scandal of grace 6

It has been quoted that Michelangelo used to say that inside every piece of marble was a masterpiece, it only needed someone to remove the stone and rubble to reveal it.

This is how God sees us. He sees the masterpiece inside, in spite of what we see on the outside. Paul said it like this: “He who has began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of his return…” (PJ’s paraphrase.)

In the Message version of the Bible, Paul writing to the Romans makes a good summary of this truth about grace:

“So here's what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don't become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You'll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you.

I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.”
Romans 12:1-3 MSG (Italics and Bold, mine.)

If we are to truly learn how to live into this grace, we must first believe the truth that God loves us and accepts us just the way we are. No, we will not stay there. No, this doesn’t give us license to sin, but it does give us liberty to run after God will passion and trust, without fear of loss of love and without the fear of judgment, if we stumble along the way. It is my belief that the reason why so many of us never truly pursue God like we want is because we have a tarnished view of this loving Father and we are afraid that if we mess it up, we’ll lose everything. So if we risk nothing, we lose nothing.

But Jesus’ response to us is this: If we seek to keep our lives, we’ll lose them, but if we give them, we’ll keep them. As we enter this season of Lent, of focusing on the sacrifice made on our behalf, let us embrace what God has done for us and give ourselves, body…soul…spirit, to God with passion and without fear. He loves us and invites us to live into His grace.