October 3
October 3
We should be thankful every day of our lives for the preserving power of God’s grace.
What keeps your relationship with God secure? Is it the power of your independent spiritual strength? The breadth of your spiritual wisdom? Perhaps you can rely on the consistency of your righteousness or the gospel-centeredness of your church? Is it the degree of your biblical literacy and theological knowledge? Your daily devotional discipline? Many of these things are good tools in God’s hands, but we are kept in a committed, obedient, and worshipful relationship with God by one thing: the keeping power of his grace. The one who sought us, called us, justified us, reconciled us, and now works to sanctify us works within us and outside of us to keep us in his flock forever. We are his now and forever only by the power and protection of his redeeming grace.
Jesus illustrates the nature and activity of his keeping grace:
See that you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven. What do you think? If a man has a hundred sheep, and one of them has gone astray, does he not leave the ninety-nine on the mountains and go in search of the one that went astray? And if he finds it, truly, I say to you, he rejoices over it more than over the ninety-nine that never went astray. So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. (Matt. 18:10–14)
Jesus rebukes his disciples, who see children as a bother and an interruption. Jesus reminds his disciples of his love for these little ones and how much he values them by telling them this parable. One sheep, out of a flock of one hundred, has wandered away. How horrific would it be for that shepherd to say to himself, “Oh well, who cares? I have ninety-nine more.” We all know what a good shepherd will do. He will leave the sheep who are safely in his flock and go look for and bring back that one lost sheep. Jesus reminds his disciples that the Father in heaven is unwilling for any of his little ones to perish. We should look at our children with the eyes of Jesus.
It is clear that Jesus’s lost-sheep illustration is about more than just valuing children. If you are one of the sheep in God’s flock, you have been chosen to be there by his grace. And Jesus, the ultimate good shepherd, is unwilling to let you wander away from him. Jesus works by grace to seek, find, and restore his lost sheep, and that is very good news. Though our strength wanes and our hearts wander, he will keep us to the end.