Grace Abounds

"Moreover the law entered, that the offence might abound. But where sin abounded, grace did much more abound." (Romans 5:20).

Grace is God's goodness, the kindness of God's heart, the good will, the cordial benevolence. It is what God is like. God is like that all the time. You'll never run into a stratum in God that is hard. You'll always find God gracious, at all times and toward all people forever. You'll never run into any meanness in God, never any resentment or rancor or ill will, for there is none there. God has no ill will toward any being. God is a God of utter kindness and cordiality and good will and benevolence. And yet all of these work in perfect harmony with God's justice and God's judgment. I believe in hell and I believe in judgment. I also believe that there are those whom God must reject because of their impenitence, yet there will be grace. God will still feel gracious toward all of His universe. He is God and He can't do anything else.

What God is, God is! When Scripture says grace does "much more abound," it means not that grace does much more abound than anything else in God but much more than anything in us. No matter how much sin a man has done, literally and truly grace abounds unto that man.

Lord, I am so horribly rebellious and sinful in the light of Your perfect holiness. Thank You that were sin abounds, Your grace abound even more! Amen

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Everybody Receives Grace

"But we are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags; and we all do fade as a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away." (Isaiah 64:6)

Everybody receives in some degree God's grace: the lowest woman in the world; the most sinful bloody man in the world; Judas; Hitler. It is hadn't been that God was gracious, they would have been cut off and slain, along with you and me and all the rest. I wonder if there's much difference in us sinners after all.

When a woman sweeps up a house, some of the dirt is black, some is gray, some is light-colored, but it is all dirt, and it all goes before the broom. And when God looks a humanity He sees some that are morally light-colored, some that are morally dark, some that are morally speckled, but it is all dirt, and it all goes before the moral broom.

So the grace of God is operated toward everybody. But the saving grace of God is different. When the grace of God becomes operative through faith in Jesus Christ then there is the new birth. But the grace of God nevertheless holds back any judgment that would come until God in His kindness has given everyone a chance to repent.

Lord, each one of Your children has sinned and deserves to be swept away. Thank You for Your saving grace that reaches out to all of us in our sinfulness. Amen

~A. W. Tozer~