|
|
THAT AMAZING
GRACE
All Bible
references are to the Anglicised New International Version
(NIV-UK)
Since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into
this grace in which we now stand.
― Romans 5: 1, 2 ―
IN THE MONTH
OF MAY 1748 a young English seaman, captain of his own vessel engaged in the slave
trade, was faced with a crisis.
Although he had had some early religious instruction
from his mother, who had died when he was a child, he had long since given up
any religious convictions. However, on a homeward voyage, while he was
attempting to steer the ship through a violent storm, he experienced what he was
to refer to later as his ‘great deliverance’. He recorded in his journal that
when all seemed lost and the ship would surely sink, he exclaimed, ‘Lord, have
mercy upon us’. Later in his cabin he reflected on what he had said and began to
believe that God had addressed him through the storm and that grace had begun to
work for him. (www.ccel.org/n/newton/)
That young man
was John Newton, author of Amazing Grace and other much-loved
hymns.
In young manhood he had become an atheist, licentious,
dissolute, blasphemous. Sunk to the depths of
depravity, he became an outcast from decent society. Yet God rescued him from
certain death many times and stirred up in him the remnants of conscience
and little by little brought him to repentance, salvation and faith.
And so he later wrote:
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound
That saved a
wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now am found;
Was blind, but now I
see.
What is this
Grace?
The Apostle Paul took great pains to impress upon the
early Christian converts the immensity of such a gift from a God who actually
loved sinners ― yes, sinners! Concerned especially for the young church
in Rome, he wrote to them at length on some of the deeper doctrinal matters that
were immerging following the advent of Israel’s long-promised
Messiah.
The Roman
church comprised both Jews and Gentiles. Probably a few of the Jewish converts
had been in Jerusalem on that day of Pentecost when the Apostles, in the power
of the holy spirit, preached in all the languages of the people, who then
carried the Gospel to their own communities (Acts2:
1-12). Schooled under the
Mosaic Law, without further enlightenment the Jewish disciples and their Gentile
converts would make but little progress in their understanding of the Divine
purpose revealed by the Messiah. Thus the Lord prompted Paul, a master in the
presentation of reasoned and logical concepts, to provide not only the Romans,
but Christians worldwide for centuries to follow, a vision of the amazing grace
of God toward sinners.
In Chapter
5
of his epistle to the Romans, the Apostle presents a convincing argument which
counterbalances sin and death with righteousness and life, discussing Divine
love, reconciliation and justification, and most crucially,
the death and resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus he stirred the minds
and touched the hearts of countless numbers of sinners, wretched in greater or
lesser degree, who learned of that amazing grace by which they might be saved,
and whose wretchedness was by the exercise of faith turned to glory.
The Pathway
to Grace
St. Paul summarises in simple terms the steps that are
taken. Addressing believers, he tells us that we have been justified
through faith, a reassuring thought even before we begin to understand what
it signifies. The word justification has various definitions, but from the Biblical
standpoint two closely related meanings fit well the Apostles thought: one is
to prove that something is right, the other to make a thing right
which is wrong. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word
justify thus: 1.‘Show or prove to be right or reasonable’;
2.‘Declare or make righteous in the sight of
God.’
Justified by
faith, freed from guilt, made righteous! This astonishing transformation in the
life of Newton and many others like him, pursuing a dissolute course, underlines
the all-inclusive depth of God’s love, and the utter faithfulness of the Son He
sent into the world to pay the price of sin.
Not all
believers have been afflicted by a deep sense of guilt. Brought up in the
Christian faith, some have never known doubt and have perhaps been scarcely
aware of their own need to be ‘made righteous’. Lest any should underestimate
their need of a Saviour, St. Paul reminds the Roman church that
‘sin entered the world
through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men,
because all sinned. . . . Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was
condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was
justification that
brings life
for all men’ (Romans 5: 12, 18).
The
faith of the individual is the basis on which justification is granted.
That faith is not a feeling or an emotion, but a belief in, a conviction
of, the absolute trustworthiness and love of God, and in the efficacy of
Christ’s sacrifice for sin. The exercise of faith is the first step of the
sinner toward reconciliation with God. Some may have walked in faith from
childhood, while others, dismissive or oppositional as regards Christianity,
have found their lives revolutionised by an unexpected encounter with Divine
love, and faith is awakened. So it may appear that the greater the sin, the more amazing the
grace.
Saved By
Grace, the Gift of God
Being made right with God ― being justified ― does not
bestow upon us instant perfection of character. Rather, we become more painfully
aware of our shortcomings, our failure to attain the perfect standard of
godliness seen in our Lord Jesus Christ. Though on becoming justified the slate
is wiped clean, so to speak, our inherited depravity wages a constant warfare
against the new mind, heart and will.
Paul himself agonised over his own sinful predilections,
describing his struggles in some detail and exclaiming in apparent despair:
‘What a wretched man I am!’ (Romans
7: 18-25). In declaring
that Christ died for the ungodly, he spoke from personal experience, knowing
that faithful justified believers in future generations would suffer the same
trials and misgivings. In the school of Christ there are many hard lessons to be
learned, and we are being
sanctified, made holy — the working of salvation at the present time. We do have
something to boast about, but nothing of ourselves, as Paul told the
Corinthians: ‘Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord’ (1 Cor. 1:
31).
Two
once-wretched men, saved by grace, knew assuredly near the end of their earthly
course that they had kept the faith.
The Apostle
Paul:
I have fought
the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. Now there is in
store for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge,
will award to me on that day— and not only to me, but also to all who have
longed for his appearing (2 Timothy 4: 7, 8).
John
Newton:
Through many
dangers, toils and snares,
I have already come;
’Tis grace hath brought me
safe thus far,
And grace will lead me home.
Copyright August 2009
ukbiblestudents.co.uk
You may reproduce all or part of this article, but please let us know if you do.