By Gary D. Robinson
Ephesians 2:1-10
I know lady who
was in a hurry to get to work. I won’t say she was flying low, but the birds
were flying a little higher than normal that morning — to keep out of her way!
She topped a rise, glanced to her left, and there he sat — John Law. The lead
in her foot turned to water. She braked, she slowed, but it was too late.
The lights whirled in her rear-view mirror as she pulled over and abandoned hope.
The cop asked her
where she was going. “To work.” “Where do you work?” “I’m the secretary at
First Church.” He said, “This is your lucky day! I go to church there.”
She got no ticket.
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Surprise!
That sudden reversal of our expectations. That amazing,
too-good-to-be-true feeling. As we go through life, we learn what expect, don’t
we? Death and taxes, colds and flu, speeding and tickets. We learn that money
talks and nobody walks. We learn that we pay for what we get and we get what
we pay for. And nobody ever gets
anything but what he deserves.
Then, all of a
sudden, something happens that turns this neat, orderly system upside down.
A little girl runs into the office of Business As Usual, a lovely child with
laughing eyes. She runs straight for the big mahogany desk and messes it up!
She throws pink slips and scatters bills. She cancels doctor appointments and
tears up tickets. She teaches us that life doesn’t always boil down to cause-and-effect.
Her name is Grace. Grace is always a surprise and a delight.
Let me tell you
something I’m sure many of you think too good to be true: Ours
is a gospel of grace. So says Paul, the Apostle of The Heart Set
Free.
What
were we before we came to Jesus? To say we were bad
off is an understatement — like saying Elvis Presley and Princess Di are bad
off. We were dead and damned.
In two dark strokes, Paul describes not only the moral culpability
of the human race, but the moral capability as well. Maybe we wanted to do
better, but we couldn’t. As Petersen paraphrases, we filled our lungs with
polluted unbelief and exhaled disobedience.
That’s the way
we were morally. Spiritually, we were even worse. In fact, we were like my
chickens, the stupid little creatures I fed and watered for weeks. They wore
little white coats stained with their own filth. They were interested only
in their next meal.
On
their last day, they seemed to smarten up a little. They knew something was
up. If you’d been having a bad day, the sight of me chasing those chickens
would’ve gladdened your heart! But what were they? Just broilers eating yellow
Broiler-Maker, dead and dinner where they stood. It was just a matter of time.