about grace

TW: rape and child molestation.

It has been a little while since I last chatted with y’all.

I’ve been thinking about grace a lot lately. As we know, God’s grace is 100% undeserved but I’ve had a tough time with it recently.

What is your worst moment? The situation that God should’ve just left you to die. Think about it. Dwell on it. Now think about the beauty of His grace and mercy.

It is refreshing, isn’t it? To know that God has extended grace through His Son’s sacrifice.

Now think about the scum of society. The murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, the kidnappers, the abusers, and just plain ole awful people.

You want to know why I’ve had such a hard time with grace lately?

The murderers, the rapists, the child molesters, the kidnappers, the abusers, and just plain ole awful people are offered the same grace that God offered me through Jesus’ death.

This fact made me really upset as I dealt with the emotional aftermath of George Floyd’s murder. The cop who murdered him is a bad man! He deserves to go to jail! I told myself this over and over again as I grappled with the concept of grace.

Then the Holy Spirit, as it often does, whispered to my heart. “God forgave you. Shouldn’t that forgiveness be extended to them?”

I was flabbergasted. How could the Holy Spirit even bring this up! I was a fornicator who drank a lot. How could the Holy Spirit compare my sins with their sins? Before I could even reply to Him, He whispered to my heart again.

“Did you deserve forgiveness? Was your sin any less than theirs?”

The Holy Spirit was right (duh!). Sin is sin in God’s eyes. I was both broken and humbled all at once. Broken that my ‘lesser’ sins were just as bad as murder in God’s eyes and humbled that He forgave me when I truly didn’t deserve it.

The issue with being a follower of Christ is that I am still human and I sometimes forget that I was once in the same spot as the person I am now judging. I was far from God because my sin controlled my life. As a believer, I sometimes fall into the trap of judging someone because I am closer to God.

Newsflash – just because you are closer to God doesn’t mean that you are God. You cannot judge anyone because you are not and never will be perfect. It doesn’t matter how pure of a life I live moving forward. The very first time I sinned as a child rendered me incapable of perfection and therefore unqualified to judge anyone.

That is why Jesus’ life is so amazing. The life He lived rendered Him qualified to judge us as harshly as He wanted but He chose to sacrifice His life so that His Father could extend grace to us.

As I’ve worked over this, I’ve found my heart softening toward the ‘scum’ of society. I think this is because I’ve asked God to make my heart like His. I still think that the cop who murdered George Floyd should go to jail for a long time. I still think that the cops who stood around and did nothing should go to jail as well. I don’t think I am any better than them however and that realization has been extremely humbling.

I am not perfect and I never will be but in the words of Mike Todd, I’m striving toward progression, not perfection.