Upward, Outward or Stooping Love
Grace.
As God has been unveiling a tiny piece of the beauty and magnificence surrounding such an intangible concept, I sit awe-struck in the stands. It’s so incomprehensible that all of humanity can’t wrap their minuscule brains around it. It’s so beautiful. So totally unexpected in the story of mankind throughout history. It’s so beyond us, far above anything we could have ever come up with.
I mean, really, would you have come up with the concept of ‘grace?’ Treat un-respectable people with respect. Treat unloving people with love. Treat anti-God people with the gift of God. Our whole flesh nature cries out for justice, for fairness, for consequences and rewards. At least most of us can understand the concept of sin and the separation of unholy beings from a Holy God. That makes logical sense — if we are willing to admit it.
But Grace? It’s a twist in the entire plot. It’s a fourth dimension exploding our three-dimension world.
Stooping down to lift us up out of our sinful humanity, our utter depravity, our desperate rebellion. Releasing us from our sin, by taking our place so we would have the option to never pay the PENALTY. Forever.
That astounding mercy is great enough. But Grace doesn’t stop.
Letting us out of our dungeon. Forever. To be free from the PROBLEM of sin and live in HIS FREEDOM.
Wow. And Grace keeps going.
Welcoming our filthy existence daily into HIS PRESENCE.
BAM! Even if I could possibly comprehend the cross, I would never imagine in a million years that He would ever want to see us again. Saving from sin, maybe, but saving us to Himself? I mean, really? Daily put up with us?
Not only that, but ADOPTING us as HIS CHILDREN. Identifying HIS holy and precious name with our dragged-in-the-mud title.
It gets better. The privilege and honor of Him COMMISSIONING us to be HIS IMAGE-BEARERS to a lost world. Flat out GIVING His precious name to US. Wow. What responsibility and trust.
And not only that, but promising to GO WITH US, to DWELL INSIDE US and be our STRENGTH, our INNER CORE, our PROTECTION, and our GRACE TO OTHERS.
We can’t even give others grace. We have to borrow His grace to give. Get that.
In class this summer, one of the girls repeated a quote from the book we’re reading through: “Love that goes upward is worship; love that goes outward is affection; love that stoops is grace.”
I attached to this quote, but something about it rubbed me wrong. And then I realized: it correctly defined what I give others as Not Grace. Hardly affection, at best. Often more bordering worship. I love in order to be loved.
The reason is because I’m not stooping. I’m on the same level as the rest of humanity. Each one of us, made in Christ’s image. Each one of us, blind and desperate without Him. I deserve nothing, so can’t demand any rights to be respected by others. The love I give others is usually barely that. Selfish love. Not grace.
Only God truly gives Grace.
And maybe that’s why it remains so pure, marvelous, and beyond my wildest dreams.
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