Thinking About Grace...Part 2

When you're not familiar with a topic or a subject, everything can seem overwhelming. When you're trying to learn something that others have spent a lifetime learning, and you only have a short time in which to learn it, you always feel like you're behind. And that's the way I felt when I packed up everything I owned and, looking slightly like the Beverly Hillbillies, Cathy and I headed off to Asbury Seminary in Kentucky. There, not only was I one of the youngest students, I felt like everyone else knew more about the Bible and theology and God than I did. Many of my friends had been to a Christian college, had spent several years intensely studying the Bible, and some of them even already knew Greek! So I started out behind, and worked hard to catch up.

Asbury Seminary - Wilmore, KY

I learned a lot about the Bible, where it came from, how it was written, how the stories all come together to make one big Story, and even some Greek. I learned theology, church history, Methodist history, and church administration. Every piece just added to my thirst for more. I loved this whole new world I was in.

And there, in the midst of all the lectures, sermons and practicums, was a word that hit me in the gut.

Grace.

Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that will pardon and cleanse within. Grace, grace, God's grace, grace that is greater than all our sin.

Certainly it was a word I had heard before, but I don't remember encountering it as powerfully as I did during those years in Wilmore. Like John Wesley before me, I began to realize, through the workings of the Holy Spirit within me, that my salvation wasn't based on what I did or what I didn't do. It was all rooted in what Jesus did. And what he did, on the cross, was done. It was finished, just like he said it was. There wasn't anything else I needed to do in order to finish his work. I couldn't. I could only receive it.

Marvelous grace!

Amazing grace!

Matchless grace!

No word I could come up with or any word the hymnwriters had used before me seemed to adequately describe what it meant to me to understand that. And maybe you've already grasped that idea. Maybe you're way ahead of where I was. If so, that is great. I remember wishing I had grasped grace much earlier in my life as well. Perhaps it took getting me out of "the real world" and into a cloister of sorts (Wilmore was not the end of the world...but you could see it from there!) for God to be able to break through my thick skull and pour in grace. Real grace.

In some ways, I felt overwhelmed, but also like I had finally arrived, like my heart had been strangely warmed. And yet, God wasn't done with me yet. Accepting the grace that is given for me was only the first step. There is more to grace, much more, because the God who gives us grace also asks us to give grace to others. That, I was to learn, would be even harder to grasp.