God's Ocean of Grace
Luis Palau
Thank God His grace isn't fair.
Nearly two years ago, one of my nephews (I'll call him Kenneth) was near death. He had AIDS. During a family reunion in the hills of northern California, Kenneth and I broke away for a short walk. He was a hollow shell, laboring for breath.
"Kenneth, you know you're going to die any day," I said. "Do you have eternal life? Your parents agonize. I must know."
"Luis, I know God has forgiven me and I'm going to heaven."
For several years, since his early teens, Kenneth had practiced homosexuality. More than that, in rebellion against God and his parents, he flaunted his lifestyle.
"Kenneth, how can you say that?" I replied. "You rebelled against God, you made fun of the Bible, you hurt your family terribly. And now you say you've got eternal life, just like that?"
"Luis, when the doctor said I had AIDS, I realized what a fool I'd been."
"We know that," I said bluntly but deliberately, because Kenneth knew full well what
Romans 1 teaches. "But did you really repent?"
"I did repent, and I know God has had mercy on me. But my dad won't believe me."
"With good reason," I said. "You've rebelled in his face all your life. You've broken his heart."
Kenneth looked me straight in the eye. "I know the Lord has forgiven me."
"Did you open your heart to Jesus?"
"Yes, Luis! Yes!"
As we put our arms around each other and prayed and talked some more, I became convinced that Jesus had forgiven all of Kenneth's rebellion and washed away all his sin. Several short months later, he went to be with the Lord at age 25.
My nephew, like the repentant thief on the cross, did not deserve God's grace. I didn't either. None of us do. That's why grace is grace--unmerited favor.
But it goes against all sense of "fairness" that Kenneth could enter heaven and forever enjoy its holy glory after living all but a few months of his young adult life in open spiritual rebellion. Fairness requires that heaven be reserved only for people like his mom and dad, who by faith have lived in service to God for 30 years and plan to serve Him, as God enables, for 30 or 40 more.
Fairness requires that heaven be home for John the beloved apostle--who obediently cared for Mary the mother of Jesus after the Lord's death and who endured persecution and exile in Jesus' name--not for a thief who repents two or three hours before his death.
But the words of Jesus leave no doubt: "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
Feel the authority? With the power that upholds the universe, Jesus assures a dying man--a legally convicted, admitted criminal--of eternal life. As it does today, assurance of salvation rested in the unbreakable promise of God--God's trustworthiness, not man's fickleness--founded on the Savior's substitutionary work on the cross.
Moments earlier, this thief was among the many who taunted the Savior as He hung on the cross:
"You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself!"
"Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"
"He saved others, but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel!"
"Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him."
"He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him...."
Then Matthew adds, "In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him" (
Matthew 27:39- 44).
How can this man be among the worshiping multitude in heaven, singing, "Worthy is the Lamb, who was slain, to receive power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise!" (
Rev. 5:12)?
Only by grace.
I've sometimes found it hard to be kind and patient with someone who has openly, purposefully, and recklessly broken a basic command of God and then is suffering the consequences. Until Kenneth put a human face on AIDS and homosexual sin, it was with trepidation--never too loud--that I'd say, "God loves homosexuals."
My nephew has made me more tender, and more bold, in discussing God's forgiveness with anyone who has committed blatant sin, whatever it may be, if that person truly repents.
Still, it doesn't come easy. In churches across America, I enter the danger zone when I say with conviction, "God loves homosexuals. Amen?"
There aren't many amens. Stone faces shout by their silence, "That isn't fair!"
Neither is grace.
God is like the owner of the vineyard who paid the same wage to workers who labored only one hour as he did to those who labored all day (Matt. 20:1-16). "You have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day," they complained. Wouldn't you?
Replied the landowner, "Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"
God's grace is generosity extraordinario, love without limits. In those agonizing moments of Grace lifted up from the earth, a criminal repented of unbelief, rebellion, and insults. Before the day ended, he joined Jesus in paradise.
Though it wouldn't be fair, having squandered so much, prodigal America has never needed grace more. Kenneth and a thief without a name send the same message: There's no bottom to God's ocean of grace.
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