The son who remained home when the prodigal one returned didn’t understand it. The person who is caught in adultery needs it. The person who was caught stealing church funds needs it too. It does not stop when someone receives Jesus in their hearts. For even then, the struggles of the flesh subsist. The mind is played tricks on by, well, many factors…

I was in church one Sunday—yes, church— and in between the worship interludes, my eyes chanced on a bald-headed man with thick side burns and skinny jeans and a form worthy of the standard of a man. I suddenly slipped into that self-degrading talk. ‘You wish you were like him, don’t you? Aesthetically on point, accurate and all …’

I had to tell the devil to get—wait, it wasn’t the devil. It was my flesh and its lust. I once remembered reading that envying another was if indirectly telling God that he didn’t made me fearfully, and that’s an insult to the greatest artist. We all have such am-I-perfect episodes… and even if I was in church when my thoughts went delinquent, I felt a deep sense of sin.

I shook it off. I’d see God smile at me, as though incognizant of my thoughts. I understood why Paul said ‘O wretched man that I am.’

But grace is God understanding that His love is bigger than your shortcomings, that your thoughts tend to become unruly. It is you knowing that He gets it. That He will not leave you nor forsake you for screwing up, that He already made up His mind to love you forever and to be with you eternally, mistakes and all.

Now remember, having received shares in the bank will in some way prevent one from robbing the bank again, but what if the primary need of a person is no longer money, but sex. The new enemy becomes fornication or pornography, and no longer poverty.

And then we find ourselves back to square one.

Grace is unmerited favor. In other settings I have heard it defined as the ability to stand. When those thoughts tried to make me fall in church, and I saw God’s smile uncondemning, I stood. My head didn’t drop. The judgement that would have descended on me for sinning in thought was not only adjudicated, but I was acquitted from it.

All our lives, what’s left then, is how terrible we could stray from God, only to see that the acquittal included that as well.

Since the bank case eliminates the sins of adultery and the rest, God pulled the same move. When mercy forgave our sin (like the forgiving of the bank debt), God’s grace came in and changed our nature from sinful to righteous (and not just any righteous, or man’s definition of righteous, but God’s very own righteousness…) and how can God’s righteousness sin?

Impossible.

This is equivalent to being made to sit on the world bank board and owning the highest percentage of shares in it. You are set, in one way, far higher than any previous struggles you have been facing.

Ultimately, that Sunday’s was a case to concrete the matter (for me), about how grace is still significant to one who has crossed over to saintship (which didn’t previously make sense to me when I saw those deep in God call for it), having forgotten that saved men have not received new bodies, and also the fact that grace is a place, a reality, a way of life, a dimension that sets you up in clouds beyond which mercy can attempt to place you!

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2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin [to be] sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

1 John 3:9 No one born (begotten) of God [deliberately, knowingly, and habitually] practices sin, for God’s nature abides in him [His principle of life, the divine sperm, remains permanently within him]; and he cannot practice sinning because he is born (begotten) of God.

2 Peter 1:2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord,