A Devotion from John Henry Jowett

In him we have redemption … in accordance with the riches of God’s grace that he lavished on us with all wisdom and understanding.  —Ephesians 1:7–8

Grace is not a prevalent word in modern speech, and its rare occurrence may be explained by the partial disappearance of the word sin from our vocabulary.  If we exile the one we will not long retain the other. Grace haunts the place where pangs are endured and tears are shed because of the sense of indwelling sin.

Sin is a word whose meanings are like sharp fangs, and they bite deep. We are busy creating easier and less distressing phrases, phrases without teeth, that we can apply to our perversities without occasioning any pain.

Sin is inevitable, says prevalent philosophy, so long as we are bound to a physical body. But if people were to be stripped of their bodies, the realm of sin would still remain, envy would remain, and malice and wrath, and so would thought and desire and will. What philosophy and personal inclination are disposed to extenuate, the Christian religion seeks to deepen and revive. Its endeavor is not to abate the sense of sin but to drive the teeth into still more sensitive parts. There is no delicacy in the way in which it describes the natural conditions of my life. Its sentences are clear and uncompromising. Sin reigns in me. The guest has become the master and determines the arrangements of the house. He is my tyrant. I am dead in sin—not a boat with power to encounter adverse winds and to ride on the storm, but a piece of driftwood, its self-initiative and self-direction gone, the pitiless prey of the hostile wind and waves.

And now to this sin-burdened and sin-poisoned race there flows, in infinite plenitude, the riches of his grace. What are the contents of the gracious flood? When grace possesses the life, it brings a threefold power. It brings “redemption,” the powers of liberation; it brings “wisdom,” the power of illumination; it brings “understanding,” the power of applying the illumination to the difficulties of life.

How do we come into the marvelous effluence of the grace of God? “In him we have.” That is the standing ground. I know no other. To be in him, in the Christ, is to be in the abiding place of this superlative energy. To be associated with the Savior by faith, in the fellowship of spiritual communion, is to dwell at the springs of eternal life.