Grace and Ashes
16 So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. 17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! 18 All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: 19 that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. 20 We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. 21 God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. [2 Corinthians 5:16–21 — NIV 1984]
“God’s law is never given to establish a relationship; God’s law is given to confirm an existing relationship. Pause for a moment and let that sink in. The story of the Exodus and the Ten Commandments reflects something important about God’s character. If we miss this, we will never understand the role of God’s law in our relationship with him. Worse, if we misunderstand the purpose of God’s law, his grace will forever remain a mystery.
The law of God is an expression of his grace… God doesn’t throw fences around people to make them hi. God gives rules of conduct to those who already belong to him… He made a choice to make us his own by grace. We enter that relationship through faith, accepting his offer of forgiveness for our sins. And then and only then do we become accountable to his prescription for living.” [Andy Stanley, The Grace of God (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2010), 64–65]
In Luke 18:9–14, Jesus tells one of his shortest parables. This is what the Scriptures tell us.
9To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable
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10 “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. 11The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. 12I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
13 “But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
14 “I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.”
Luke prefaces this parable by saying that Jesus told this parable “to some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else” (vs. 9). Jesus made it clear to them in this parable that none of us, regardless how “good” we may think we are, can stand proudly before God in our own “righteousness.” All of us are humbled in the presence of God and are reminded that we are all sinners forgiven only by the grace of God.
Today, we begin the season of Lent — a time to reflect on Jesus’ sacrifice that made God’s grace available to us. It is a time for us to reflect, repent and recommit our lives to the Lord. We do not come as the Pharisee — proudly declaring what wonderful examples of godliness we are — but rather as the publican (the tax collector), recognizing that we don’t deserve the grace of God, but we need His mercy and grace.
So, we come to proclaim this need to God on Ash Wednesday. We confess our faults to God and receive the ancient mark of the ashes as a symbol of our mortality; as a symbol of our humility; as a symbol that we mourn for the sins that we have committed and how they have hurt, not only us, but God and others. We receive the ashes in the sign of the cross to indicate that we belong to Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. We surrender to Him anything that we have tried to hold on to and trust our lives completely to Him.
We do this as we enter the season of Lent — a season of true repentance and anticipation of the redemption received from Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. So, I invite you to look to the Lord today. Approach His throne of grace and seek His mercy and love, even as you prepare your heart for coming celebration of His final victory of sin and death.
