We know from Romans 5:21, that grace trumps sin, any time, and anywhere. In fact the revelation of grace in the early church was so powerful that Paul had to ask the question ‘Shall we go on sinning that grace may abound?’, and the answer of course is ‘By no means! We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?’ Romans 6:1,2. He lived expecting and praying for the Christians to become more and more like Jesus, carrying His presence wherever they went.
This truth, that abundant grace is available to help us to grow and become more like Jesus, can however risk us slipping into a kind of perfectionism with ourselves and others, as we seek to live out our new life in Christ. As we, through the power of the Holy Spirit working in us, look to produce the precious fruit described in Galatians 5:22,23, we also need to understand that we will still be needing the grace and forgiveness of God until the day we die and are finally and completely transformed into His likeness. 1 John 3:2.
I was recently struck by some lines in the song by Brandon Lake, ‘Graves into Gardens’,
I’m not afraid to show my weakness, my failures and faults. You see them all and still call me friend. There’s not a place your mercy and grace won’t find me again.’
These words express to me such an amazing and beautiful mystery, that the ‘Majesty’ and ‘Magnificence’ of our King should not lead us to be afraid to bring Him our failures and weaknesses. We don’t have to hide the bits of us that might cause us to feel ashamed, from Him. This is so different to the world where, the more important and powerful we see a person to be, the more we ‘clean up’ and ‘hide’ any weakness from them, particularly anything about us of which they might disapprove.
Let us, if we can, imagine a servant going before a medieval king or, in our day, an employee being called before the company director, or somebody with power who can profoundly affect their future career. We know, if that was us, that we would smarten up and definitely hide any mistakes or failings. God, on the other hand, who has such a high calling for us and such incredible plans to share His glory with us; God who is the Mightiest and most Magnificent Being ever by such a long, long way, is also the safest place to take our weaknesses. In fact He wants us to bring them to Him – all of them – and to hide nothing.
I first learnt this lesson many years ago, when after a very difficult year, of trying to be a ‘good’ and ‘happy’ and ‘fruitful’ Christian, I found myself feeling very low, and quite the failure in many areas of life. In church one Sunday the reading was of the man with the withered hand, who Jesus healed in the synagogue. Jesus ‘said to the man ”stretch out your hand”. So he stretched it out and it was completely restored, just as sound as the other.’ Matthew 12:13.
It felt like the Lord was saying to me that I’d been trying so hard to be ‘a good christian’, to be what I believed I should be but wasn’t, that I would always put out, or ‘show’, my good hand – what I perceived as my strengths – so much so that I never brought my ‘withered parts’ to Him but hid them. He helped me to see, through that passage, that I would try to always show Him (and my fellow Christians) my best parts, not the ’withered parts’ because I feared that if He or they saw my weaknesses or failures, I would not be acceptable.
The wonderful truth that He taught me that day, and that I have to revisit often, is that not only am I a sinner saved by grace, which involved taking my sin to the cross, but that the journey towards being transformed to be like Him, also involves taking my weaknesses and failures to the cross, where they now belong, not hiding them or trying to sort them myself. It’s about unconditional love and acceptance, not performance, and it’s about bringing things into the light where the Lord can heal as we ‘stretch out our withered hands’.
So let us thank Him to day for the wonderful combination of Majesty and Mercy that there is in our King. It’s a combination rarely found in the world, except hopefully in the church, as we grasp the power of this combination to bring change, restoration and eventually triumph to each and every one of us. Thanksgiving for His grace and mercy, will give me increased ‘confidence to come boldly unto the throne of grace,…….to obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need’. Hebrews 4:16 AV. That confidence will enable me to resist the whispers of the enemy to hide my weaknesses because; what I (think I can) hide from Him, I will also keep.
