Why God’s Grace is More Amazing than Yours

You may have seen the story circulated on social media. An elderly woman accidentally breaks some dishes in a store. Embarrassed and ashamed, she begins gathering the broken pieces. While other customers observe, she frets over how she’ll pay for the merchandise. The store manager comes along and tells her not to worry. Insurance will cover the loss. He orders his staff to clean the mess. The woman goes free, filled with gratitude.

The story is intended to give us a picture of God’s grace toward us when we blow it. It warms our hearts, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

John 8 tells about the woman famously caught in adultery. Religious leaders catch her in the act (although her partner in crime somehow escapes their grasp). They throw her at Jesus’s feet, reminding him the law stated such a woman should be stoned to death. Jesus shows her mercy, advising the accuser without fault to throw the first stone. You’re probably familiar with the passage. I heard a sermon on this where the speaker invented a backstory for this woman in which she was sexually abused as a child. This may have been accurate; we can’t possibly know.

This version immediately incites our compassion for her. It places us on the woman’s side, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

In the Old Testament, God instructs the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute and to cherish and pursue her no matter how often she returns to her former ways. God intended Hosea’s marriage as an illustration of his love for his people, Israel, despite their unfaithfulness to Him. In a popular Christian novel based on Hosea (also recently released as a movie), the prostitute is a sex-trafficking victim since childhood. This premise makes her a sympathetic character, a smart move for an author to make—any author who understands human nature and how a good story works. (It also doesn’t hurt that she made the character beautiful.)

This assertion causes us to root for the character and cheer when she finally submits to love, but as an illustration of grace, something is lacking.

What if the old woman in the store was a rebellious teen who deliberately broke the dishes and defiantly spat in the manager’s face, but he still let her off the hook? We wouldn’t love the story nearly so much, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

What if the woman caught in adultery had been a man who chose an affair out of boredom—but Jesus still let him off the hook? We probably wouldn’t tell the story much, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

What if Hosea’s wife came from a place of privilege? What if her character in the novel was a pimp instead? We’d hate that story, but it would be a more accurate illustration of God’s grace.

Before we mortals can root for those who receive mercy, we want to understand why they did what they did. It was an accident. They were victims. They were trying to fill the empty hole in their heart. Those scenarios make God’s grace so much more palatable to us. Our sense of justice is too strong to cheer for a defiant scoundrel.

Until, of course, that defiant scoundrel is us.

That sense of justice we all share exists because we were made in the image of God. He is a God of justice. He demanded it.

And then he provided it. That’s what Good Friday is all about: Jesus, taking the blow for the thief, for the adulterer, for the pimp, for you, for me. Though each of us is free to reject it, God’s grace came first. In case you’ve forgotten what we’re celebrating this weekend.

Happy Easter.