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Dear Fellow-Alumni,
We are now entering the last weeks of the Season of Lent. Soon it will be the Holy Week – the week of passion and intense suffering of our Lord Jesus. We will once again survey the wondrous cross on which the Prince of Glory died. On Easter Sunday we will celebrate the glorious resurrection of our Lord and Saviour! Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
One of the songs I have been truly blest, is Only By Grace! This song is a powerful reminder of God’s gift of salvation. It’s all about the grace and mercy of God that has come to us at a great cost – the blood of Jesus Christ, shed for the sins of the world.
Only by grace can we enter,
Only by grace can we stand;
Not by our human endeavor,
But by the blood of the Lamb.
Into your presence you call us,
You call us to come.
Into your presence you draw us,
And now by your grace we come.
Lord if you mark my transgressions,
Who would stand?
Thanks to your grace
We are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.
This line, “Lord if you mark my transgressions who would stand?” hit me really hard! It led me to the source of this line – Psalm 130. The Psalmist in his deep anguish concerning the magnitude of his sins, cries to God for help. He knows that if God were to take stock of all his sins, he would never stand a chance before his holy presence! He then declares, “but with you there is forgiveness, that you may be feared.” (Psalm 130:4). And so the song writer sings on a triumphant note: “thanks to your grace, we are cleansed by the blood of the Lamb”!
The Psalmist calls all Israel, then, and you and I, now, to “hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him there is plentiful redemption, and he will redeem Israel from all his iniquities.” (Psalm 130:7-8).
The Psalmist did not have the privilege of knowing Jesus Christ in the manner that you and I enjoy today. He was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write these truths, and he obeyed in faith. Each one of us have tasted and seen that the LORD is good. We have become recipients of the grace and salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ continues to invite us to draw into his presence and sit at his feet to worship and give thanks to him for his grace and mercy.
Paul reminds us in his Letter to the Church at Ephesus:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages, he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. (Ephesians 2:4-7). Hallelujah! What a Saviour!
I end with the words of another hymn:
How marvellous!
How wonderful!
And my song shall ever be!
How marvellous!
How wonderful!
Is my Saviour’s love for me!
THE LORD HAS RISEN!
HAPPY EASTER!