Scandal of Grace

 

 

Can you imagine? The God you worship has put skin on and walked among you. He has touched you, eaten with you, healed you, taught you, laughed with you, cried with you, lived with you. Now He shoulders a cross up a hill and dies for you.

Darkness falls.

Shattered, you stagger away from that hill of blood and death and suffering. Nothing will ever be the same again. The greatest love you’ve ever known is dead and gone. All is lost.

Days pass in a blur of numbness. You have no tears left.

But on the third day, light bursts forth. A tomb opens wide, and its bowels are empty. And look! There He stands—alive. How can this be?

Suddenly, words come rushing back, things He said and did that made little sense at the time, but now brim with color and meaning. The events fall into place and your blind eyes now see how everything has come together.

After centuries of trying and failing to keep the law, it is fulfilled. After years of distance, years of inadequacy, years of judgment . . . at last it is finished. One perfect sacrifice, undeserved, has turned everything around. The curtain is torn in two. No longer is that holy place of God reserved for the select priests. Now anyone can walk into His presence boldly.

Now you can.

Death’s reign is over, its power conquered. You weep from the sheer beauty of it all as His scarred hands pull you into an embrace. You never deserved this. You’ve spent your whole life trying to scrub away your filth, but Love has cleansed you, bought you with blood.

You should have bled out on that cross to atone for your wrongs, and yet you didn’t. He did. Perfect, blameless, He died a criminal’s death so you can walk free.

There are no words for this, only gratitude. You lean back and smile at Him through the tears because now, truly, nothing will ever be the same again.

Innocence slain. The guilty absolved. A curse broken.

This is a scandal of grace.

 

Grace, what have You done?

Murdered for me on that cross

Accused in absence of wrong

My sin washed away in Your love

Too much to make sense of it all

I know that Your love breaks my fall

This scandal of grace—You died in my place so my soul will live

 —Scandal of Grace, Hillsong United