Only By Grace

I wrote the words to a song a few days ago but it came from a couple discussions and a few things I had been thinking of over the past little while.

It was interesting to me that the space shuttle launch is supposed to be this big thing about men attempting to further their kingdoms. And yes, it is an amazing thing to be in a shuttle that zooms out to space! But I think the main takeaway will always get lost in the mix - just how big God is. Look at it! Look at the vastness of space! Look at all that He created by his breath that is continuing to be seen! And through it all, God’s bigness is comprehended ever more clearly.

What is focused on at Easter shouldn’t just be focused on then, on those two days of the year. Instead we can take in the amazing and wondrous truth of what Christ did throughout the entire year, always. But in relation to the space shuttle launch and Easter weekend a thought came to me. And it became the lead-off for this song. I was thinking about the crown of thorns placed on Christ’s head and how it mocked Him as being, in the people’s eyes, not really a king. And yet He was and is the only true King. The only One truly deserving of reverence.

See the Godhead planned that Jesus would come to die for His people. He stepped onto this small planet Earth from outside of time and came with the cross before His eyes. Do you see how small we are in that? Sin ultimately is not that we have made some mistakes, like oops! That was an accident! Or that was just a slip up but I got myself on track now. Sin is that man does not want God to be God but that they want to be god in His place. They want to stand above Him, they want it to be that He can’t do things without us. They don’t want Him to get the glory that He deserves, but they want that glory for themselves. They want to be their own saviour and the saviour to others. They want to do things to get the glory back in return for their saving of themselves. And, in that way, man can go about carrying on in the way that they have always done, in the pursuit of their pleasures of fame and money and so on, because God, a big God who stands above them in worthiness and worth and authority, doesn’t exist as the God that they want.

And I come back to the crown of thorns. What does this point to? They didn’t want Jesus to be King. They didn’t want Jesus to be God. A big God who, amazingly, stepped out of time (the Creator of the universe!) and, through the love of the entire Godhead for those who were Christ’s Bride, He came to this earth and, knowing beforehand, He came to die on a cross. And most of the people mocked Him and didn’t want Him to be who He said He was. And that still happens now.

There is no part of our salvation that is our own doing. Jesus came and He did what we could not do through His life - we cannot be like Christ in this salvific way because we could not make ourselves right with God as humans. He was man, yes, He was enrobed in flesh, but He was also GOD. And that’s the point - that’s why He could actually die in our place as a perfect sacrifice and it not have to be done over and over again like the Levites bringing the sacrifices of bulls and goats to the temple all the time. Jesus did it once and for all through His perfect sacrifice as our sacrificial Lamb of atonement and there are no longer any priests or mediators between God and man anymore because of that. Jesus came and He died and His sacrifice was enough and He rose again to declare it so! And since it is so we can know that what He says for His people will happen - transformation, new life and new desires, conviction, peace with God! It is completed and it is His doing and He gets all the glory! There are not things like well, Jesus died but I have to do these five things for His blessing. There is not Jesus died but I have to find this path or get myself back onto here or go to this or what have you. Grace is a gift that we did not deserve and we were less than deserving - we were deserving of death - and He came and made us new. If grace is based on our checklist of things to do for our glory it is based on merit and merit is not grace because that type of “grace” would no longer be a gift, it would be owed to us.

And this is the wonder of a Christian. He did it all. He saved us by His work and by opening our eyes to see His glory and what is our response? To worship Him, to delight in Him, to live in the joy that He desires for His people with new desires that call our sin what it was and do not love to carry on in sin but see the grace of conviction and delight that He is conforming us to the likeness of the Son as branches to the Vine. We live in awe that we are small and He is big and we see His truth as a well of wonder about this One who astounds our hearts and minds. This is how we live - with hope and joy rooted in His sufficient work and a peace that transcends because it is not our work that keeps having to be done to save us for our glory and the fickle fame and wants of man.

The crown of thorns points to man’s desire to bring Jesus down to man’s size and prop man up above Him for man’s glory and the continued pursuit of it. But for those who have had their eyes opened to see His glory - we once had seen in grey and now we see in colour, we once had marvelled at mud puddles and now we have to catch our breath at the site of the Rocky Mountains! - we comprehend that the Maker of the Universe that evermore astounds us with His bigness stepped into time and did everything, with complete authority, for His people to know the joy of worshipping Him and coming before Him in prayer and living in light of the hope that we have in Him regardless of our circumstances and that are being transformed through the Spirit at work within us and have a peace with God yes, but a peace that is also rooted in how sovereign He is. May this be a gift that you marvel at throughout the year and beyond!