Driving home today I was listening to JD Helser as I so often do recently, and one lyric from “I’ve Seen I AM” caught my attention:
I’ve looked into the eyes of a lamb
I saw love face to face
I felt grace destroy my sin
As mercy flowed from his veins
I saw grace DESTROY my sin! I thought I understood grace pretty well. It’s a free gift that is my ticket to eternal life in Heaven. I cannot earn it, I cannot buy it, I cannot lose it as long as I believe.
But wait…why do I always picture grace as this perfectly wrapped square box with red wrapping paper with silver stripes and a huge perfectly tied red bow on top? And other days grace is just a multitude of soft white layers with a brightness shooting up around the sides…
But when have you ever seen a department store-wrapped gift box or a soft white sheet DESTROY anything (except hopes for a PS3 which turned out to be a shirt)? Yet Jonathan Helser could not describe God’s grace any more perfectly: it DESTROYS our sin. I don’t know about you, but that gets me pretty pumped up.
As soon as i screw up, and commit that sin, God’s grace is standing there with a sledge hammer getting ready to bludgeon it to nonexistence!! I DESTROYS my sin. It DESTROYS your sin. You can’t slow it down either, so stop trying. No matter how guilty you feel, no matter how much you constantly remind yourself of what you did or didn’t do, grace has already beaten the tar out of your mess, and left you with a clean slate.
Maybe that’s why I do see grace as a snow-white soft texture, or as a gift box…perhaps that’s what God presents us with after his grace has done the dirty work that we close our eyes too. Beaten to a pulp is our sin, left in our hands is a gift of purity, wrapped in ribbon and shining paper.
