Embracing Grace: A Journey of Transformation
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Reflecting on the hymn "How the Grace of God Amazes Me" by Pastor Emmanuel T. Sibomana, I am reminded of the depth and richness of God's grace. This hymn, discovered in a hymnbook that our church in Scotland acquired, has been a source of inspiration and reflection. It emphasizes the necessity of grace not just at the beginning of our Christian journey but throughout our entire walk with Christ. [00:02:43]
In our Christian lives, we often find ourselves veering towards either legalism or antinomianism. Legalism binds us with rules, while antinomianism falsely liberates us from the law, leading us to believe we can live without regard for God's commandments. However, the New Testament teaches us that the solution to both extremes is the grace of God. [00:04:45]
Another thing I supposed I’d learned just through pastoral experience was this, that Christian people tend to fall off the gospel center either into what we usually call legalism or on the other hand antinomianism – a legalism in which we are restricted and bound and we make sure that other people will be restricted and bound with us. [00:04:59]
The striking thing that I felt the New Testament greatly emphasized and especially the Apostle Paul, not just in Romans and Galatians but everywhere, was that he saw that the resolution for both antinomianism in our spirits and legalism in our spirits was one and the same resolution. And it was this – the grace of God in the gospel. [00:07:51]
God is not gracious to me because Jesus Christ died for me. Let me say that again. God does not become gracious to me because Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus Christ died for me because God is gracious to me. Now, why do I say that? Because I’ve often heard the gospel preached in exactly that way. [00:10:50]
What Jesus Christ did on the cross made God gracious towards us. But that’s not the teaching of John 3:16, apart from anywhere else in the Scriptures, is it? What John 3:16 teaches is that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. And that I would say turning an element of the gospel on its head was something that I wanted to emphasize. [00:11:32]
And actually that was significant in this book, and it was significant for me behind it in pastoral ministry because I had met so many Christians who had a disposition of love and faith toward the Lord Jesus but had very little sense of the absoluteness of the grace of God the Father towards them and a certain uncertainty and therefore a lack of confidence and assurance. [00:12:32]
And of course, what was even more fundamental than that was that that notion that Jesus did something to constrain the Father to be gracious meant that there was an inbuilt, essential difference of disposition towards sinners between the Father and the Son, and therefore, between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. [00:13:24]
And our doctrine of God the Trinity and His unity of disposition towards us – that the Father lovingly, graciously planned salvation, that the Son willingly effected salvation, that the Spirit delights to apply salvation – that in a sense as we’ve been thinking already in this conference, the very doctrine of God was a stake in this. [00:13:47]
Because one of the things I’d become convinced of, and I thought that I saw echoes of this in Pastor Sibomana, was this that just as Steve Lawson was emphasizing from Genesis 3 that the serpent was engaged not only in a denial of God’s Word, but he was actually engaged in a twisting of God’s character. [00:15:15]
And I’d come to realize actually that was how many Christians actually felt about the Father. And then as I’d read I began to discover that this was… this was a pastoral need with which the great masters of pastoral ministry had already dealt. John Owen, for whom I had a great love, was a primary illustration of this. [00:16:20]
And I find myself with doubting and struggling Christians, having to re-gospel them and in a sense to re-Trinity them. And in so many ways, this particular hymn gave wonderful expression, not systematic expression, not even logical expression, not exegetical expression, but real expression to the nature of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. [00:17:13]
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In our Christian lives, we often find ourselves veering towards either legalism or antinomianism. Legalism binds us with rules, while antinomianism falsely liberates us from the law, leading us to believe we can live without regard for God's commandments. However, the New Testament teaches us that the solution to both extremes is the grace of God. [00:04:45]
Another thing I supposed I’d learned just through pastoral experience was this, that Christian people tend to fall off the gospel center either into what we usually call legalism or on the other hand antinomianism – a legalism in which we are restricted and bound and we make sure that other people will be restricted and bound with us. [00:04:59]
The striking thing that I felt the New Testament greatly emphasized and especially the Apostle Paul, not just in Romans and Galatians but everywhere, was that he saw that the resolution for both antinomianism in our spirits and legalism in our spirits was one and the same resolution. And it was this – the grace of God in the gospel. [00:07:51]
God is not gracious to me because Jesus Christ died for me. Let me say that again. God does not become gracious to me because Jesus Christ died for me. Jesus Christ died for me because God is gracious to me. Now, why do I say that? Because I’ve often heard the gospel preached in exactly that way. [00:10:50]
What Jesus Christ did on the cross made God gracious towards us. But that’s not the teaching of John 3:16, apart from anywhere else in the Scriptures, is it? What John 3:16 teaches is that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son. And that I would say turning an element of the gospel on its head was something that I wanted to emphasize. [00:11:32]
And actually that was significant in this book, and it was significant for me behind it in pastoral ministry because I had met so many Christians who had a disposition of love and faith toward the Lord Jesus but had very little sense of the absoluteness of the grace of God the Father towards them and a certain uncertainty and therefore a lack of confidence and assurance. [00:12:32]
And of course, what was even more fundamental than that was that that notion that Jesus did something to constrain the Father to be gracious meant that there was an inbuilt, essential difference of disposition towards sinners between the Father and the Son, and therefore, between the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. [00:13:24]
And our doctrine of God the Trinity and His unity of disposition towards us – that the Father lovingly, graciously planned salvation, that the Son willingly effected salvation, that the Spirit delights to apply salvation – that in a sense as we’ve been thinking already in this conference, the very doctrine of God was a stake in this. [00:13:47]
Because one of the things I’d become convinced of, and I thought that I saw echoes of this in Pastor Sibomana, was this that just as Steve Lawson was emphasizing from Genesis 3 that the serpent was engaged not only in a denial of God’s Word, but he was actually engaged in a twisting of God’s character. [00:15:15]
And I’d come to realize actually that was how many Christians actually felt about the Father. And then as I’d read I began to discover that this was… this was a pastoral need with which the great masters of pastoral ministry had already dealt. John Owen, for whom I had a great love, was a primary illustration of this. [00:16:20]
And I find myself with doubting and struggling Christians, having to re-gospel them and in a sense to re-Trinity them. And in so many ways, this particular hymn gave wonderful expression, not systematic expression, not even logical expression, not exegetical expression, but real expression to the nature of the grace of God in Jesus Christ. [00:17:13]
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