Freakin' amazing grace

Hallelujah, God doesn't expect more than His own grace to carry us to shore. (Sojourn, "All Good Gifts)

I was reading through Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount the other day, and was struck anew by what a brilliant picture it presents of our need for grace.

There's this line in there: "I say to you, unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and the Pharisees, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven." Never. It has so much finality. Unless you do this impossible task of living more perfectly than the most intensely obsessive rule-followers of the day, that's it. You're out.

Jesus then goes on to list a bunch of those important rules for righteousness which his listeners would know, and makes them even more impossible: You've heard that if you murder someone then you're liable to judgment? I say if you're even angry with him then you're liable to that judgment. You've heard that you shouldn't have sex outside your marriage? I say that if you even lust after someone in your heart then you're guilty. On and on, taking the Law beyond the external "rules" and making it about our hearts and our minds and our motivations. He demands that we be perfect, all the way through.

Impossible.

Which would be really depressing, if it weren't for the fact that He then offers us the incomprehensible gift of grace. If He didn't live that perfect life for us, then switch places with us so He could bear the crushing guilt and nastiness of our lives and we could get the credit for the God-glorifying perfection of His. If God didn't remember that we are dust, and show his love and everlasting patience by letting us into His presence on nothing more than the merit of His son. No matter how badly we've screwed everything up, and keep screwing it up.

It's crazy, really. Crazy and beautiful and infinitely humbling.