One of the most well-known and beloved English hymns is the hymn Amazing Grace. It was written in 1772 by a man named John Newton, whom God graciously came to and revealed to him the wretchedness – the miserable and damnable condition of his soul, and his destiny of Hell, apart from God’s saving grace (Ephesians 2:4-5). Incorrigible as a youth, Newton graduated quickly to employment as a slave trader and captain of a slave ship, establishing a well-deserved reputation as a mean and foolish drunk as well as being a self-confessed blasphemer of God. Of himself Newton would write, “I was capable of any sin; I had not the least fear of God before my eyes, nor (so far as I remember) the least sensibility of conscience.”
Lost in sin, shame and condemnation; blinded like the world around him to the truth of God’s greatness, goodness and the glory of His grace (2 Corinthians 4:4): Newton was the glad and thankful recipient of that grace – the free gift of God that brings salvation through and in the person and work of Jesus Christ, alone (Romans 5:17). He wrote the words of Amazing Grace, to express his own personal wonder – his absolute astonishment that the eternally holy God would “save a wretch like me”, freely forgiving him of all his heinous sins, declaring him righteous or in right relationship with Himself and changing his wicked heart, thus rescuing him from the Hell he knew he deserved and qualifying him for Heaven, which he knew he could never deserve, which is the essence of saving grace (Philippians 3:20) (Colossians 1:21-23) (Ezekiel 36:24-27).(Romans 3:21-22)
Newton found himself in a long line of despicable, deplorable, damnable wretches noted in redemptive history, deserving of God’s wrath and judgement, who ultimately found grace, saving grace, in the infinitely glorious “God of all Grace” (1 Peter 5:10) (Exodus 34:5-8).
The Apostle Peter, a professional fisherman, was graciously brought to see his Hell-deserving wretchedness and need for grace when upon after fishing all night and catching nothing, he sees the holiness of God and the glory of His grace in Jesus supernaturally filling his empty nets with fish (Luke 5:4-8). And after ministering with Jesus for three years and seeing much, much more of His glory, Peter denies Him three times to save his own despicable life (Luke 22:33-34) (Luke 22:60-62).
The prophet Isaiah, probably the Godliest man of the Old Testament, was graciously brought to see his Hell-deserving wretchedness through the vision God gave him of His unmediated holiness (Isaiah 6:1-5).
King David, proclaimed by God to be “a man after God’s own heart”, was graciously brought to see, through the prophet Nathan, his Hell -deserving wretchedness in his adultery with Bathsheba and murder of her husband and his friend, Uriah (Acts 13:22) (2 Samuel 12:1-7) (Psalm 51:1-17).
The man Job, whom the LORD bragged to the devil as being a “blameless and upright man”, was graciously brought to see his Hell-deserving wretchedness in God’s confrontation of his prideful questioning of God’s goodness and justice (Job 1:8) (Job 42:1-6).
And then we have Saul, the Christian murdering, self-righteous Jewish Pharisee, to whom God dramatically revealed his Hell-deserving wretchedness, wherein while on his way to arrest more Christians, Jesus blinds him with the light of His glory, confronts him on his murderous persecutions, and then graciously gives him a new heart, identity and mission as the Apostle Paul (Acts 26:12-18) (Galatians 1:14-16) (1 Timothy 1:13-14).
Despite his new identity and new heart, Paul remained well aware of his Hell-deserving wretchedness even as a Christian, and the necessity of grace in battling sin throughout his life, even though he was now fully forgiven and declared righteous by God in Christ (Romans 7:18-25) (Philippians 3:7-9).
God will use Paul’s Epistles to reveal to His church the width and length and depth and height of His love and the glory of His grace in forgiving our sin, reconciling us to Himself and declaring us righteous in Jesus (Ephesians 1:3-7) (Ephesians 3:14-19). God will do so first by revealing the depths and vileness of our sin and unrighteousness, the justness of His wrath and judgement in response to it, and our inability to do anything to remediate our desperate condition apart from His saving grace (Nahum 1:2) (Ephesians 2:1-3) (Ephesians 5:5-6) (2 Timothy 1:8-10).
In Romans 1:18-31, Paul reveals how mankind has come under the wrath and judgment of God in our suppression of the truth of the glory of God, in our idolatrous worship of the creation rather than the creator, and in our indifference to our sin and its consequences. In Romans 3:9-20, he summarizes God’s indictment of all mankind for sin in its various manifestations and the inability and futility of human effort to do anything about it.
In Ephesians 2:1-3, Paul highlights that inability by presenting mankind as spiritually dead in our trespasses and sin (what can a dead person do?), living under the rebellious influence of the devil – “the god of this world”, controlled by our lusts – our disordered desires that oppose God’s order and design for human flourishing and our individual happiness in God, and thus subject to the wrath and judgement of God, which has its ultimate consummation in Hell – the Lake of Fire (Revelation 21:8).
Thankfully, what follows this short exposition of our desperate and dire condition is the most glorious exposition in the Bible regarding God’s saving mercy and grace; “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in (union with) Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:4-10).
In Romans 3:21-31, Paul reveals how and why this gracious salvation is possible; why wretched, despicable sinners like Paul, Peter, Isaiah, Job, John Newton and you and I can be justified – declared righteous or in right standing before a holy God, with all of our sins forgiven, and that is because Jesus has propitiated – borne it on the cross in our place, the wrath and condemnation our sins deserve (1 John 4:10).
In Romans 5:1-11, Paul lays out the gracious benefits of Jesus’ work of justification which bring us peace with God, no longer His enemies – objects of His wrath, but now, in Jesus, made His children – objects of His love, the truth of which the Holy Spirit supernaturally reveals to our hearts (Romans 5:5) (John 1:10-13).
And then Paul reveals in Romans 6:23, the end for which all of these benefits are given when He writes, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”; eternal life being the full restoration to the relationship and glorious life with God for which we were created (John 17:3).
However, receiving this gift and its associated benefits, by which Gods bring us from wretchedness and wrath to righteousness and peace with God, is conditioned on one thing, faith; faith in the Holy One providing them, faith in believing that we need them, and faith to receive them and live our lives as fully redeemed and grateful recipients of the gracious gifts they are (Romans 4:5-8) (Romans 1:17) (1 Thessalonians 5:18).
And it is this faith I hope to look at in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×