Copyright by Shea Oakley<\/p>\n
All rights reserved<\/p>\n
Many of us have a tendency to feel that we know what the limits of divine grace should be for ourselves and others. This is usually based on human ideas of fairness and justice that we have embraced as normative after observing how things work between people in the world we live in. But when it comes to the grace of God we nearly always fall short in recognizing the depth of His love for our fallen race, both collectively and individually.<\/p>\n
Sometimes we may feel tempted to rail against the seeming \u201cunfairness\u201d of the unmerited favor He shows towards people who we feel do not deserve it. An example might be the apparently real conversion of a man like David Berkowitz. During the long summer of 1977 Berkowitz serially murdered several people in New York City while sending notes to police signed \u201cthe Son of Sam.\u201d He was eventually captured and subsequently sentenced to life in prison without parole. Years later this one-time serial killer cried out to God for forgiveness and found it in Jesus Christ. Since that time he has shown the fruits of real repentance and even become the head chaplain of prisoners in the correctional facility that will be his home for the rest of his earthly life.<\/p>\n
Some Christians do know \u201cfrom whence they came\u201d and can identify enough with even a man like Berkowitz that they rejoice at his salvation. Others wonder, secretly or otherwise, why a serial killer should ever be the object of saving grace. Some crimes seem so heinous to us that we feel like they should be included under the heading of unpardonable sins, and so we either doubt the sincerity of such conversions or, worse, resent them.<\/p>\n
The core of this issue lies in our understanding of the nature of the God we worship. We know that He is \u201cnot mocked\u201d; the Bible tells us so. Vengeance most definitely is His. However the Scripture also says that \u201cHe has no pleasure in the death of the wicked\u201d and while He does take vengeance He does not do so in the fashion of sinful human beings. We, truth be told, are often inclined to enjoy seeing those we consider to be especially\u00a0bad people get what we think they deserve. One needs look no further than the\u00a0local theater\u00a0to see evidence of this. There are scores of Hollywood movies that feature the bad guys “getting theirs” in violent scene after violent scene. We like revenge. It makes us feel better about ourselves. It makes us feel superior to those\u00a0who we consider to be the really wicked people of the world.<\/p>\n
God, however,\u00a0has no such spurious need to feel morally superior to others because He is the only One who truly is <\/em>morally superior. Paradoxically the one Being in the universe who has the right to condemn the wicked (and that, by the way, includes every one of us if the Bible and our own deepest consciences are to be believed) would prefer not to. He would rather shed His loving grace on us first, in the hope that we might repent and return to Him.<\/p>\n Sometimes the depth of that loving grace astounds and discomfits us. We are like the older brother in the prodigal son story. We<\/em> are good and do not feel that we are getting the reward for that studied goodness which we deserve. Meanwhile, God is letting the likes of \u201cthe Son of Sam\u201d into the Kingdom. It all seems patently unfair.<\/p>\n Well love, divine love anyway, is unfair and unapologetically so. If God\u2019s generosity compels Him to pay all the day laborers the same amount no matter when they started working, then so be it. If His perfect love leads Him to embrace a person who we think deserves nothing but death and lead him or her towards repentance what is that to us? We might do well to remember the grace we ourselves were shown when we were hell-bound worshippers of anything and everything but the one true God, grace that He continues to lavish on us every day of our lives.<\/p>\n Rather than trying to set some kind of personal limit on the grace of God it is far better for us to look up to Heaven and thank that God for the unbelievably \u201cunfair\u201d generosity of His love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Copyright by Shea Oakley All rights reserved Many of us have a tendency to feel that we know what the limits of divine grace should be for ourselves and others. This is usually based on human ideas of fairness and justice that we have embraced as normative after observing how things work between people in… <\/p>\n