August 31
August 31
It is sad that we not only give ourselves to sin, but also reject God’s offer of forgiving and saving grace.
One particular moment in ministry left me stunned. I was counseling a couple whose marriage was in deep trouble. The husband and wife had done a litany of things to weaken their bond of love and to make their home a place of war and not peace. He was selfish, demanding, unkind, impatient, and vengeful. He regularly threw every wrong thing his wife had ever done in her face. She had pleaded with him for years to get help. She had said for years that she would go with him and deal with the wrong things she had done. Finally, only to silence her, he agreed to go to counseling. He had no hunger for change, no willingness to consider how he treated his wife. I was in the room with them not just to point out how sinful they had been but, more importantly, to offer them God’s forgiving, transforming, empowering, and delivering grace. I told them that, because of the presence and power of God’s grace, I had hope for their marriage, and they should too. I told them stories of how I had watched God, in grace, reach down and completely change the direction of marriages. I talked about the awesome restorative power of God’s grace. And I assured them that God’s grace was theirs for the asking.
I was in the middle of reminding them again, as we talked about the battles of the past week, that in God’s grace they could find everything they needed to love one another as God had designed for them to love as husband and wife. In the middle of my grace soliloquy, the husband jumped up and said, “I can’t do this! I can’t come here week after week and act like I want what you have to offer.” And with those words, he stormed out of my office, got in his car, and drove away. His wife burst into tears, and I was at the edge of tears. We were grieved not just because he loved his sin, but because he had heard God’s offer of grace again and again yet chose to reject the offer.
In a single sad sentence in Ezekiel, as God is announcing judgment on his people, he charges them not just with sin, but with turning their backs on his grace: “On account of your unclean lewdness, because I would have cleansed you and you were not cleansed from your uncleanness . . .” (Ezek. 24:13). God says, “It’s not just that you were unclean, but that you have rejected my offer to cleanse you from that uncleanness.”
All of us sin, but we have hope because God offers us forgiving and cleansing grace. Yet there is no hope for us if we turn our backs on God’s offer of grace. Even in our uncleanness, he looks on us with a tender heart and says, “You come to me, and I will make you clean.” May we never turn away from the one place of hope for sinners: God’s offer of grace that forgives and restores.