P.O. Box 53055    
Los Angeles, CA 90053   

GRACE FRANCHISES

You can often tell where a book is going to go from its opening story. And that’s certainly true in a great Christian classic from 1979 entitled Love, Acceptance, and Forgiveness, by Jerry Cook with Stanley C. Baldwin. Chapter One: “A Place Where People Are Made Whole,” and Pastor Cook launches right into a sordid story about a man who had committed adultery. But this wasn’t just anybody; this was a fellow pastor. The marriage had been wiped out, and his ministry had been wiped out too. Obviously the Christian community was deeply upset. This offending minister had been a prominent leader in the city, and so when these storms of sexual sin came, “great was the fall of it,” as Jesus says in Matthew 7. The church busted up into about 12 angry little pieces, and Jerry Cook relates how “hurting, confused people were scattered all over the city.”

About a year and a half went by, and one Sunday morning Jerry’s phone rang. It was this fallen pastor. And he said: “Jerry, would you mind if my wife and I came to church this morning?”

“Of course I wouldn’t mind,” Jerry said. “Why would you even ask me a question like that one?”

And the man, his heart in his throat, explained that the marriage had fallen apart, and that this was his second wife.

“I already know that,” Jerry told him.

And this broken-down sinner told Jerry Cook how, for the last eight months, he hadn’t been able to find a place to go to church. One pastor told him from the pulpit to get out of the building. At other churches, the pastor met them at the door and said “No way.” Some churches heard through the grapevine that maybe he was coming, and went out of their way to call this former pastor at home to tell him: “Please stay away from our church.”

And now this man on the phone said to Jerry Cook: “We just can’t handle it again if a church tells us to get lost. We’d just be so embarrassed and ashamed.” By now the guy was crying as he told Pastor Cook that his wife was that close to a complete nervous breakdown. “Look,” he said. “I know you folks have overflow rooms with a video feed. Just let us sit in there where nobody will see us.”

And, bless his heart, Jerry said to him: “Forget that. You come to the front door and I will personally meet you and welcome you.” And he did. This man with his wife and new little baby came to church and sat in the back. Ironically, many of the people who had been hurt by this pastor’s moral fall, who had all scattered like confused sheep, were in Jerry’s church now! Here’s how Jerry describes what happened next:

“We extended fellowship to that man and the Lord did a cleansing and a healing. We shed so many tears together. I never will forget how he grabbed me and buried his head on my shoulder, a man 15 to 20 years my senior. He wept like a baby and held on to me like a drowning man. He said, ‘Jerry, can you love me? I’ve spent my life loving people but I need someone to love me now.’”

And you know, over the next few paragraphs, Jerry describes how the gift of heaven’s grace healed this man. Grace made him repent of his great sin. Grace allowed him to express godly sorrow. He literally fell down on the floor, almost on his face, one evening, in front of all the elders and deacons, begging them for forgiveness. Today that man is a restored servant of God, preaching and ministering again . . . all because the church gave him grace.

We’re having a fantastic spiritual time here at the Voice of Prophecy exploring for five weeks what we call THE SCIENCE OF GRACE. And we’re really just spending this one meager Wednesday defining one of the huge points that surely must be made; here it is:

“The church is to be a demonstration of God’s love and grace in Christ to the entire creation.”

That’s a line we’re borrowing from the same source we’ve been dipping into for eight days now: this recent “Week of Prayer” special issue on grace mailed out within my own Adventist community. It’s wonderfully gratifying to me, here in a faith group that certainly focuses – sufficiently, and maybe sometimes too much – on the importance of sanctification and discipleship and the exalting of God’s moral law, that this incredible edition of the Adventist Review upholds the primacy of grace in our Christian lives. And you know, we got into the lead article, written by Jan Paulsen, and we’re still in it! Tomorrow we’ll sample some of the keen insights from the others, but here again is what our world president has to say to all of us:

“Jesus paid the price for our transgressions of God’s law. He took upon Him our unrighteousness so that we may enjoy His righteousness. Therefore, God ‘made us alive together with Christ . . . and raised us up together, and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”

That certainly sounds like the Church, doesn’t it? And many of you listening will recognize his quoting from Ephesians chapter 2. But here’s the rest, and I know you’ll forgive the repetition:

“Paul goes so far as to indicate that the purpose of God for the Church reaches beyond salvation and re-creation, beyond its unity and the proclamation of the gospel to the world. The Church is to be a DEMONSTRATION of God’s love AND GRACE in Christ to the entire creation.”

Verse 7 of Paul’s essay takes us to that same reality. After describing the body of Christ, all seated with God in the heavenly realms, we find this purpose to it all:

“. . . In order that in the coming ages He [God] might SHOW the incomparable riches of His grace, expressed in His kindness to us in Christ Jesus.”

Now, friend, let’s return to our opening story. But first, let’s recount what grace actually is. We call it “unmerited favor.” Getting what you don’t deserve. Kindness that shouldn’t really be granted. Forgiveness that you haven’t qualified for. A restoring of the family jewels when you’re a rebel. A warm bed and a meal in the family that you so angrily rejected in an earlier moment of lostness.

Think of how this pastor was loved by Jerry Cook’s church. Did he deserve to be loved? No. Did he deserve to be forgiven? No. Did he deserved to be shown to a pew? No. Did he deserve to be restored to ministry? No. Playing by the rulebook, you wouldn’t give him any of those things. But because the Church is a haven of grace, a place where people are loved unconditionally and accepted just as they are, this man saw heaven’s grace right there in the parking lot and in the foyer and in the pews and finally in the baptismal tank.

A few lines later in the book, Jerry Cook shares with his readers a kind of Magna Carta for the church he pastors. And may it be so with all of our congregations. Listen to this:

“The minimal guarantee,” he writes, “we must make to people is that they will be loved – always, under every circumstance, with no exception. The second guarantee is that they will be totally accepted, without reservation. The third thing we must guarantee people is that no matter how miserably they fail or how blatantly they sin, unreserved forgiveness is theirs for the asking with no bitter taste left in anybody’s mouth.”

You know, that sound so violently jarring, so much against the system that we wonder if it can be right. But think of the thief on the cross. Jesus gave him grace right at that moment, instantaneously . . . based on just one sentence of confession. With one whispered word of expressed faith in Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus immediately guaranteed this death-row convict a billionaire’s mansion in heaven. Forever! In five seconds! This is the rule of the church in our world today, friend.

We sometimes quote from J. I. Packer’s masterpiece book, Knowing God. He has a line about grace that’s well worth considering here.

“Justification is the truly dramatic transition,” he writes, “from the status of a condemned criminal awaiting a terrible sentence to that of an heir awaiting a fabulous inheritance.”

And the church is to express this amazing turnaround, this exciting truth, not just from the pulpit and on our official radio broadcasts, but in the attitude which permeates the entire congregation. Jerry Cook puts it like this:

“Today the church of Jesus Christ needs to make a bold commitment to love people and then dedicate itself to fulfilling that commitment. Our whole lifestyle should tell people, ‘If you come around here, we’re going to love you. No matter who you are or what you’ve done or how you look, smell or behave, we’re going to love you.’”

A great line attributed to Archbishop William Temple goes like this:

“The Church is the only cooperative society in the world which exists for the benefit of its non-members.”

We sometimes sing:

“Lord, prepare me to be a sanctuary; Pure and holy, tried and true. And with thanksgiving, I’ll be a living Sanctuary for You.”

In us, and through us, friend, God wants to water this thirsty planet with the waterfall of grace.