God’s Grace

What awakens the human conscience and draws a man or woman to Jesus Christ? In Reformed circles it is customary to say that it is mostly a sense of need occasioned by awareness of sin. We know sin by the law. So we say that a person must first be slain by law before he can be resurrected by the Gospel. That is good theology. Yet in actual experience it is more often the case that an awareness of the great love of God is the decisive factor.

The story begins with the brothers’ fear, the same fear that had gripped them when the return of their silver had first been discovered. At their father’s insistence they had brought double the money on this journey, the first part to pay for the grain already purchased, and the second part to pay for a new supply. But when they presented themselves in Egypt and were immediately invited to eat with Joseph at noon, they suspected a plot against them.

If you are not a follower of Jesus Christ, you are in the same position as Joseph’s brothers at this point in the story. You have sinned against your elder brother, the Lord Jesus Christ, by denying His claims and refusing His proper lordship over your life. He has used means to awaken you to your need and bring you to an open confession of sin. But you have gone only so far as God’s tactics have forced you to go; even though He has been most loving and gracious toward you, you have not acknowledged His hand in these benefits.

Romans 2:4 puts the matter of God’s common grace to you and others in the form of a question: “Do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, tolerance and patience?” The answer is, of course you do, unless you have repented of your sin and turned back toward God through faith in Jesus Christ. By nature human beings are filled with ingratitude. By nature you show “contempt” for God’s kindness. Yet it is precisely this kindness that God is using to bring you to repentance.

There are no such excuses for us. We know there is a God; the Bible says that only fools deny it (Ps. 14:1). We know that all we are and have come from God’s hand; the Bible says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17). When we stop to think about it, we even know that God sent the Lord Jesus Christ to save us by giving His life in our place. But do we acknowledge this? We do not, unless God awakens our consciences and turns us from our manifest ingratitude.