Sermon Central
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Moved By Grace
Contributed by Martin Spoelstra on Apr 20, 2023 (message contributor)
The word itself... grace... has become trite and debased through misuse and overuse. It does not move us the way it moved our early Christian ancestors. In some European countries, certain high ecclesiastical officials are still called, Your Grace. Sportswriters spoke of Michael Jordan's easy grace while business mogul Donald Trump has been described as lacking in grace. A new perfume appears with Grace on the label and a child's report card is called a disgrace. The word has lost its raw imaginative power.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky caught the shock and scandal of the Gospel of Grace when he wrote:
At the last judgement, Christ will say to us, Come, you also! Come, you Drunkards! Come, weaklings! Come, children of shame! And he will say to us: vile beings, you who are in the image of the beast and bear his mark, but come all the same, you as well. Then the wise and prudent will say, Lord why do you welcome them? And he will say: If I welcome them, you wise men, if I welcome them, you prudent men, it is because not one of them has ever been judged worthy. And he will stretch out his arms, and we will fall at his feet, and we will cry out sobbing, and then we will understand all, we will understand the gospel of grace! Lord, your kingdom come. (Crime and Punishment. New York: Random House, 1950, page 322)
What a stunning truth! Justification by grace through faith. It's almost too good for us to accept. Through no merit of ours, but by his mercy, we have been restored to a right relationship with God through the life, death, and resurrection of his beloved son. This is the Good News, the gospel grace.
Brennan Manning, The Ragamuffin Gospel. Multinomial Books: Colorado Springs 2005. Page 18-19
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