Grace has been chasing me my entire life.
For the first 25 years of my life, I did not have an understanding of grace. I was a slave to guilt. Because I always wanted to be right, and because I always wanted to be justified, I never left room for grace.
But as I entered the workforce and began pursuing my wife, I started to find out that living without grace wasn’t really that awesome. I regret so much the way I talked to my middle school students and my girls’ basketball team. I wish I could go back in time and just love those kids rather than yelling at them.
All the while, my wife was watching and praying for me. She modeled grace in ways that still make me shake my head in disbelief. She offered grace in the way she listened to me. She offered grace in the way she talked to me. Kimberly Summer Morton, now Kim Pollock, introduced me to grace. She presented a glimpse of the grace Jesus was going to shower me with once I connected the dots.
One Sunday, we attended Biltmore Baptist Church, as we did every weekend back in the early 2000s. The sermon was on John 5, when Jesus heals the disabled man by the pool after asking the man if he wanted to get well, which by all accounts, was an absurd question. Or so I thought.
At the end of the sermon, our pastor came back to the question—”Do you want to get well today?”—and repeated it, lowering his voice to a whisper.
It destroyed me.
I put my face in my hands and wept. No, I bawled. I grew up in the Episcopal church, so this was not exactly something I was accustomed to. Excluding my time in the nursery as a toddler, this was definitely the first time I had ever cried in church.
Grace had tracked me down. I did want to get well! (And I haven’t stopped crying in church since then.)
To take it one step further: I needed to get well. I was enslaved. I was following a works-based, perfectionist-seeking Christ who wagged his finger at me every time I did something wrong.
Grace had set me free. And how precious did that grace appear!
Next thing I knew, my Bible started to change. Rather than reading about an “angry Jesus,” all these new passages about grace started showing up. Not only were these passages encouraging, they were also necessary. For without grace, there is no understanding of the cross. Without grace, there is no concept of unmerited or ill-deserved love. Without grace, our infinite, indescribable, all-powerful creator God is reduced to a tally-keeping dictator.
Grace transfers the focus of our faith from us to Him. As it says in Romans 11:6, “And if by grace, then it cannot be based on works; if it were, grace would no longer be grace,” so my performance is no longer at stake, despite the temptation to think it is. Christ’s work on the cross has replaced any notion of my self-proclaimed importance.
But sin still abounds in my heart. Shame keeps me from coming boldly to the throne. Lust rips at my pursuit of purity; bitterness tugs on my conscience. Anger rises when I’m disregarded, and jealousy surfaces in the face of competition.
Yet despite my shortcomings, I am justified by His grace. I no longer move at the pace of perfection; instead, God directs me at the pace of grace.
I am such a sinner. But where sin abounds, grace abounds even more. How sweet the sound!