A little over a week ago, a mass was dicovered on my grandfather’s right lung. He went in for a biopsy this past Monday at which point his lung collapsed. They were able to reinflate it, but they didn’t get a large enough sample, so they were redoing the biopsy this afternoon. The doctors seem to think that it is malignant, and if they’re right there will be all kinds of other things to deal with. They would want to do surgery in which they’d remove the upper lobe of his right lung (a very extensive surgery with long recovery time), but they have to make sure his heart can stand it first. Chemotherapy and radiation would also most likely enter the picture at some point. My grandfather is 80 years old and has not been in the best health for a while though he’s been managing ok.
I only saw my grandparents once or twice a year as I was growing up. I know that’s more than some people get to see their relatives, and I’m grateful for the visits we had, but I still didn’t get to know my extended family as well as I would have liked to. Now I may very well be facing the loss of my grandfather (my other grandparents are still alive), and my heart is breaking… not just because of the loss that I and the rest of my family will experience, but because of something he said to my cousin the other day.
My cousin was visiting him in the hospital yesterday morning, and, as she wrote in her email to the family, “He said that the preacher from Grandma’s church had already been in to see him this morning. Then he said, ‘I don’t know why he’d come to see me. I don’t go to church. It’s kind of like I’m unworthy, but I guess those guys don’t see it that way.'”
Unworthy. Unworthy to attend church. Unworthy to be loved by God. Unworthy.
Is he unworthy? Well, let’s see… Isaiah 64:6 says, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (All references I give will be from the New American Standard Bible.) Note the reference in that passage to righteous deeds. That basically says you don’t get to heaven by being good. Perhaps a better known passage that makes that same point is Matthew 5:20, “For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Do you know how righteous the Pharisees were? They were the ones who wouldn’t walk more than a certain number of steps on the Sabbath because they were afraid if they did they wouldn’t be keeping it holy. They kept every law on the books. You want outwardly righteous, they could give it to you. Problem was, they didn’t realize their “goodness” wasn’t going to save them. Again, Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Unworthy? Absolutely! We all are. Every last one of us. So where’s the hope in that?
The hope comes in the very next verse in that Romans passage. Romans 3:24 continues, “… being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” (emphasis mine) The answer is grace! I read a really good distinction recently between mercy and grace, both of which God extends to us. Mercy is defined as not giving us what we deserve. Grace, on the other hand, is giving us bountifully of blessings we don’t deserve. An example in Steve McVey’s book Grace Rules is of a time when he was pulled over for speeding. The officer had opened his ticket book to write out the ticket, and Mr. McVey stopped him and asked if he wouldn’t extend mercy towards him this time. The officer stopped what he was doing, looked at him, closed the ticket book, and told him ok, just drive a little slower, please. That was an example of mercy. An example of grace, says Mr. McVey, would have been if the officer had then pulled out his wallet, handed over $100, and told him to have a nice day. Mercy was not giving him the deserved ticket. Grace would have been giving him undeserved blessing.
So, how does grace work? Well, God had to make a way for us to somehow become perfect, because if we’re not perfect, we can’t meet with a holy God. God extended grace to us — gave us the chance to be perfect — by providing His Son as a sacrifice for our “unworthiness”. Acts 13:38-39, after speaking of how God raised up Jesus and how Jesus did not undergo decay (he rose from the dead), says, “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” Know what that means? It means that because Jesus died on the cross and rose again, we have the chance to be worthy! Worthy! Our worth doesn’t come from what we do or even who we are; it comes from one thing and one thing only… the fact that Jesus, the ultimate and only worthy one, lives in us. When we choose to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes and lives inside of us. Romans 8:10 says, “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Do you know what that means??? I’m alive!!! I received a spirit transplant! When I accepted Christ as my Savior, God took my old dead spirit, and He replaced it with His very own living Spirit, the Holy Spirit! My old spirit couldn’t do anything… a dead thing can’t, after all. But the Holy Spirit… it has no limits! And best of all, it’s pure, righteous, holy… worthy. Know what that means about me? Even if I mess up sometimes, I too am pure, righteous, holy, and worthy. First Corinthians 3:16-17 says, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” And so an unworthy person is made worthy.
Grace is perhaps the most beautiful thing in the Bible. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” We often think of that “eternal life” as being a future thing, but grace allows for both present and future. Yes, that holiness and worthiness I spoke of will allow us into heaven when we die, but perhaps more importantly, it will allow us to live here and now. We have a living Spirit who takes all of our burdens and cares, who guides and directs us, who teaches us and does great works through us (often despite us!). Grace means we don’t have to struggle anymore. It means that God wants to take our struggles and give us back love, acceptance, value, security, and adequacy. He gives us all we need if we just turn to Him.
I’m still learning how to give all of my burdens over to Him, but I know that He’s released me of several over the years. The upcoming burden of losing a grandparent will be a biggy, but I know that God will carry this one for me, too. After all, He promised me He would in his Word, and He always keeps His promises. I just wish there was some way I could tell my grandfather how very much God loves Him… enough to pay a large price to make sure that he could be worthy.
If anyone wants to do further research on what the Bible has to say on any of these topics, you can even do it online at several sites. The one I’ve used most often is Crosswalk.com’s Bible Study Tools. If you go to their concordances, you can type in a word and see which passages contain it, or go to Nave’s Topical Bible and look things up by topic.