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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #10
AN UNCLAIMED CALVARY
I have a friend whose church here in Southern California
has a marvelous slogan. Here it is: Grace – Everyone, Everywhere, and
Every Time. Isn’t that good? And you know, it seems from the Word of God
that Jesus intends for grace to be mailed to every single member of the
human race. Do you believe that? You might possibly have heard of this
verse from John 3:16:
“For God so loved the WORLD, that He gave His only
begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life.”
What do you think of this follow-up guarantee in I
John 2:2:
“He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not
only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”
Or how about this wonderful statement in II Peter 3:9?
“[God is] not willing that ANY should perish.”
And you know, I can understand that we might surmise:
“Hey, if an all-powerful God doesn’t WANT someone to perish, then they’re
not going to! How could they?” So is “universalism” true then, where God’s
abundant grace finally washes all of this world’s sinful subjects right
into heavenly mansions? If grace is both free and global, how could a
person ever be lost? How could there be a broad highway, a veritable eight-lane
freeway, that leads to destruction, as Jesus warns in Matthew 7?
We’ve been studying grace now for a couple of radio weeks, and getting
some life-changing insights from a recent Adventist Review special issue
that came out in 2003. By the way, a tip of the hat to Pastor Dan Smith
and the La Sierra University Church in Riverside, California, for the
line of reasoning in our opening segment; it’s borrowed from an upcoming
book he’s working on. But as we get into our Friday study, let me quote
again from author Wesley Torres, who does put this very biblical caveat
or asterisk on the doctrine of grace. Five important words say it all:
“GRACE NEEDS TO BE ACCEPTED.” It’s a gift that HAS been given, but now
must be received. If you don’t sign for it, and hold out your hand and
receive it and grasp it and embrace it, it won’t do you any good.
I mentioned once on this broadcast an angry airline flight that almost
derailed a crucial moment in U.S. history. President Richard Nixon had
just resigned in disgrace, August, 1974, after the Watergate scandal.
Gerald Ford had been in office for about a month is all, and continuing
questions about Nixon’s guilt, about the tapes, about possible jail time
for the 37th President of the United States, were just consuming Washington,
D.C. It was impossible to get a clean start. It was impossible to conduct
foreign policy. The poison of the crisis was lingering in the political
air and damaging the nation.
So, after just a few weeks in the Oval Office, President Ford decided
that a pardon was the only way to get a clean break with the past. He
got advisors around him and, very carefully and clandestinely, they began
to explore their options. It would be a political bomb; Ford knew that.
Many people would be upset. He might very well jeopardize his own reelection
in 1976. (Sure enough, we can say these many years later.) But for the
good of the nation, he thought it was the only way to break with the damage
of the past.
Ford tells in his autobiography, A Time to Heal, how he sent a lawyer
named Benton Becker on a top-secret Air Force flight out to San Clemente
in California to try and put the deal together. While he was there, Ford
wanted to get a statement from Nixon, first of all accepting the pardon,
and secondly, admitting some level of guilt in the Watergate mess.
Well, Becker got out to San Clemente late on a Thursday night, and almost
before the wheels of the plane touched down, disaster struck. Ron Ziegler,
Nixon’s former press secretary, and now the “guardian at the gate,” met
Becker, and was his usual truculent, smart-aleck self. “Let me get one
thing straight right now,” he snapped. “President Nixon isn’t issuing
any statement whatsoever regarding Watergate, whether Jerry Ford pardons
him or not.” He called the new President “Jerry,” like he was a minimum-wage
messenger or the water boy on Michigan State’s football team. It was a
nasty, haughty, condescending tone . . . just about like always. And –
true story – this attorney, Becker, was so mad he just about said to the
limo driver, “This is nuts. Just take me back to the plane. Nixon can
rot in jail for all I care.” In fact, he came right out and asked the
nose-in-the-air Ziegler how to page the military pilot of the airplane.
Fortunately, cooler heads prevailed, Becker stayed over, and by the next
day they had worked out a statement where Richard Nixon sort-of graciously
accepted the pardon that had been offered at such personal sacrifice by
President Ford.
This Wesley Torres, in his Review article, tells a similar, famous story
where two men, a George Wilson and James Porter, robbed a federal payroll
way back in 1829; historical accounts vary as to whether or not they shot
and killed a man. Six months later, Porter was hanged, but some influential
friends interceded on behalf of first-time offender George Wilson. Eventually
President Andrew Jackson, moved by public sentiment, sat down and wrote
out a pardon reducing his sentence to 20 years in prison. But for some
reason, Inmate Wilson refused to take it. He wouldn’t hold out his hand
and accept the presidential parchment with grace written on it. And the
matter went all the way up to the Supreme Court, where Chief Justice John
Marshall wrote:
“A pardon is a parchment whose only value must be determined
by the receiver of the pardon. It has no value apart from that which the
receiver gives to it. George Wilson refused to accept the pardon. . .
. We cannot conceive why he would do so, but he has. Therefore, George
Wilson must die.”
And that’s exactly what happened. This man who, amazingly,
did not WANT “Amazing Grace” went to the gallows and was hanged for nothing.
Another internet rendering of this story has the Chief Justice writing:
“A pardon is a deed, to the validity of which DELIVERY
IS ESSENTIAL, and delivery is not complete without acceptance.”
And he concluded with the helpless words that “if it
is rejected, we have discovered no power in this court” – remember that
this is the SUPREME Court! – “to force it upon him.”
And friend, the reality is that it is the same with our loving and generous
God. Grace is a universal gift, and God intends and desires for every
single person in the universe to say yes to that gift. But He’s not going
to force us. And it isn’t enough to be IN His universe where grace is
rained down upon us. It isn’t enough to hear the song “Amazing Grace,”
or read the Bible verses about “Amazing Grace” or hear this radio sermon
series with our own feeble attempts to extol the glories of Amazing Grace.
At some point we have to reach out our hands and take it.
We’ve already read John 3:16; now let’s skip down just 20 verses to the
rest of the grace transaction. Here it is:
“Whoever BELIEVES in the Son has eternal life, but
whoever rejects the Son will not see life, for God’s wrath remains on
him.”
We have to weigh that word “wrath” with real care,
because we’ve already read verses which tell us God is eager to save us,
intensely determined to love us into heaven. His wrath is actually His
heart-wrenching disappointment and anger at the folly caused by sin which
causes some to do like George Wilson and spurn the gift.
Over in the wonderful “grace” promise, found in Ephesians 2, we read that
you and I are saved “by grace, THROUGH FAITH.” That is the accepting part.
We have faith that God’s promise is true, that Jesus’ sacrifice is valid,
that the offer is meant for us. Sometimes we use the illustration of a
person in a burning building who jumps out of the fifth-store window and
into a net held by strong firemen. Grace is the net, and faith is the
jump! We’re not saved by the jump – many people have jumped to their death
– but without the jump, we can’t be caught by the net! At some point,
you and I have got to say: “I believe this loving Savior who is holding
out the net is strong enough to catch me.”
You know, I’m thankful today that our generous God is also a lover of
our free will. We see that all through the pages of both Old and New Testaments.
Clear down at the end, after all God has done to win people back to Him,
after the entire Calvary saga has been told and re-told, how does God
invite us?
“Whosoever WILL,” promise both the Spirit and the bride.
“Whosever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Eugene Peterson’s
Message paraphrase says: “All who WILL, come and drink.”
Back in that George Wilson story, the Attorney General
at the time wrote about the pardon:
“It is a GRANT to him: it is his property; and he may
accept it or not as he pleases.”
Listen, friend. Grace is YOURS – at this very moment.
It pleases us, and it certainly pleases the Father, if you say yes. I
certainly hope it pleases YOU . . . right now.
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