An immeasurably comforted frog

"The devil's singing over me, an age-old song, that I am cursed and gone astray/Singing the first verse so conveniently, over me - but's he's forgotten the refrain: Jesus saves!" 

                                                                      Embracing Accusation, Shane and Shane (2007)

I think I may have an issue with deafness. 

As in, God blessed me hugely by allowing me to hear about grace from a young age. But the world I live in operates on merit. And image. And achievement. And appearance. And performance. It's a blaring cacophony of comparisons and categorizations. I get sucked in. I don't often articulate it, but I slip into suspecting that God grades on a curve ....somehow....sometimes.... 

Hallelujah that Jesus is willing to tell us of grace again and again and again. Hallelujah that when the accusations of unworthiness hit, they cannot stick because they take us to the cross....

“When the devil accuses us and says, ‘You are a sinner and therefore damned,’ we should answer, ‘Because you say I am a sinner, I will be righteous and saved.’  

‘No,’ says the devil, ‘you will be damned.’ 

And I reply, ‘No, for I fly to Christ, who gave himself for my sins.  Satan, you will not prevail against me when you try to terrify me by setting forth the greatness of my sins and try to bring me into heaviness, distrust, despair, hated, contempt and blasphemy against God.  On the contrary, when you say I am a sinner, you give me armor and weapons against yourself, so that with your own sword I may cut your throat and tread you under my feet, for Christ died for sinners. . . . As often as you object that I am a sinner, so often you remind me of the benefit of Christ my Redeemer, on whose shoulders, and not on mine, lie all my sins.  So when you say I am a sinner, you do not terrify me but comfort me immeasurably." 

                                                                                                             Martin Luther

"The measure of God’s love for us is shown by two things. One is the degree of his sacrifice in saving us from the penalty of our sin. The other is the degree of unworthiness that we had when he saved us.We can hear the measure of his sacrifice in the words, “He gave his only son” (John 3:16). We also hear it in the word Christ. This is a name based on the Greek title Christos, or “Anointed One,” or “Messiah”. It is a term of great dignity. The Messiah was to be the King of Israel. He would conquer the Romans and bring peace and security to Israel. Thus the person whom God sent to save sinners was his own divine Son, his only Son, and the Anointed King of Israel–indeed the king of the world (Isaiah 9:6-7).

When we add to this consideration the horrific death by crucifixion that Christ endured, it becomes clear that the sacrifice the Father and the Son made was indescribably great–even infinite, when you consider the distance between the divine and the human. But God chose to make this sacrifice to save us.

The measure of his love for us increases still more when we consider our unworthiness. “Perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:7-8). We deserved divine punishment, not divine sacrifice.

 There is only one explanation for God’s sacrifice for us. It is not us. It is “the riches of his grace” (Ephesians 1:7). It is all free. It is not a response to our worth. It is the overflow of his infinite worth. In fact, that is what divine love is in the end: a passion to enthrall undeserving sinners, at great cost, with what will make us supremely happy forever, namely, his infinite beauty.

I have heard it said, “God didn’t die for frogs. So he was responding to our value as humans.” This turns grace on its head. We are worse off than frogs. They have not sinned. They have not rebelled and treated God with the contempt of being inconsequential in their lives. God did not have to die for frogs. They aren’t bad enough. We are. 

Our debt is so great, only a divine sacrifice could pay it."

                                                                 John Piper, The Passion of Jesus Christ (2004)