Grace: Definitely Not a Blue-Eyed Blonde

Some time ago, I was in a Christian bookstore – remember those? – and noticed a book entitled, Grace Is Not a Blue-Eyed Blonde. Curious about the title, I picked it up and scanned the back cover description. As promised, the book was not about someone named Grace, but about an indispensable element of biblical truth: God’s grace.

Many distinctives make Christianity unique among the world’s myriad other belief systems, but in terms of importance, grace ranks near the top.

 

As a friend of mine used to say, “All other religions are spelled ‘DO’ – do this, do that. Christianity is spelled ‘DONE’ – Jesus Christ has done everything necessary for us to experience God’s forgiveness and the assurance of eternal life.” At the heart of this is the biblical concept called grace, which literally means the Lord’s unmerited or undeserved favor – His unconditional acceptance. The Bible teaches we can’t earn God’s love, and if we’re His children, we can’t do anything to lose it.

 

This is hardly a new perspective. It was a driving force for the Christian Reformation, and over the years numerous books have been written to help us in fully understanding what the Bible teaches about grace. Philip Yancey’s What’s So Amazing About Grace? and Chuck Swindoll’s The Grace Awakening are just two that I’d recommend. 

 

We even have the classic hymn, “Amazing Grace,” that’s been sung not only in church sanctuaries and chapels, but also in theaters, auditoriums and arenas around the world. However, when I hear people singing it, I sometimes wonder if they’ve really let the lyrics sink in. Here are a few stanzas from a contemporary rendition of that soulful tune:

Amazing grace
How sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I'm found
Was blind, but now I see

 

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear
And grace my fears relieved
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed

 

My chains are gone
I've been set free
My God, my Savior has ransomed me
And like a flood, His mercy rains
Unending love, Amazing grace

 

If anyone ever was a candidate to fully grasp the incredible, incomparable grace of God, it was the writer of “Amazing Grace,” John Newton. In his earlier life, Newton had served as a captain of slave ships, and even after retiring from life on the sea, continued to invest in the slave trade until 1754. 

 

However, after a dramatic spiritual encounter with Jesus Christ during a storm at sea, that all began to change. Time spent in Africa helped him to understand the plight of slaves in a very different light. Instead of being a participant in the reprehensible system, Newton became an advocate for abolishing slavery. Ultimately, he became an ally of William Wilberforce, leader of the British Parliamentary campaign to abolish the African slave trade, and lived to see the passage of anti-slavery legislation in 1807.

 

In 1788, in a pamphlet called, Thoughts Upon the Slave Trade, Newton described the horrific conditions he had witnessed on the slave ships. Repenting of the deeds of his past life, Newton offered "a confession, which...comes too late.... It will always be a subject of humiliating reflection to me, that I was once an active instrument in a business at which my heart now shudders." 

 

Can you imagine? How could someone live with the guilt of having been engaged in such evil, inhumane practices? As Newton attested in his now-famous hymn, it was possible only through God’s redeeming and transforming grace.

 

Centuries earlier, the apostle Paul had written about a similar, 180-degree change in his own life. Once a proud, enthusiastic adversary of the first-century Church, he turned into one of the most zealous ambassadors of Jesus Christ. He wrote:

“For I am the least of the apostles and do not deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them – yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me” (1 Corinthians 15:9-10).

 

Christianity turns the faith-works debate on its head. While so many belief systems concentrate on how a person can become “good enough” to earn God’s acceptance, the Scriptures teach there is nothing we can do to establish ourselves worthy of His love. Our works, therefore, should be an outflow of our relationship with the Lord. As Ephesians 2:8-10 clearly declares: 

“For it is by grace that you have been saved, through faith – and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God – not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”

Because of this, we need not wallow in guilt and remorse over past sins. When we turn to God, seeking His forgiveness, He not only wipes our slates clean, but also begins the process of turning us into living testimonies of His grace. Like John Newton, we can experience the truth of 2 Corinthians 5:17, which states, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”