Breathtaking Grace

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
Romans 11 (click the link)


KEY VERSES:
Oh, the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God!

How unsearchable his judgments,

and his paths beyond tracing out!

“Who has known the mind of the Lord?

Or who has been his counselor?”

“Who has ever given to God,

that God should repay them?”

For from him and through him and for him are all things.

To him be the glory forever! Amen. (Romans 11:33-36, NIV)

REFLECTIONS:

After contemplating the overwhelming vastness of God's grace, we should rightly expect to find ourselves suffering from theological vertigo… After thinking on the immensity of God's wisdom and righteousness, we should rightly find ourselves stricken with a sense of sheer terror… After pondering the plans and workings of God to rescue mankind, we should rightly find ourselves in a state of intellectual exhaustion.

God's grace is so amazing, so great, so breathtaking that the only thing we can do is take a long, deep breath and shake our heads in wonderment and give praise to the God whose thoughts, plans, and accomplishments are so much deeper and greater than anything we could have imagined ourselves.

The Apostle Paul draws together several scriptural passages to heap up a declaration of praise to our God. The Psalms are full of declarations of how extraordinary God is in his wisdom and love. Proverbs and Job celebrate that sense of wonder and mystery at the way in which God is always out in front of us, ready to surprise us by doing new things which, in retrospect, are exactly right and full of wisdom and insight far beyond anything we could have fathomed. Passages such as Job 5:9, 15:8, and 36:22-23 echo underneath Paul's declaration in verses 33-34. Verse 35 then quotes directly from Job 41:11. 

God is never in anyone's debt. It is a perpetual human failing to imagine that he is—to suppose that we can establish a claim on God by our birth, our beauty, our brains, or our behavior. But we can't. Nobody is ever in the position of giving God a gift that demands repayment. No one can ever sit smugly in God's presence, knowing they are in the right and waiting for God to get his act together.

In fact, as this chapter's final verse indicates, everything we are comes from God. Everything we have comes from him. Everything that exists is his handiwork and is sustained in its existence by his power and love. Everything we do traces itself back into his presence as the Sovereign One before whom all our work and activity is, at best, loving service.

This kind of all-embracing statement of God's universal sovereignty is always in danger of ignoring the obvious problems. There are plenty of signs that all is still not well in the world and in the heart of mankind. Many have said in our own day—as, I'm sure, they said in Paul's—that if God is somehow really in control of all, then it surely appears as if he has good days and bad days, as though some parts of his world are very good while others are a bit less than that or perhaps downright bad. But Paul has dealt throughout this letter with just these sorts of problems.

The letter of Romans is a beautiful letter about the saving, restorative righteousness/justice of God. In this letter Paul has previously written not only of universal human idolatry, disobedience, and sin (1:18-32; 3:9-20) but also about the corruption to which all creation has been subjected as a result (8:18-27). 

This letter—above all other writings—wrestles with exactly these problems in the light of the death and resurrection of Jesus and the gift of the Holy Spirit, and demonstrates that God has been faithful both to creation and to covenant. This letter declares that God's faithfulness will work its way out—in fact, is already working its way out—to the point that we can see the end from the beginning.

The project of God's new creation is not yet complete. But the Architect has designed it, and he is faithful. The foundations of God's plan have been squarely laid and work is already well underway. The final completion of God's plan is not in doubt. It's time to stand back in sheer awe and breathtaking wonder at the scale and scope of it all.

Glory to God forever and ever! Amen and amen!

POINT OF ACTION:

Sit silently before the Lord for at least 5 minutes.

PRAYER:

Dear Father always near us,

may your name be treasured and loved,

may your rule be completed in us—

may your will be done here on earth in

just the way it is done in heaven.

Give us today the things we need today,

and forgive us our sins and impositions on you

as we are forgiving all who in any way offend us.

Please don’t put us through trials,

but deliver us from everything bad.

Because you are the One is charge,

and you have all the power, and the glory too is all yours—forever—

which is just the way we want it.

WHO AM I?

I'm Tres Sansom, and I still remember the day my parents and I went to the Grand Canyon. I had always imagined that it would be a cool place to visit. But when I stood on the edge of the cliff looking out over the enormous hole in the earth, I lost my breath at the enormity and vastness of it all. The reverence I felt that day is the closest semblance I can think of to describe the feelings that sweep over me when I ponder the breathtaking grace of God.