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THE SCIENCE OF GRACE #11
WHAT A TASK TO ASK
Is the most wonderful, absolutely free, no-strings-attached, all-expenses-paid GIFT hard to get? Is it difficult to qualify for the world’s greatest FREE offer?
Right away, that sounds like a galactic oxymoron. If it’s truly a free gift – and not involving a 90-minute, timeshare seminar presentation that must be attended by both husband and wife – why would it be hard to qualify for it?
Our topic for two full weeks already has been this: THE SCIENCE OF GRACE. And I would be remiss as a Christian minister of the gospel if I hadn’t already declared to you many, many times in the first ten radio segments that grace is a free gift. Absolutely free. “Not of works, lest any man boast.” And so on. But despite the heavenly price tag of zero dollars and zero cents, it still comes up as an important question. How do we get this free gift? What must one do to qualify for something this wonderfully free? We said last Friday: “Grace must be accepted.” Okay, but how?
In her hot-selling book, Living History, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton describes a 1994 trip she took in her role as America’s First Lady. She and her entourage, along with Al and Tipper Gore, took a 16-hour flight from D.C. to Johannesburg to witness the swearing in of South Africa’s newly elected President, Nelson Mandela. For 27 years, Mandela had been in prison for opposing the former apartheid policies and the regime that enforced them. Now he was free and about to become that great nation’s first black President. Fifty thousand people were there to see the historic moment; Colin Powell and Jesse Jackson were both weeping with joy at the deeply moving site of this former prisoner taking his place as a leader in their new world. A flyover of jets – formerly “a powerful symbol of apartheid’s military power” – from the South African Defense Force “[dipped] their wings to honor their new black commander in chief.”
After the inauguration there was a huge banquet held under an elegant white canvas tent over at the presidential grounds. There Mandela stood up, and in his powerful and dignified way, made a speech welcoming so many dignitaries and guests. Then there was a priceless moment, and here’s how Senator Clinton describes it:
“He was most pleased,” he said, “to have in attendance three of his former jailers from Robben Island who had treated him with respect during his imprisonment. He asked them to stand so he could introduce them to the crowd.” And Mrs. Clinton adds: “His generosity of spirit was inspiring and humbling.”
Well, that’s Part A of the story. Three years later, in their second term, the First Lady and Chelsea Clinton took another trip to South Africa, this time while a limping, leg-in-a-cast President Clinton was off to Helsinki, Finland for a meeting with Boris Yeltsin. Now in 1997, President Nelson Mandela and Archbishop Desmond Tutu were both involved in a post-apartheid project called the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“[The participants in Cape Town] were taking testimony from victims and perpetrators of violence,” she writes, “as a means of exposing the truth and encouraging reconciliation among the races after generations of injustice and brutality. Mandela and Tutu understood the challenges and the importance of institutionalizing forgiveness.”
Isn’t that an interesting concept? “Institutionalizing forgiveness”? I’ll tell you, friend, that ought to be emblazoned over our church doors; what do you say? The official distributing of grace should be what the Body of Christ is all about, 24/7.
And here’s the kicker: a person who had committed atrocities, who had participated in apartheid, who had even killed someone or helped light a “necklace” – a gasoline-filled automobile tire draped around a victim’s neck – could receive amnesty. He or she could be forgiven. It was possible, within the confines of this Truth and Reconciliation Commission, to receive the free gift of grace.
And what did you have to do to get it? The answer speaks volumes for the Christian gospel. All a person had to do was to step forward and ask for it. Confess your part in apartheid, say you were sorry, and ask for grace. And it was given! The double blessing was that victims now knew what exactly had happened. As Mrs. Clinton puts it:
“Victims could finally have answers. As one victim put it: ‘I want to forgive, but I need to know who and what to forgive.’”
So all you have to do is ask. I John 1:9 couldn’t be any plainer than this:
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify [or cleanse] us from all unrighteousness.”
And of course, we remember the beautiful promise expressed by Jesus Himself, in His Sermon on the Mount. This is Matthew 7; listen:
“ASK . . . and it will be given unto you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”
Actually, this is true of all God’s gifts, so it should certainly be true of His greatest gifts of all, forgiveness and grace. There’s a nice P.S. to this promise, found over in the gospel of John, chapter 15:
“And I will do whatever you ask IN MY NAME,” Jesus asserts, “so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. You may ask Me for ANYTHING in My name, and I will do it.”
Did it bring glory to God when people humbled themselves before that “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” and either received OR GAVE grace? Of course it did. When a brand new Christian comes to the foot of the Cross and allows the generous river of grace to wash over them, is God’s kingdom glorified? You bet it is.
We did a radio series a number of years ago entitled “It Can’t Be That Easy!” You simply ASK? Come on! An absolute pardon, full and free, unconditional and un-expiring, eternal and everlasting, simply CAN’T be given out just for the asking? But it is. Thief on the cross . . . he asked. He got. The jailer in Philippi: he asked, he got. Six thousand people in my recent series of meetings in Lusaka, Zambia. They raised their hands. They stood up. They came forward. We baptized them. They asked, they got.
Did we study the Bible with them? Sure. Did they determine to honor God and become obedient Christians? I heard them say that with their own lips. But the condition of receiving grace was the same in Lusaka as it was in the days of Luke and Lazarus. You ask for grace . . . and you get it.
Back in 1997, bestselling Christian author Philip Yancey spent 282 pages asking and answering the question: What’s So Amazing About Grace? You ought to read his eloquent answer, but the most amazing thing surely is this: it’s free, and it’s for the asking. He writes about the Samaritan woman sitting by the well. She’d had five husbands, five failed marriages, and was now just living with guy #6. Jesus came along and asked her for a drink, and subsequently offered her the gift of grace. She asked; she got. John Newton was the captain of a slave ship. Talk about an evil way to make your living in this world. But the gospel of grace hit him full force like an Atlantic storm. He asked for grace; he got it. In fact, he got it so good he wrote a little tune that talks about grace being, you know, amazing.
Yesterday we made the one simple point that grace must be accepted in order for it to take effect. If grace is the net down below and we’re in the burning building, then faith is the jump we take into that net. We accept the strength of the firemen holding it there on our behalf.
But HOW do we jump? HOW do we accept grace? What exactly is involved?
Friend, I guess I should want to make it harder, or fancier . . . but the simple reality is that we accept – by accepting! I don’t know what else to say but that! “Whosoever will, may come.” How do we come? We just come! We say yes to Jesus.
We’ve talked about simple tools like the “Four Spiritual Laws,” distributed by the millions by our late, great friend, Bill Bright and Campus Crusade for Christ. You can read through all four of the laws in about a minute and a half. How do you accept Jesus’ grace? You just say it.
In Bill Hybels’ book, Becoming a Contagious Christian, he tells how he has many, many times sat down with a secular friend – perhaps a sailing buddy who’s just been out with him on windy Lake Michigan. He draws the salvation story on a cocktail napkin next to his friend’s fifth Bud Lite. (This is the actual scenario, by the way!) And he draws a little pencil-y picture of a big chasm. God’s on one side, we’re on the other. What separates us? Our sins. But then the cross of Jesus comes down and is a bridge between us and God. Grace destroys the barrier, and we can come home.
Here’s Hybels’ word-for-word solution to that Bud Lite friend:
“We do this by humbly admitting to God that we’ve rebelled against Him and need His forgiveness and leadership. That simple act of trust and obedience results in our sins being pardoned and our debt being paid. Our relationship to God is firmly established, because we’re immediately adopted into His family as His son or daughter.”
Well, Hybels – who’s not a bad preacher – took 56 words there. You can actually do it in four, I think: “You ask – you get.”
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