Lent Book: https://www.thegoodbook.co.uk/an-ocean-of-grace
My jottings:
(Comments welcome)
Ocean of Grace (38): FRIDAY – Medicine
For The Soul (p127ff)
Everything is really grace, undeserved gift,
all the way down, for how could we ever deserve or merit favour from God? Our
existence, our creation, is a matter of grace. What do we have that we did not
receive as sheer gift? Some theologians have sometimes contrasted “nature” and “grace”.
Our human nature is certainly fallen and corrupt, but in a way we might say
nature is grace. Certainly creation is a free undeserved gift of the
overflowing abundant generosity of God. Praise Him!
* * *
And we should not think of grace as a thing as
if it were a substance or a force. It is good to remember that grace is the
kindness and generosity of God Himself towards us. It is love to undeserving
sinners. It is personal and relational: God relating and acting towards us on
the basis of his character not our merit.
* * *
If grace is “love with stoop in it”,
condescension, the love of a prince for a pauper, the rich for the poor, the
full for the empty, the Lord for the beggar, the judge for the criminal,
consider the grace of Christ, the eternal Son to us sinners. There could be no
one fuller, richer, kinder. He gives and gives and gives and never runs out.
* * *
Christ is honey, cordial for the heart, the
concentrated essence of the gospel, for he came from the hive of sweetness to
conquer obstinacy with kindness. (After Thomas Watson)
Hymn: Wonderful grace of Jesus
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsPc-Ix3_ow
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