Amazing Grace: How Sweet the Sound!
Ephesians 2:1-10
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.
There are no better known or more powerful words in all of Christian hymnody. Wherever the words are sung, or the tune played to this old hymn, everyone sings because everyone knows this song. It is the most sung Christian hymn in the world. We sing the words and hear the tune, but do we ever stop to think about the meaning? What is the idea behind this amazing grace that we sing about?
To capture a deeper understanding of this amazing grace we sing about, we have to go to what has been called the magna carta of God’s grace, Ephesians 2:1-10. In this passage of Scripture, the Apostle Paul reminds the Ephesians of the great work God has done in their lives. Listen to Paul:
[1] Once you were dead, doomed forever because of your many sins. [2] You used to live just like the rest of the world, full of sin, obeying Satan, the mighty prince of the power of the air. He is the spirit at work in the hearts of those who refuse to obey God. [3] All of us used to live that way, following the passions and desires of our evil nature. We were born with an evil nature, and we were under God’s anger just like everyone else.
[4] But God is so rich in mercy, and he loved us so very much, [5] that even while we were dead because of our sins, he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead. (It is only by God’s special favor (grace) that you have been saved!) [6] For he raised us from the dead along with Christ, and we are seated with him in the heavenly realms—all because we are one with Christ Jesus. [7] And so God can always point to us as examples of the incredible wealth of his favor and kindness toward us, as shown in all he has done for us through Christ Jesus.
[8] God saved you by his special favor (grace) when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. [9] Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. [10] For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so that we can do the good things he planned for us long ago.
Paul’s words tell us that grace is the centerpiece of God’s salvation. There are five words that are key to understanding the Christian gospel. They are grace, truth, faith, love, and hope. Paul says that grace is the key ingredient. All God’s salvation is for us begins in grace. Everything else in the gospel flows from and builds upon our understanding of grace.
So what is grace? Webster defines grace with such words as “unmerited divine assistance, approval, favor, mercy, pardon, and privilege.” Those are all nice words, but it doesn’t quite ring the same when we say “we are saved by God’s divine assistance,” and it leaves something left unsaid, because if we are saved simply by God’s assistance, that communicates that we help God in the saving act, but that is exactly what Paul says isn’t the case. He says that God is the actor—it is all God. Grace as Paul shares the concept means the completely undeserved, loving commitment of God to us. For some unknown reason that is rooted in the nature of who God is, God gives himself to us, attaches himself to us, and acts to rescue us. Because of His mercy and love, God saves us, and that saving is a result of God’s grace. Paul is clear—wrath should have come, but grace comes instead.
If grace is God giving Himself to us without any preconditions or complaints, then we are given significance, and find our value in God’s relationship to us. But listen, the attention is not on us, but upon the One who loves us so deeply. So grace moves us to worship and humility.
Charles Spurgeon and Joseph Parker both had churches in London in the 19th century. On one occasion, Parker commented on the poor condition of children admitted to Spurgeon’s orphanage. It was reported to Spurgeon however, that Parker had criticized the orphanage itself. Spurgeon blasted Parker the next week from the pulpit. The attack was printed in the newspapers and became the talk of the town. People flocked to Parker’s church the next Sunday to hear his rebuttal. "I understand Dr. Spurgeon is not in his pulpit today, and this is the Sunday they use to take an offering for the orphanage. I suggest we take a love offering here instead." The crowd was delighted. The ushers had to empty the collection plates 3 times. Later that week there was a knock at Parker’s study. It was Charles Spurgeon. “You know Parker, you have practiced grace on me. You have given me not what I deserved, you have given me what I needed.” Grace is so amazing, and sounds so sweet because with God’s grace we don’t get what we deserve. We get what we need—God’s salvation.
There is another reason that grace is so amazing and sounds so sweet—its cost. God gives His grace to us as a gift. The Greek word is “doron” (?????????The “doron” was the kind of gift offered as a expression of honor, and was used whenever someone offered gifts or sacrifices to God, and was also used of the gifts people put into the Temple treasury. Paul says that God’s grace is God’s “doron,” his gift to us. God has honored us with His grace. Isn’t that amazing? We dishonor God by being disobedient, by failing to love as we should, yet He bestows the honor of His grace upon anyway!
Paul expressly states that God’s grace is a gift to us. In verse 9: “Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it.” We haven’t earned it. As a matter of fact we can’t earn it. When a person works an eight-hour day and receives a fair day’s pay for his time, that is a wage. When a person competes with an opponent and receives a trophy for his performance, that is a prize. When a person receives appropriate recognition for his long service or high achievements, that is an award. But when a person is not capable of earning a wage, can win no prize, and deserves no award--yet receives such a gift anyway--that is a good picture of God’s special favor. This is what we mean when we talk about the grace of God.
We tend too often to take gifts for granted, and so we do the same with God’s grace. How we treat a gift is dependent, largely, on two variables: 1) the value of the gift received, and 2) our relationship to the giver. If the gift is very valuable, we tend to cherish it more, to put it up on the mantle, or in a safe place because we don’t want the gift to get broken or lost. We parents know that when our children have created artistic masterpieces in Sunday school, or for some school project, and they present them to us on Mother’s Day or Father’s Day, that those gifts may have little value in terms of the actual gift itself, after all, it is just a colored paper, or some rocks glued to a piece of glass. But that gift has a depth of meaning because of the time and love involved in making it, and the relationship we have to the little one who created it. So the gift goes in a special place. I have, in my office right now, a coloring that my daughter Kelsey did several years ago. It is a coloring of a stained glass cross. It is nothing more than a piece of paper a little girl colored. But she’s my little girl, and she gave it to me after she had taken the time and effort to color it. And it’s beautiful, so it is taped over my desk where every time I turn around to look out the window, I am reminded of the gift she gave to me.
What do we do with the gift of grace God has given us? Do we cherish it? Or do we simply take it for granted, and never offer God our gratitude. The danger is for us to view the grace as “cheap grace,” and therefore, we have a do-nothing religion. After all, I like sinning, and God likes forgiving, so everybody is happy. As Paul told the Roman Christians, “May it never be!” (Romans 6:2). Paul would tell the Corinthian Christians that it was grace that put him to work (1 Cor. 15:10). When our hearts are touched by grace, we move out in service in gratitude for the wonderful gift. Service is the way we cherish the gift of God in Jesus Christ.
That brings me to the third reason that grace is so amazing and sounds so sweet—grace works in our lives to transform us from what we are to what Christ calls us to be.
God’s grace is the gift that keeps on giving. Grace is not a one time offering on God’s part, nor is God’s salvation a one time event. We speak so often about being saved, or we make the statements, “I got saved on…,” or “When I was saved…”, but salvation didn’t start and end when we said “yes” to God’s saving grace. We must think of salvation as a journey that continues throughout our lives. I know you don’t care, but Paul’s use of the Greek verb indicates that salvation is a past act that has continuing results now and in the future. For the Christian to whom Paul was writing, this passage makes the stark contrast to the life lived before God’s grace and the life lived after God’s grace. Before, it was “Once you were dead…because of your many sins” (v. 1). In contrast though, Paul says, “But God is so rich in mercy…he gave us life when he raised Christ from the dead” (v. 4-5). From death to life, that is just the first transformation God’s grace works.
I suspect John Newton knew the sweet sound of amazing grace in a mighty way, else how could he have penned such enduring words. They are autobiographical words. You see, John Newton felt like a wretch. Born into a respectable family with an early Christian upbringing, at age eleven he was sailing the high seas with his father, and by the time Newton was seventeen, he had laid aside every religious principle and abandoned himself to the service of the devil. He became a deserter and was arrested as a common felon, and at times throughout his life, contemplated suicide. He began service among the slave traders of Sierra Leone, and the shame of his actions drove him to “hide myself in the woods from the site of strangers,” and he believed that “my conduct, principles and heart were still darker than my outward condition.”
Then on March 10, 1748, during a violent storm on a slaver to England, a storm as violent as the night’s, broke across his soul. That date became Newton’s spiritual birthday. Newton would write, “I cried to the Lord with a cry like that of the ravens which yet the Lord does not disdain to hear. And I remembered Jesus whom I had so often derided.”
Sixteen years later, Newton was ordained a priest in the Church of England at Olney, England. It was there, in collaboration with the great hymn writer William Cowper, that they published a hymnal they called Olney Hymns. Number forty-one, of Book I, contained these words:
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.
Newton, writing his own epitaph before his death on December 21, 1807, at the age of eighty-two, reveals how far God’s amazing grace had brought him:
JOHN NEWTON, Clerk
Once an infidel and libertine
A servant of slaves in Africa,
Was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour
JESUS CHRIST,
restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach
the Gospel which he had long laboured to destroy.
He ministered,
Near sixteen years in Olney, in Bucks,
And twenty-eight years in this Church.
Grace never stops working. That is what we believe as United Methodists. Over the next three weeks, we will look deeper into this thing called amazing grace, and discover how God’s grace works in our lives on this journey we call salvation. For the grace of God finds us (we call that prevenient grace), and that same grace reconciles us (we call that justifying grace), and that same grace transforms us (we call that sanctifying grace), and in the words of John Newton, it is that “grace will lead me home”.
