"Grace Is..." (Part 3)

To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen. Greet all the saints in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me send greetings. All the saints send you greetings, especially those who belong to Caesar's household. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. Amen. (Philippians 4:20-23 NIV).

Today, we come to the second principle in understanding the fullness of grace: It is expressed in our relationship to other believers. The grace Paul had come to know had taught him something very special about his relationship to others. He knew how important Christian courtesy was in the body of Christ. When Paul thought about the grace of God, it extended to his relationship with others including good manners and a considerate lifestyle. It included beautiful, well-chosen words. It included care for others people. It included various expressions of kindness and mercy.

Jesus’ life is full of examples of this kind of grace. You remember the woman caught in the act of adultery. The law clearly stated she should be stoned to death. The Pharisees brought her to Jesus and demanded that he carry out the sentence of death. He said, “He who is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” That’s grace! Though they had every right to execute her, with rocks in their hands, self-righteous fire in their eyes, Jesus intervened with grace! As I meditate more on that story, I am forced to ask the question of how many we have stoned for their sin, when all Jesus wanted to do was forgive them. How tragic that we have not caught the vision of grace in our relationships!

It goes even further than our relationship with those who have fallen. When Jesus’ dear friend Lazarus died, Martha met Jesus on the road and Mary later faced him in the house. Both blamed him for not coming earlier: “If you had been here, my brother would not have died.” There is strong accusation in those words. He took them in grace. With the turn of his hand, he could have sent them to join him in eternity; but he refused to answer them back in argument. That is grace. How we ought to learn Christian courtesy! How we need to love one another as God has loved us!

I love the story about an elderly lady named Mamie Adams. She always went to a branch post office in her town because the postal employees there were friendly. She went there to buy stamps just before Christmas one year and the lines were particularly long. Someone impatiently pointed out that there was no need to wait on line because there was a stamp machine in the lobby. “I know,” said Mamie, ‘but the machine won’t ask me about my arthritis.” I wonder if we can recapture a genuine sense of grace in our relationship to others, especially our brothers and sisters in Christ? We sure need too!