I Was Lost, But Now Am Found

I didn’t work at it. I wasn’t even aware it had happened until I got my transcript. But when I saw them, I liked what I saw.

I liked that 4.0 beside my name on that piece of paper. It made me feel good about myself. Though I hadn’t put any effort into it before, I decided then and there to start putting effort into keeping those A’s on that paper.

The thing is, I really didn’t deserve those first two A’s I got. Let me repeat that. I want to make it clear - I really didn’t deserve those first two A’s I got. I didn’t work at it to get them. It was more like a present, like a gift of something I didn’t deserve. But the gift of those A’s has caused such a response in me that I want to strive to keep getting them.

That’s what repentance is all about.

The love of God that results in the grace we receive in Jesus isn’t something any of us deserve. But that God would love us enough that God would come down to live among us, that he would die on the cross for us, that God would use his power to raise Christ from the dead so that through him we too might have life, well it brings about an overwhelming response in us. We want to be better people because God believes in us. We want to love other people, because God first loves us. That’s what repentance is.

Yes, we sin, and we need forgiveness from God. But where our thinking goes wrong is when we believe that God’s forgiveness is contingent upon our repentance. We’ve got it backwards. God has already forgiven us. He did it 2000 years ago on Calvary. All we have to do, is accept it. Our repentance is something we do in response to God’s gift of grace, something we do when we accept God’s forgiveness. God just wants to know why we haven’t done it a long time ago.

Earlier this evening, we opened with story of John Newton. He knew the truth of the relationship between God’s forgiveness and our repentance all too well. His song we sing, “Amazing Grace,” why is it so popular? What makes it one of the world’s most beloved hymns?

Its because of the intensity of its bittersweetness that it attracts us. The bitterness we feel in the pain of our sin. We join with John in our wretchedness. We too are lost. Left in such state, there would be nothing for us to do but despair.

But the sweetness we experience in God’s grace, amazing grace, when we are found, made whole, healed, set right, given a new beginning. Like the A’s on our transcript, we wish to keep the joy we experience in the gift of God’s grace. We didn’t deserve it. We didn’t do anything to get it. But God gives it to us, just the same.

And so with joy and pleasure we repent, striving in a new way to embrace God and the life we have in him.

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One more thing about John Newton’s hymn.

In the last stanza John remarks: “through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come.”

I am reminded of the words of Paul we have read this evening where he speaks of the many hardships he has faced and his struggle to remain faithful during those hardships. It is, in fact, the series of opposites Paul recites towards the end that made me think of John Newton’s hymn when Paul writes: