Tuesday, February 13, 2018


Scandalous Grace
By Tracy Smith

“And since it is through God’s kindness, then it is not by their good works. For in that case, God’s grace would not be what it really is - - free and undeserved.”

I am a fiction reader and have favorite authors whose new releases I eagerly look forward to. One of those authors is Dee Henderson. She had a new book released shortly before our family had a trip planned to visit my husband’s family in Minnesota. Six hours of reading - - a dream come true for this reader! Little did I know that this fiction book would have a gem of a quote that would spark my thinking for months to come. In the book, Unspoken, I found this quote, “Grace is so scandalous we can never get beyond its reach to forgive.” [1] Wow! I had to stop reading, write the quote down to think on later.

Scandalous and grace - - not two words you think of as “going together.” But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that God’s Word is full of examples of scandalous grace.

David (2 Samuel 11): David sent a man to his death in war so that he could have the man’s wife. Yet because of David’s true repentance and lifelong trust in God, he is later called a man after God’s own heart (1 Samuel 13:14).

The Samaritan woman at the well (John 4): She was a woman and a Samaritan, so normally a Jewish man would not have spoken to her. On top of that, she was an outcast (she was at the well during an “off” time) because of some sad choices she had made in life. Choices others may have seen as unforgivable. Yet, Jesus did a scandalous thing for His day: spoke with her and then offered her Living Water.

Saul/Paul (Acts 9:1-31): As Saul, he thought he was doing God’s work by persecuting and contributing to the death of Christians. Yet, after his conversion, God used Paul mightily in the new church.

In our world, the actions of those above would be deemed “hard to forgive” or even “unforgivable.” But God puts no one and no action outside of God’s redemptive, forgiveness grace. Scandalous and amazing!

GOING DEEPER:
1.  Do you ever feel like you’ve done something hard to forgive or even unforgivable? If so, would you commit to finding more stories of God’s scandalous grace in the Bible as encouragement?
2.  Do you know those who feel like they’ve done something unforgivable? What can you do to encourage or remind them of God’s forgiving grace?

FURTHER READING:


Along with being a wife and mother to two teenage sons, Tracy is a ministry assistant at Oakwood and works with a great group of Junior High girls.


[1] Henderson, Dee. Unspoken. Page 170. Bloomington, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 2013.