Is God's Grace Scandalous?

God's Grace ... It's amazing ... It's wonderful ... It's moving ... It's powerful.  God's Grace is satisfying, uplifting, and lasting. But wait.

God's Grace ... A lamb ... A Cross ... A Sacrifice ... A Fateful Friday ... A Dark and Lonely Day ... A Savior Lying in the Grave. God's Grace is inexplicable, confounding, illogical.

God's Grace. With our tiny human brains, intellects, and reasoning, We would never have come up it! It's beyond human reason or understanding, and beyond the realm of human invention.

The innocent One taking the place of the guilty, suffering for other people's sins and transgressions, and dying for guilty sinners as their Substitute. Amazing, yet scandalous!

Why? Because God didn't have to die in the place of sinners. He is perfect and holy, and could have chosen to remain separate from sinners. Yet instead, God chose to come down to this earth and dwell among us. In other words, God decided "to move into the neighborhood". He came to live amongst us in order to "seek and to save that which was lost." And God dies for us on a cross as our substitute, and offers us forgiveness, peace, and assurance that we can have eternal life. Scandalous! ...

It doesn't seem fair, it seems unjust, and illogical. That is not what human justice does. The guilty must pay, the transgressor must be punished, the criminal must be locked up in jail to pay for his/her crime. But God's Grace says, "I'll take your place, I'll pay your sins, I'll die in your behalf." More that this, God offers us the perfect life of Christ in exchange for our messed up imperfect life. Scandalous? Yes. Amazing? Altogether!

God's Grace is amazing, it is wonderful, it is moving, and it is powerful. It is inexplicable, confounding, illogical, and scandalous! Yet it is altogether lovely, deep, heart-fixing, soul-satisfying. I want to live God's Grace, taste it, eat it, and revel in it. I want to experience it, share it, and love it.

God's Grace is Amazing!

"For it’s by God’s grace that you have been saved. You receive it through faith. It was not our plan or our effort. It is God’s gift, pure and simple. You didn’t earn it, not one of us did, so don’t go around bragging that you must have done something amazing." Ephesians 2:8-9, The Voice paraphrase Bible

~ S.A. Garcia