GRACIOUSNESS ...

This is an idea I sometimes think is lost on us, and I'm not sure if it's because of society or our the times we live in. We don't embrace the concept of sovereignty -- that is, the idea that someone can do whatever they like, whenever they like, and that they have the right to do so.





Americans believe in having some individual authority, as long as it doesn't impinge on others. But we don't embrace the idea of one person unilaterally deciding because of his or her right to do so. That's not even something bestowed to the President.





But God is not the President. He is the creator, and as such He has rights. It is His right to assemble and disassemble. It is His right to create and re-create. Just like we have a right to make computers or programs or policies do as we wish when we create them, God has ultimate rules over us and this world that He created.





There was a day when there was no need for a Christ. It was the dawn of creation, and Man lived in perfect harmony with HIs Creator. There was nothing that stood between them. Nothing that would pull them apart of separate them. The Bible records humankind was naked and unashamed.





But we no longer live in that day. God did not make us the way we create computers -- to bend to our will. He gave us a free will, a right to choose, and has never rescinded that gift. But our right to chose does not take away His sovereignty. He still has His right to do whatever He chooses when He chooses, however He chooses, no matter who it effects.





He makes the rules. It is He who has made us and not we ourselves. His rules, His right.





He could have left us out in the cold, as pathetic creatures who used His gift of free will to chose poorly, but He didn't.





In His sovereignty, and because of His great love for us, He made a Way for us to restore a broken relationship with Him. That's actually good news: God loved us so much that even when we were lost and broken, He made a way for us to get back into a right relationship with Him.





Jesus is that way, and that is more than fair; it is gracious.



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