All of grace.

In the book that I reviewed yesterday, A Heart for Freedom, Ling really struggles with the fact that she had several abortions as a young woman living in China. Although she gets saved and knows God loves her, she still has a very hard time forgiving herself. A small part of her struggle was knowing that her husband looked down on her. He certainly didn't mean to, and was nothing but a loving, kind husband, but he couldn't really come to terms with her abortions either. Not having grown up in China himself, he didn't really get how she could have let it happen. Ling's husband attended a conference where he heard Dr. Tim Keller speak, and he came away with a renewed perspective on grace, and passed it on to Ling, enabling them both to heal. Here is what he heard:

"The key to understanding grace... is recognizing that we were all dead in our sins (Ephesians 2:5). If we were merely sick in our sins, there would be degrees of illness and degrees of treatment. But dead is dead. When we're dead, we don't need treatment, we need a resurrection, and there is nothing we ourselves can do to bring that about. So grace is not only a free gift from God, it is also indispensable to our lives. On top of that, even though grace is a free gift to us, it was purchased at the price of Jesus' life - which makes it infinitely costly, as well. If we have received this gift of grace... which is both indispensable and infinitely costly, on what basis do we look down our noses at others for the sins or wrongs they have committed?"

This is something that I should have known, and I guess I did to a point, but I don't think it's ever been spelled out to me in quite this way. It's the type of thing that I know, but I'm only slowly learning the full implications of as I get older. Thought I'd share :)