Rev. Don Campbell
Amazing Grace
A cosmetic company named Philosophy markets a perfume called Amazing Grace, with the line: “Amazing Grace is always appropriate, soft, and feminine. A scent that never offends and is praised by women everywhere.” It occurred to me that this is the attitude of many toward God’s amazing grace—soft, never offensive, and praised by all.
God’s grace is amazing only when viewed against the backdrop of His holiness, which includes His wrath against sin. God made that wrath manifest when he sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin, He condemned sin in the flesh” (Rom 8:3, NASB).
Jude wrote: “Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (vv.3-4, ESV).
If we have no sense of God’s holiness, we will have no sense of our sinfulness. We transform God’s amazing grace into a floral fragrance that we spray around as we dance through life, forgetting Christ’s sinless sacrifice, in whose footsteps we are to walk (1 Pet 2:21-22).
