Dear Friends,
I have been reading a wonderful book by the late Chuck Smith, the
founder of the Calvary Chapel movement. Why Grace Changes Everything,
was a book I pulled off my bookshelf that I didn’t know I even possessed,
but what a wonderful discovery. As I read it, I thought to myself, this is a
book that everyone should read. It’s the perfect book to give to both believers
and non-believers alike, because we all need to better understand the amazing
nature of “Amazing Grace.”
Yesterday in doing a bible study with some men in a U-Turn
addiction ministry with which our church is associated, I mentioned to the
director of the ministry how much Chuck Smith’s book had meant to me. He
surprised me when he commented, “I know it well. I have read it a number
of times, and over the years I have probably given six dozen of the books
away.” It was his “go to” give away book, and it is going to be mine as well.
No matter how much we think we understand grace, and no matter how
many times we memorize and repeat to ourselves Ephesians 2:8-9 ("It is by
grace that you have been saved, through faith-and this is not from yourselves,
it is the gift of God-not by works, so that no one can boast"), it is so
easy to slip back into a legalistic works mentality which screams, “Look what I
am doing for you God. Look how many chapters I read in my bible this morning,
or how many minutes I have been praying this week, or how many visits I made to
those shuts in or how many…”
Proverbs 30:12 reminds us “There is a generation that are pure in
their own eyes, and yet is not washed from their filthiness.”
Our performance driven mentality wants to stand up and scream,
"Look what I have done," when in truth we need to fall on our faces
and humbly cry out “O God look what you have done.”
Church Smith writes in his book, “Whenever we try to establish our
righteousness by keeping rules,” (or performing good acts) “eventually we are
forced to admit we operate on a sliding scale. I will always look morally
better to myself than I do to you, and you will always look morally worse to me
than you do to yourself. I can look at your life and see all kinds of flaws,
but when I look at myself, the few flaws I notice don’t seem so bad” (P. 18).
But no matter the quality and quantity of our good works, they are
all nothing more than filthy rags compared to the goodness and ‘righteousness
of a holy God. “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousness are
as filthy rages” Isaiah 64:6).
No matter how high we climb on the ladder of good works, our ladder
will eventually topple and when it does all we can do is look up and
acknowledge, the only way I can ever make it to heaven is through your “Amazing
Grace” revealed to me in the good work You did for me upon the cross. And
so, with the hymn writer who wrote Rock of Ages, we come to Him singing,
“Nothing in my hands, I bring, simply to the cross I cling.”
Yours in faith and friendship,
Tom
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