#25.

The Lord's Supper Proclaims the Amazing Grace of God

Ephesians 1:58a He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself,
according to the kind intention of His will, 6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He
freely bestowed on us in the Beloved. 7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the
forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace 8 which He lavished on us. In
all wisdom and insight
Here is the grace of the Father freely bestowed, and redemption and forgiveness according to the
riches of the grace of the Son, lavished upon us.
Let's back up a bit, though, and think about this term, grace. Many of us can probably trot out
the well-known definition, that grace is "unmerited favor". We can say it quickly, and once we
have heard it enough times, it simply becomes a factoid, an matter of intellectual assent. Shame
on us! How like our old man, our sinful nature, to minimize and play down something that is at
the very heart of the gospel, at the very center of the revelation that God has made of Himself in
saving us. Locked up in this simple term is the incomprehensibly vast gap between God in His
utter holiness and us in our complete and utter depravity, our vile corruption and rebellion, with
hearts that are filled only with evil desires and ambitions. There are really no words in the
English language that can adequately describe how rotten and foul we are by nature, and
therefore how totally undeserving to receive any good thing from such a God.
In our foolish pride, we puff ourselves up with vain conceit and imagine that we are good, that
the God of Scripture looks upon us with pleasure, and is impressed and pleased with the way we
live our lives in general. We actually think, on balance, that we deserve to go to heaven! How
blind we are! How can we arrive at such an assessment of ourselves in the light of all that God
says about us in the Bible?
But we not only puff ourselves up, we also bring God down. He is infinitely holy, with eyes too
pure to even look on sin. He cannot bear it in His presence. It is an affront to Him, an offence to
His character, calling out for His justice to fall on the perpetrators. Yet we make Him just a little
bit above ourselves - a genial buddy who winks and smiles at what we consider to be our very
minor failings. How foolish we are to think that the God of the Bible could have changed into
this monstrous caricature, not much different than Santa Claus.
The truth, then, is that every one of us richly deserves the eternal wrath of this holy and just God
because of the way we have offended him from the moment of our conception. It's not just that
we did not deserve God's kindness and goodness - we lived in such a way to earn the very
opposite!
So there is the "unmerited" part of the word, "grace". What of the favor? Nothing less than that
God vented the just fury of His wrath against sinners upon His Son, Jesus, instead of visiting it
upon those He chose to save; that He took wicked and undeserving rebels and adopted them into
His family, calling them by His Name, making them a kingdom and priests and preparing a
glorious inheritance for them in heaven. And there are countless other blessings that He lavishes
upon His children - too many to list them here.

And where did this transaction take place? Where did God pour out His righteous anger on the
Lord Jesus Christ, rather than reserving it for those who had earned it by their sin? It was on the
cross. As Paul puts it in our text, we have redemption through His blood - and this is what is
symbolized for us at the Lord's Supper. The grace of God who has treated His people so
wonderfully and so graciously when they had only earned eternal condemnation by their
deeds. So come to this meal and reflect on the fact that you never deserved to sit there (and
never could have deserved to do so), at His Table, eating and drinking in His presence, accepted
entirely because of Him and what He has done!
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