top of page

Beholding The Face of Grace

  • Writer: OpenDoors Lucknow
    OpenDoors Lucknow
  • Dec 3, 2019
  • 4 min read

Jesus was once asked what the greatest commandment of all was. His answer was intriguing to say the least. Given that Jesus was God in the flesh, the exact representation of God’s being. He told Thomas, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” So one can safely say that Jesus, being in his very nature God, is an authority on the subject of God’s ultimate desire.

The average person thinking about what God wants would normally say God wants obedience above all, or sacrifice (by means of money, or some odd ritual). Most folks think of relating with God as one would relate with the boss of a company. Do and be seen just enough to be on their good books. But Jesus said the greatest commandment of all was to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and strength.” Think about that for a moment. God wants us to love him. This video might help you understand what that love means. Love isn’t a word naturally associated with life with God. But, God who is love, wants precisely that from us.

Many people have tried to represent what God is like. Prophets, teachers, scribes et al. But none could fully describe what He is like until Jesus came. This is how John said it:

Out of his fullness we have all received grace in place of grace already given. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. John 1:16-17 (NIV)

Grace. What a lovely word. We’ve all experienced it at some level like the forgiveness of a friend, the kindness of a parent, grace marks in school. And every time it appears, it humbles us, touches us deeply. Facebook is rife with viral videos that depict some aspect of grace. But when Jesus came, it was grace personified that appeared and lived among humans. The One from whom all definitions of love, truth, beauty, justice and grace find their source – came and lived it out among us.

Joan Osborne wrote a song in which she asks, What if God was one of us? Just a slob like one of us Just a stranger on the bus Trying to make his way home If God had a face what would it look like? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Gx1Pv02w3Q

Well, God was one of us. Living the ordinary, mundane, pressure-filled, temptation-ridden life that we all are living. Like John says

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+1&version=NIV

If God was one of us, if he had a face what would it look like? It would be “full of grace and truth”. Grace. Like oxygen to a person gasping for breath, grace is God’s life-supply given to a gasping world. And when we look around us at incidents that show us how much the world is gasping, we know that we need so much more that just good political rhetoric, social media driven movements, moral teaching, or exemplary justice. The human race is blue in the face without the air of grace – the transforming power of grace that fills every fiber of a person’s being, permeating the heart, mind, soul and spirit of a person, making them new. And this is what God wants to give a world dying, gasping, and trying to redefine living.

The place where we see grace in it’s full glory is at the cross of Christ. Where the full force of evil was unleashed on the fullness of good. And Jesus died there – unjustly, mutilated, mocked, pierced, and killed. For people like the veterinarian who was brutally raped and murdered last week, God knows what that’s like. He was one of us. Rejected, accused, betrayed, beaten, mocked and killed like any one of us.

The face of grace in a gasping world, turned to His killers and prayed for them saying, “Father forgive them for they don’t know what they are doing.” What was happening as he died? As the face of grace was bowed down on that lonely cross? Paul declares, “.. God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. ” We step into this grace the moment we look to Him and put our trust in Him. He reconciles us to himself, makes us one with Him, makes us his children, and puts his Spirit in us and gives us peace with Him.

The Cross of Christ, where Jesus bore on Himself everything that is wrong with the world, is our portal to a different world. As we behold the Face of Grace, let it shine fully, brightly upon our hearts, illuminating every part of us, till every part of our being is consumed by the power of His grace. Open your heart today, and turn to Jesus – Heaven’s unending reservoir of Life for you and me.

 
 
 

Comments


  • Facebook
  • Instagram

©2021 by OpenDoors Lucknow.

bottom of page