The wonder of grace

I have learned a lot about grace in recent years.

You know what grace is. It's God's Riches At Christ's Expense. It's God giving us what we don't deserve. I deserved nothing. He gave me everything.

You may be familiar with the story of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. He told his father he wanted his inheritance now.

This would be terrible to Jewish ears. It was almost like saying you wished your father were dead. His father might have had to sell his estate at a reduced price to someone who would let him live there for the rest of his life. Whatever he needed to do for his son to have his inheritance, he did it. 

Having received his inheritance, the son went off and wasted it on fast living.

Imagine the father in the story was your Heavenly Father. He couldn't do anything until the son repented and came home. Bur He never stopped looking and waiting for the day.

"When he came to himself." That's the turning point in the story. When the prodigal came to himself, he came home. "Father," he said, "I have sinned. . ." But the father wasn't listening. "Get out the best robe and put it on him," he said. "Put a ring on his hand and sandals on his feet. Kill the fatted calf."

Now I have a lot of sympathy for the older brother. His attitude wasn't right, but what he said might well have been true. "I've been serving you all these years, and I never disobeyed you. But you never gave me a fatted calf."

Note the father's reply. "Son, everything I have is yours. But your brother was dead and is alive again, and was lost, and is found."

That's grace.