Not So Amazing

"Amazing grace, how sweet the sound," the song says, and even unbelievers know the song. What's sad, however, is the numbers who haven't a clue about how amazing grace is -- unbelievers and believers.

You see, we often give God's grace lipservice, but then manage to minimize it to near meaninglessness. We agree that we're saved by grace and then sing about how God thought I was worthy of being saved. God's grace is magnificent because we don't deserve His favor, but we'll minimize our sin and maximize our value to God until, frankly, He likely would have been a fool to miss out on saving us. We are not particularly stunned that He saved us and complain that He doesn't save more.

Paul saw it differently (Rom 9:22-24). He understood the human race as "vessels of wrath prepared for destruction" and God as a God whose will was to demonstrate His power and wrath. The hammer is ready to fall, and all of justice would demand that it happen. But God, in His amazing grace, withheld that complete judgment and showed mercy to "vessels of mercy" that He prepared. He did it all. Paul's question isn't, "Why wouldn't God save me?" or "Why doesn't God save more?", but "Why does God save one?"

We sing about amazing grace, but we diminish it in our minds. We deserve it. We're not that bad. He is lucky to have us. In fact, any good and wise God would know that. Not so amazing grace at that point. Thus Paul's, "By the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned." (Rom 12:3) A right picture of a just God and the true nature of humans will bring into clear focus how utterly amazing God's grace truly is.