Faith and Hope Explaining justice, mercy, and grace

Welcome to episode 113. We're going to start this one like we do every other one.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God, and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Spending time in the Word of God is the best way to spend time with God. Welcome to No Doubt, No Fear, Only Believe podcast, where we will encourage, inspire, and empower you to live your best life in Christ. Here's Greg.

Welcome to episode 113. If this is your first time here, I am going to talk about grace, and more specifically what I talked about on episode 112, which is the one right before this one. And pardon me for my Captain Obvious imitation. The picture of the cruise ship just works for me. Before we get into that and talking about that and maybe breaking that down a little bit more, I want to make sure that we understand, because when we throw words out and we're walking or driving or working out or doing whatever we're doing as you're listening to this podcast, when I'm throwing words out and grace happens to be one of those words, I just want to make sure that we all are on the same page. And that's why I'm going to great lengths, because I think that the concept or the truth about grace is so important. And I think we— some of us just don't have a— and present company included, I'm not sure that I have a perfect understanding of what grace is in my life. In fact, I know I don't. Perfect is not even close to being able to describe the way I understand grace. I really probably have a 10% understanding, but I do— what I do know is that it is a free gift from God, and it includes so many things that is just incredible, and it's just mind-blowing. I, you see, I see the little emoji where the mind just blows up, and so I just want you to get a picture of how wonderful grace is for you, for me, for everyone on earth. Jesus died and released the grace of God as a free gift to the whole world. All of us have the grace of God available to us, but not all of us will reach out and appropriate it to our life by faith. And that's what I want to talk about. First, I want to get us a picture of justice and mercy and grace, because I need us to have an understanding. Justice is what happens if you break the law, you go to court, and the judge hits the gavel and says— and let's just use an example of speeding. Let's just say that I was going, let's say I was going 55 in a 35. And just for the example, let's say that, and it was by us, a church, and on Sunday, and people were walking, there was a police officer there and I just didn't care. I mean, I wasn't paying attention, may have been looking down at my phone, whatever I was doing. But I'm going 35 miles— the speed limit is 35 miles an hour, and I bust through there at 55 miles an hour. And there just so happens to be a police officer there with his radar on, and he clocks me at 55 miles an hour. And when he pulls me over, he gives me a ticket for 20 miles over the speed limit. In order to get a picture of justice when I get— stand before the judge and I go present my case and say, look, I, you know, I wasn't paying attention, I didn't realize that it was, you know, 35, whatever I say in my own defense. Justice would be when the judge hits the gavel and says, Greg, you were speeding. There was a— it was posted, it was 35 miles an hour. Whether you saw it or didn't see it, you still broke the law. And so because you broke the law, you owe $457 because you were through You were speeding through a church zone or whatever. I mean, we're just gonna make— we're making this up anyway. So I owe $450, and when I pay that $450, justice is served. I don't have to do anything else. I have been fined. The $450 is my payment. That's where I broke the law, I was given a remedy for breaking— or the punishment for breaking the law, $450. I write the state or the whatever the whatever the entity is that I write the check to, to take care of this speeding ticket, justice is served. Okay, that same example. Now we're gonna use mercy. I throw myself on the, I was speeding through and I've got a different scenario. I was, it wasn't that I wasn't paying attention, is that I, my younger son had ripped his foot open or something and stepped on a nail. Or let's say that he, you know, he's bleeding in the back and we're holding ice. My wife's in the back seat. And I'm busting it to try to get to the hospital because it looks like he might— I mean, he's losing a lot of blood. So I'm driving 55 miles an hour and through this, and I see that there's a church zone, but I've got to get there. And so I make sure no one's going and I've slowed down just enough to get through there without causing any harm. And then I speed up even more and the police officer pulls me aside. He sees my son with blood going everywhere and he says, what, what's happening? And I tell him, and he says, follow me. And so then I go, we get to the hospital, we get the stitches. Instead of getting— I, now I still sped through the same 35, 55, and a 35, but the police officer gave me mercy because of my situation. And mercy, it doesn't have to be— I don't have to have a cut foot or bleeding to death or anything like— mercy can come when justice should be served, when there's a $450 fine that should be paid, the judge could have given somebody mercy and say, look, you know, this is your first offense, you put a pretty decent defense in front of the court, and we don't want to punish you. This a lot of money, you're out of a job, this is tough times. What we're going to do is we're going to give you a probationary period of 90 days, and if you don't speed in these next 90 days, the court is going to waive the $450 penalty. That's showing mercy. Justice would be you pay the $450. Mercy is justice demands the $450 payment. Mercy is allowing you to skip that or to not pay it. So, and I'm just using this example, and it may not be a great example, but I just want to tell you the difference. Justice is when you break the law and then justice is served by either doing time if you're, if you're told you gotta go to prison or whatever it is. If you robbed a bank, say justice would be if you're caught and you're found guilty of robbing a bank, you're gonna spend the next 15 years behind bars. That's a justice. Mercy would be you got caught robbing a bank, the judge finds out that you, your mom or kid or somebody had some kind of rare disease that you were trying to steal the money to pay for the treatment, blah, you know, you, you understand you're trying to do it for something besides yourself, and you were given mercy. Now here's grace. With all of those things, and I may not be doing a great job of talking about justice and mercy, but grace— I just want to take this to the next level of just how incredible grace is. Now, with unmerited favor, favor would be— you could kind of define favor as having mercy. So, so mercy would say, you know, he, he found favor in the court's sight when they suspended that $450 fine. That could be construed as favor. You found favor with the judge, he bought your story, or whatever it was. So that's not unmerited. That's just— that can be mercy. Unmerited favor and grace would be you're going 55 through a 35. And the police officer pulls you over and tells you to come downtown. And so when you get downtown and you stand before the judge, the judge says, look, you were, you were going 55 in a 35. That is 20 miles an hour over the legal speed limit. What you should, what we should do is we should fine you $450. But instead of fining you $450, What I want to do is I understand that you owe $350,000 on your house. I understand you've got some student debt, and I understand that you've got a car note and some credit card bills. So what I want to do is I want to pay all of that off, and I want to give you $500,000 over and above that. So your, your debt is $450,000. I want to give you that $450,000 I want to give you another $500,000 because the first $450,000 you're gonna have to pay taxes on that, and this additional $500,000 will help you pay the taxes and will give you some more money just, you know, just because. Now I just want you to think about if that is even possible. Could that even in your wildest dream ever happen? You're going 20 miles an hour over the speed limit, you're hauled into court, and the judge, who can do anything he wants within the law, instead of fining you $450, he gives you $950,000. Now, you didn't earn it, you didn't deserve it, and there's no rhyme or reason to why he did it. And when someone asked, why did you do that? I just, I just felt love for that person, and I just really wanted to pour out my love to that person. That is just a, just a fragment, and it is a horrible example, but it's the grace. If you take that analogy and use it to the grace of God, the unmerited favor, that grace has been poured out to you and I from God in the form of the death of and burial of his Son. And then on the third day was resurrected and now is sitting at the right hand of Father making intercession for you and I. The grace of God and all of those— the saved and the salvation, all of those terms and all of those things, those words that I used on that pre— on the previous episode, words like forgiveness, healing, prosperity, safety, rescue, liberation— those words, that is describing just a part of what happens with salvation, just a part of the grace of God. And I want you to hear what Paul says in 1 Timothy. 1 Timothy 1:12: And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has enabled me, because he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a prosecutor, and an insolent man. But I obtained mercy because I didn't— I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant with faith and love which is in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of who I am chief. I want you to see Paul's heart when he starts talking about the grace and mercy and all of that stuff. And, and it's all— and they're all interwoven together. And that's why I kind of wanted to talk about I was gonna talk about the, the cruise ship and the analogy that went with the cruise ship that I talked about in episode 112, but God kind of wants me to, to make sure that you understand the difference between justice, mercy, and grace. And it is grace that when, when we're talking about the unmerited favor of God, it is something that we cannot— you cannot humanly with your mind, with your little— with my little peanut brain, I cannot wrap my mind around the wonderfulness of God and how much he loves me and how good he is, and all of those things that go with the fruit of the Spirit, which is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control—all of those things that he's just overwhelmed me with and gives me daily. I just, I know I'm not doing a very good job of communicating this to you, but I just want to tell you The grace of God is incredible. And, and if we— when you hear grace, and I— we're going to talk about when Paul talks about grace, but when you see that word, I want you to think about how wonderful God is. And when you hear the grace of God, I just want you to start picturing this treasure chest of things and these promises. And we're going to talk about that in the next episode. And I just want to pray for you right now. God, I thank you so much for the person listening to this episode. And I want to thank you for the grace that you've poured out for the whole world. And God, I— we don't— I don't think we understand it. I don't know how we could. But God, we just want to thank you, and we just want to, as best we can— help us, Holy Spirit, to understand the grace of God and how we can apply it to our lives. Lord, we thank you. We love you. We ask it all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you for being a part of this, and I look forward to visiting with you on the next episode.

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