A Story That Never Ends
Biblical Studies
Rebellion, Remorse, and Return
The Prodigal Son's Painful Journey Home
This story of two lost sons and a loving father is one of rebellion, disrespect, selfishness, and greed. Above all, it is the powerful story of love and grace. It is the story of a lost son: lost to his father, lost to his family, lost to his community, and lost to his heritage. It tells of an older son who remained at home and became a stranger in his own house. Because of the relentlessness of a father's love and the fact that a lost son could not obliterate or deny his roots or forget what life was like in the father's house, it ends in a joyful homecoming. As long as there are parents and children, there will always be rebellion, anger, pain, and the running away into a distant land. Because of the persistence of love and grace that can reach to the farthest land and forgive the gravest sin -- there will always be a homecoming. It is a story that never ends, because there is no end to the love and grace of God that seeks to bring the wanderer home.
This great parable has many themes working its way through the story. First, it is a story of joy. It is a story of great joy because it is a love story. It speaks about a love that existed before any rejection was possible and a love that will still be there when all rejections have taken place. Nouwen reminds us that it is first the everlasting love of God who is father and mother. "Jesus' whole life and preaching had only one aim: to reveal this inexhaustible, unlimited motherly and fatherly love of God and to show the way to let that love guide every part of our daily lives" (The Return of the Prodigal, p. 102). Love is the source of the story's joy. The joy results because the lost son who was dead is alive again; he was lost and is found. There is the joy of the father who is reunited with his lost son. The story is a vivid picture of Jesus' joyful life-giving ministry to the lost. This is the heart of the gospel message that Jesus wants to get across to the Pharisees and scribes listening to this story. By bringing the lost, dead, and dreary souls to the joy of God's grace and love, Jesus is expressing the very nature and purpose of his ministry. The Pharisees listened to the story with a critical ear. They were greatly annoyed that Jesus would express such joy in being with sinners and publicans who became his friends. They were extremely critical of his hospitality regarding such people and they caustically stated, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." Joy was not part of their religious life. They knew the law, regulations, and rules. They knew little about love, grace, and joy. They were clueless about the meaning of heaven rejoicing over a sinner who repents or the joy of a lost son being found.
The Pharisees and scribes standing in the crowd that day had lost the wonder of life and knew nothing about joy. They were given to criticism, becoming narrow and bitingly sarcastic and calling Jesus a winebibber and glutton because he ate with sinners and took his food with gladness. The listeners are like the old professor in Ingmar Bergman's film Wild Strawberries, who dreamed one night he was taking an early morning walk in the empty streets of his town when a funeral procession turned into the churchyard just ahead of him. Just as the wagon bearing the coffin made the sharp turn to enter the church yard, a wheel wrenched loose and the coffin rolled off at his feet, dislodging the corpse. Left alone in the street with the body, the professor reluctantly took hold of it to put it back in the box. But a strange thing happened: the corpse seized his arm and struggled with him until they stood face to face. In horror, the professor looked into the face of the dead man. It was his own. When he woke from the dream, the professor knew the meaning of it at once. He had been living as a dead man. He was a living, walking corpse. Wonder and joy were absent from his life. He was determined to change things.
Little did these listeners realize how dead their lives had become by their attitudes of criticism and faultfinding and losing their sense of wonder and joy. Jesus had them in mind all the time he was telling this story. Would grace and love break through the crust of their hard-hearted countenance? Religion for them had become a drab and boring imposition. In John Steinbeck's East of Eden, his character Liza exemplifies such behavior. She is described as "a tiny Irish wife, a tight hard little woman, humorless as a chicken. She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do." Did Jesus ever get through to them? The story ends with that question unanswered.
Let us not overlook the fact that this story is a source of joy for God. Nouwen reminds us that God rejoices, not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering has come to an end, nor because great multitudes have been converted. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost is found. We are invited by God to enter into this joy. This was something the Pharisees and the scribes, who were listening to the parable, were unable to do. It is God's joy, not the kind of joy the world offers. It is the joy that comes from seeing a child walk home amid all the destruction, devastation, and anguish of the world. "From God's perspective, one hidden act of repentance, one little act of selfless love, one act of true forgiveness is all that is needed to bring God from his throne to run to the returning son and to fill the heavens with the sound of joy" (p. 108).
Jesus describes how the return of one sinner causes rejoicing in heaven and in the heart of God. This is a small joy when we consider all of those who are still outside of the father's house. Yet it is these small joys that reveal to us the truth about the world we live in. When Jesus speaks of joy, he also is realistic about his world. He talked about wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famine, persecution, imprisonment, betrayal, and death. Regardless, the joy of God can be ours in the midst of it all. Jesus' joy came from living in the father's house. This joy is not a joy without sorrow, but a joy in the midst of sorrow. Jesus was a man of sorrow acquainted with grief, but also a man of complete joy. Jesus knew about the world's sorrow, but in the midst of such a world of contradictions he shares the good news of hope, "so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete." The return of a child to the father's house is God's joy and our joy as well. Henri Nouwen says:
There is seldom a minute in my life that I am not tempted by sadness, melancholy, cynicism, dark moods, somber thoughts, morbid speculations, and waves of depression. And often I allow them to cover up the joy of my father's house. But when I truly believe that I have already returned and that my father has already dressed me in a cloak, ring, and sandals, I can remove the mask of my sadness from my heart and dispel the lie it tells about my true self and claim the truth with the inner freedom of the child of God.
-- p. 110
Second, this is a parable of hope. The parable gives a clear description of what it means to be lost, yet hope shines through. Although Jesus describes in vivid terms the younger son as being lost in a distant land, at the same time, he is describing lost humanity in general. We all identify with this lostness. We have all acted in an outrageous, selfish, and rebellious manner against a loving God. We have ignored God's laws, rejected God's love, and misused God's gracious and good creation. The result is that we have been exiled to a distant land, far away from the father's house. There is good reason to view the son's rebellion as Jesus' diagnosis of the human condition in general. The parable describes our human journey in vivid terms: rebellion, greed, selfishness, disrespect, judgment, yet with the hope of self-discovery and the possibility of a joyful homecoming. The homecoming is the intent of the gospel. The gospel's intent is not to condemn but to restore, not to exile, but to bring home, forever holding on to the possibility of transformation. The hallmark of the gospel is the changed life. It is not the rebellious son living in a pig sty in a distant land, but the son coming home, being embraced by his father who throws a party to celebrate his son's return. Regardless how far we have wandered from the father's house, because of the grace of God that knows no bounds, there is the hope of a homecoming.
Third, above all it is a parable of grace. There is one theme that overrides all others in this story -- it is the theme of grace. It is described by the actions of the father in regard to his rebellious sons. It is the undeserved, unmerited, unearned love of the father toward his wayward sons. On two occasions the father came out from his house in humiliation to extend his gracious love to his sons who treated him with insult and disrespect. Though treated with disgrace, the father was gracious with his love and forgiveness. The word grace never appears in this story, but there has never been a clearer or more forceful description of grace. Within the biblical texts, grace is expressed through stories and relationships rather than vocabulary. Neither did Jesus ever use the word grace, but his life was the source of its meaning. Grace happens!
Behind all of our divisions, beyond all of our famous gaps -- generation, sex, credibility, ideology, political -- there is a common human search for the renewing and sustaining power that only grace can provide. The Apostle Paul expressed this grace remarkably when he declared, "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself." In God's love, manifested in Christ, a new spiritual power has been set loose in the lives of men and women. In Christ the deepest of human needs was met: the need to be loved and accepted. The parable has expressed this in very dramatic and unforgettable terms. Fred Craddock reminds us that the story has a power all of its own. Let it stand alone and do its work on and in the hearts of the hearers.
The reason the parable has such universal appeal is because the single most compelling need of our lives is acceptance. Many times we are tormented by the notion that we need to be acceptable before we can be accepted. The prodigal sought to make himself acceptable by crafting a speech that he would present to his father on his arrival home. Grace is the beginning of our healing because it offers us the one thing we need most, acceptance, without regard to whether we are acceptable or not. For many this becomes a stumbling block regarding the gospel, because it just sounds too good to be true. However, grace means that we are accepted before we become acceptable. The Apostle Paul expressed this as, "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us." That was the prodigal's greatest discovery. Before he could ever get his speech out, before he could make himself acceptable, his father ran to him, kissed him, hugged him, and in a moment of joyful, tearful reunion, accepted his son home. It was not a question of being smart enough, clean enough, handsome enough, or good enough, or whether he had accomplished enough. The fact that he came home seeking acceptance was all that mattered. The fact is, cleaning ourselves up is the very thing we cannot do. In our helpless state, the miracle of grace brings acceptance. This is indeed amazing grace!
The story has been told that on Palm Sunday morning, April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee put on his finest dress uniform, mounted Traveller, and rode away from his tired and tattered troops to Appomatox, where he would surrender his beaten army to General Ulysses Grant. As Lee rode to meet his conqueror, he fully expected that his men would be herded like cattle into railroad box cars and then sent to a Union prison and he, as their general, would be tried and executed as a disgraced traitor. In the tidy living room of the home where the vanquished and the victor met, Lee asked Grant what his terms of surrendered were to be. Grant told Lee that his men were free to take their horses with them and go back to their little farms and that Lee too was free to go home and create a new life. Lee offered Grant his sword. Grant refused it. Lee heaved a sigh. He came expecting to he humiliated, and he left with dignity and honor. As he watched General Lee mount Traveller and ride back to his troops, Grant took off his hat and saluted his defeated enemy. It was a magnificent act of grace. It deeply affected the defeated general as long as he lived. Lee never allowed a critical word of Grant to be spoken in his presence. The point is this, in grace God does not give us what we deserve, rather God gives us what we need -- acceptance. It is the incredible voice of our heavenly father's heart that overtakes us in a far country and tells the incredibly joyful good news, "You can come home. Come home!" Thielicke reminds us that the ultimate theme of the story is not the lost son, but the father who finds him. The ultimate theme is not the faithlessness of men and women but the faithfulness of God.
In telling the story of the prodigal's return, Jesus has drawn the most winsome picture of the grace of God. It is a vivid picture of a God who is eager to forgive utterly and to restore completely. Jesus wants to make it clear that the God of whom he speaks is a God of compassion who joyously welcomes all repentant sinners into his house. Jesus believed that by eating and socializing with people, considered by many of the religious elite as unclean and unworthy of association, he was living out God's teaching in everyday life. Nouwen states that one of the important points that Jesus is making in this parable is: If God is forgiving sinners and welcoming them home, then those who claim to be God's followers should do the same. If God loves sinners, then certainly those who love God should love in the same manner. Jesus announces the grace, love, and compassion of God, who has offered himself as an example and model for all human behavior.
The parable abruptly ends, leaving us to wonder: Did the Pharisees, the listeners, get the point of the parable? But the greater question is: Do we?
Discussion Questions
1.
Purpose. Jesus' life, his teaching, and his preaching had one aim and purpose: to reveal the inexhaustible, unlimited love of God and to reveal how this love could guide and influence every aspect of our daily lives. How did Jesus accomplish that purpose in this parable? Did he accomplish that purpose in your live?
2.
Joy. The parable is one of joy. The Pharisees and the scribes, who were listening with a critical ear to what Jesus had to say, did not seem to possess much joy. They were annoyed by the company that Jesus kept and that he did so with joy. They were the religious leaders, but joy was not part of their lives. How do you deal with such joyless, clueless, critical souls in our churches today?
3.
Hope. The parable is one of hope. It expresses the hope that there will always be a homecoming. Our hope does not mean the absence of turmoil or conflict but hope in the midst of turmoil. How can Christian hope prevail for the majority of the world's population that suffer from war, life in refugee camps, AIDs, and a grinding and debilitating poverty? Where is hope when there is so much corporate crime and ruthless political power? What do you say to the hopeless around you?
4.
Grace. Grace is the central theme of this parable. However, the word grace is never mentioned. How then is grace expressed in the parable? How would you define the word grace?
5.
Gracious. If God forgives sinners, then those who have faith in God should do the same. If God is compassionate, then those who love God should be compassionate. If God desires a homecoming for everyone, regardless of who or what they are, so should we. But do we? God has extended his grace, which is unmerited, undeserved, and unearned, to you through Jesus Christ. Are you so gracious and loving to others?
Prayer
O Lord, I stand amazed by your gift of grace. A sinner such as I, who has no claim upon you, yet you have extended your grace to me freely, a grace unearned, unmerited, undeserved, but freely given regardless of how far I have traveled from the Father's house. Such grace is amazing.
"And can it be that I should gain an interest
in the Savior's blood?
Died he for me? Who caused his pain!
For me? Who him to death pursued?
"Amazing love! How can it be that thou
my God, shouldst die for me?
"Amazing love! How can it be that thou
my God, shouldst die for me?" Amen.
-- From Charles Wesley in The United Methodist Hymnal
This great parable has many themes working its way through the story. First, it is a story of joy. It is a story of great joy because it is a love story. It speaks about a love that existed before any rejection was possible and a love that will still be there when all rejections have taken place. Nouwen reminds us that it is first the everlasting love of God who is father and mother. "Jesus' whole life and preaching had only one aim: to reveal this inexhaustible, unlimited motherly and fatherly love of God and to show the way to let that love guide every part of our daily lives" (The Return of the Prodigal, p. 102). Love is the source of the story's joy. The joy results because the lost son who was dead is alive again; he was lost and is found. There is the joy of the father who is reunited with his lost son. The story is a vivid picture of Jesus' joyful life-giving ministry to the lost. This is the heart of the gospel message that Jesus wants to get across to the Pharisees and scribes listening to this story. By bringing the lost, dead, and dreary souls to the joy of God's grace and love, Jesus is expressing the very nature and purpose of his ministry. The Pharisees listened to the story with a critical ear. They were greatly annoyed that Jesus would express such joy in being with sinners and publicans who became his friends. They were extremely critical of his hospitality regarding such people and they caustically stated, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them." Joy was not part of their religious life. They knew the law, regulations, and rules. They knew little about love, grace, and joy. They were clueless about the meaning of heaven rejoicing over a sinner who repents or the joy of a lost son being found.
The Pharisees and scribes standing in the crowd that day had lost the wonder of life and knew nothing about joy. They were given to criticism, becoming narrow and bitingly sarcastic and calling Jesus a winebibber and glutton because he ate with sinners and took his food with gladness. The listeners are like the old professor in Ingmar Bergman's film Wild Strawberries, who dreamed one night he was taking an early morning walk in the empty streets of his town when a funeral procession turned into the churchyard just ahead of him. Just as the wagon bearing the coffin made the sharp turn to enter the church yard, a wheel wrenched loose and the coffin rolled off at his feet, dislodging the corpse. Left alone in the street with the body, the professor reluctantly took hold of it to put it back in the box. But a strange thing happened: the corpse seized his arm and struggled with him until they stood face to face. In horror, the professor looked into the face of the dead man. It was his own. When he woke from the dream, the professor knew the meaning of it at once. He had been living as a dead man. He was a living, walking corpse. Wonder and joy were absent from his life. He was determined to change things.
Little did these listeners realize how dead their lives had become by their attitudes of criticism and faultfinding and losing their sense of wonder and joy. Jesus had them in mind all the time he was telling this story. Would grace and love break through the crust of their hard-hearted countenance? Religion for them had become a drab and boring imposition. In John Steinbeck's East of Eden, his character Liza exemplifies such behavior. She is described as "a tiny Irish wife, a tight hard little woman, humorless as a chicken. She had a dour Presbyterian mind and a code of morals that pinned down and beat the brains out of nearly everything that was pleasant to do." Did Jesus ever get through to them? The story ends with that question unanswered.
Let us not overlook the fact that this story is a source of joy for God. Nouwen reminds us that God rejoices, not because the problems of the world have been solved, not because all human pain and suffering has come to an end, nor because great multitudes have been converted. No, God rejoices because one of his children who was lost is found. We are invited by God to enter into this joy. This was something the Pharisees and the scribes, who were listening to the parable, were unable to do. It is God's joy, not the kind of joy the world offers. It is the joy that comes from seeing a child walk home amid all the destruction, devastation, and anguish of the world. "From God's perspective, one hidden act of repentance, one little act of selfless love, one act of true forgiveness is all that is needed to bring God from his throne to run to the returning son and to fill the heavens with the sound of joy" (p. 108).
Jesus describes how the return of one sinner causes rejoicing in heaven and in the heart of God. This is a small joy when we consider all of those who are still outside of the father's house. Yet it is these small joys that reveal to us the truth about the world we live in. When Jesus speaks of joy, he also is realistic about his world. He talked about wars, revolutions, earthquakes, famine, persecution, imprisonment, betrayal, and death. Regardless, the joy of God can be ours in the midst of it all. Jesus' joy came from living in the father's house. This joy is not a joy without sorrow, but a joy in the midst of sorrow. Jesus was a man of sorrow acquainted with grief, but also a man of complete joy. Jesus knew about the world's sorrow, but in the midst of such a world of contradictions he shares the good news of hope, "so that my own joy may be in you and your joy be complete." The return of a child to the father's house is God's joy and our joy as well. Henri Nouwen says:
There is seldom a minute in my life that I am not tempted by sadness, melancholy, cynicism, dark moods, somber thoughts, morbid speculations, and waves of depression. And often I allow them to cover up the joy of my father's house. But when I truly believe that I have already returned and that my father has already dressed me in a cloak, ring, and sandals, I can remove the mask of my sadness from my heart and dispel the lie it tells about my true self and claim the truth with the inner freedom of the child of God.
-- p. 110
Second, this is a parable of hope. The parable gives a clear description of what it means to be lost, yet hope shines through. Although Jesus describes in vivid terms the younger son as being lost in a distant land, at the same time, he is describing lost humanity in general. We all identify with this lostness. We have all acted in an outrageous, selfish, and rebellious manner against a loving God. We have ignored God's laws, rejected God's love, and misused God's gracious and good creation. The result is that we have been exiled to a distant land, far away from the father's house. There is good reason to view the son's rebellion as Jesus' diagnosis of the human condition in general. The parable describes our human journey in vivid terms: rebellion, greed, selfishness, disrespect, judgment, yet with the hope of self-discovery and the possibility of a joyful homecoming. The homecoming is the intent of the gospel. The gospel's intent is not to condemn but to restore, not to exile, but to bring home, forever holding on to the possibility of transformation. The hallmark of the gospel is the changed life. It is not the rebellious son living in a pig sty in a distant land, but the son coming home, being embraced by his father who throws a party to celebrate his son's return. Regardless how far we have wandered from the father's house, because of the grace of God that knows no bounds, there is the hope of a homecoming.
Third, above all it is a parable of grace. There is one theme that overrides all others in this story -- it is the theme of grace. It is described by the actions of the father in regard to his rebellious sons. It is the undeserved, unmerited, unearned love of the father toward his wayward sons. On two occasions the father came out from his house in humiliation to extend his gracious love to his sons who treated him with insult and disrespect. Though treated with disgrace, the father was gracious with his love and forgiveness. The word grace never appears in this story, but there has never been a clearer or more forceful description of grace. Within the biblical texts, grace is expressed through stories and relationships rather than vocabulary. Neither did Jesus ever use the word grace, but his life was the source of its meaning. Grace happens!
Behind all of our divisions, beyond all of our famous gaps -- generation, sex, credibility, ideology, political -- there is a common human search for the renewing and sustaining power that only grace can provide. The Apostle Paul expressed this grace remarkably when he declared, "In Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself." In God's love, manifested in Christ, a new spiritual power has been set loose in the lives of men and women. In Christ the deepest of human needs was met: the need to be loved and accepted. The parable has expressed this in very dramatic and unforgettable terms. Fred Craddock reminds us that the story has a power all of its own. Let it stand alone and do its work on and in the hearts of the hearers.
The reason the parable has such universal appeal is because the single most compelling need of our lives is acceptance. Many times we are tormented by the notion that we need to be acceptable before we can be accepted. The prodigal sought to make himself acceptable by crafting a speech that he would present to his father on his arrival home. Grace is the beginning of our healing because it offers us the one thing we need most, acceptance, without regard to whether we are acceptable or not. For many this becomes a stumbling block regarding the gospel, because it just sounds too good to be true. However, grace means that we are accepted before we become acceptable. The Apostle Paul expressed this as, "While we were yet sinners Christ died for us." That was the prodigal's greatest discovery. Before he could ever get his speech out, before he could make himself acceptable, his father ran to him, kissed him, hugged him, and in a moment of joyful, tearful reunion, accepted his son home. It was not a question of being smart enough, clean enough, handsome enough, or good enough, or whether he had accomplished enough. The fact that he came home seeking acceptance was all that mattered. The fact is, cleaning ourselves up is the very thing we cannot do. In our helpless state, the miracle of grace brings acceptance. This is indeed amazing grace!
The story has been told that on Palm Sunday morning, April 9, 1865, General Robert E. Lee put on his finest dress uniform, mounted Traveller, and rode away from his tired and tattered troops to Appomatox, where he would surrender his beaten army to General Ulysses Grant. As Lee rode to meet his conqueror, he fully expected that his men would be herded like cattle into railroad box cars and then sent to a Union prison and he, as their general, would be tried and executed as a disgraced traitor. In the tidy living room of the home where the vanquished and the victor met, Lee asked Grant what his terms of surrendered were to be. Grant told Lee that his men were free to take their horses with them and go back to their little farms and that Lee too was free to go home and create a new life. Lee offered Grant his sword. Grant refused it. Lee heaved a sigh. He came expecting to he humiliated, and he left with dignity and honor. As he watched General Lee mount Traveller and ride back to his troops, Grant took off his hat and saluted his defeated enemy. It was a magnificent act of grace. It deeply affected the defeated general as long as he lived. Lee never allowed a critical word of Grant to be spoken in his presence. The point is this, in grace God does not give us what we deserve, rather God gives us what we need -- acceptance. It is the incredible voice of our heavenly father's heart that overtakes us in a far country and tells the incredibly joyful good news, "You can come home. Come home!" Thielicke reminds us that the ultimate theme of the story is not the lost son, but the father who finds him. The ultimate theme is not the faithlessness of men and women but the faithfulness of God.
In telling the story of the prodigal's return, Jesus has drawn the most winsome picture of the grace of God. It is a vivid picture of a God who is eager to forgive utterly and to restore completely. Jesus wants to make it clear that the God of whom he speaks is a God of compassion who joyously welcomes all repentant sinners into his house. Jesus believed that by eating and socializing with people, considered by many of the religious elite as unclean and unworthy of association, he was living out God's teaching in everyday life. Nouwen states that one of the important points that Jesus is making in this parable is: If God is forgiving sinners and welcoming them home, then those who claim to be God's followers should do the same. If God loves sinners, then certainly those who love God should love in the same manner. Jesus announces the grace, love, and compassion of God, who has offered himself as an example and model for all human behavior.
The parable abruptly ends, leaving us to wonder: Did the Pharisees, the listeners, get the point of the parable? But the greater question is: Do we?
Discussion Questions
1.
Purpose. Jesus' life, his teaching, and his preaching had one aim and purpose: to reveal the inexhaustible, unlimited love of God and to reveal how this love could guide and influence every aspect of our daily lives. How did Jesus accomplish that purpose in this parable? Did he accomplish that purpose in your live?
2.
Joy. The parable is one of joy. The Pharisees and the scribes, who were listening with a critical ear to what Jesus had to say, did not seem to possess much joy. They were annoyed by the company that Jesus kept and that he did so with joy. They were the religious leaders, but joy was not part of their lives. How do you deal with such joyless, clueless, critical souls in our churches today?
3.
Hope. The parable is one of hope. It expresses the hope that there will always be a homecoming. Our hope does not mean the absence of turmoil or conflict but hope in the midst of turmoil. How can Christian hope prevail for the majority of the world's population that suffer from war, life in refugee camps, AIDs, and a grinding and debilitating poverty? Where is hope when there is so much corporate crime and ruthless political power? What do you say to the hopeless around you?
4.
Grace. Grace is the central theme of this parable. However, the word grace is never mentioned. How then is grace expressed in the parable? How would you define the word grace?
5.
Gracious. If God forgives sinners, then those who have faith in God should do the same. If God is compassionate, then those who love God should be compassionate. If God desires a homecoming for everyone, regardless of who or what they are, so should we. But do we? God has extended his grace, which is unmerited, undeserved, and unearned, to you through Jesus Christ. Are you so gracious and loving to others?
Prayer
O Lord, I stand amazed by your gift of grace. A sinner such as I, who has no claim upon you, yet you have extended your grace to me freely, a grace unearned, unmerited, undeserved, but freely given regardless of how far I have traveled from the Father's house. Such grace is amazing.
"And can it be that I should gain an interest
in the Savior's blood?
Died he for me? Who caused his pain!
For me? Who him to death pursued?
"Amazing love! How can it be that thou
my God, shouldst die for me?
"Amazing love! How can it be that thou
my God, shouldst die for me?" Amen.
-- From Charles Wesley in The United Methodist Hymnal
