Romans 5:20

THE TRIUMPH OF GRACE

‘Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound.’

Romans 5:20

Grace runs through the epistles of St. Paul like a silver thread. We do not wonder at this when we remember what it did for St. Paul. He was a monument, a miracle of grace.

I. It arrested him.—‘Suddenly’ it laid its strong and tender hand upon him. Here we see its absolute sovereignty, for Saul of Tarsus was altogether undeserving. ‘I was apprehended,’ he says, ‘of Christ Jesus’ (Php_3:12, R.V.). There was no preparation, no sense of sin, as far as we know; there was certainly no fitness.

II. It transformed him.—See that young fanatic breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord: is there any power on earth or in heaven which can make that man think and feel and pray like a little child? Yes: there is, and that power is grace. The grace of God can change the lion into the lamb (Acts 9:13; Acts 9:20).

III. It used him.—The Lord had need of him. He wrote thirteen epistles, and ‘laboured more abundantly than they all,’ but he is careful to add, ‘Yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.’ It was through his preaching that the Gospel was published throughout the world. His life was so intensely Christian that he called it Christ—‘to me to live is Christ.’

IV. It preserved him.—Grace is glory in the bud, and glory is grace in flower. Whenever God begins ‘the gracious work’ He completes it. Therefore grace did not let him go.

The Christ Who met Saul of Tarsus at the gate of Damascus still arrests men on the highways of sin and shows them the heavenly vision. Across the wastes of nearly two thousand years the Voice of Jesus speaks to human hearts. Grace has not spent its power. It can still ‘steal in silence down,’ and touch the hearts of men.

—Rev. F. Harper.

Illustrations

(1) ‘You may have heard of a painted window that is said to be one of the most wonderful in Europe, which was made in this way. There was a young apprentice to one of the great window creators of the older days—for they did create in those days—and after working time he would pick up from the floor broken fragments of the painted glass that had been rejected, and take them home and put them piece by piece into a frame and design, which he himself had designed in his mother’s cottage. So it went on in a quiet way for some two years, until at last it was finished, and the master came in by accident, and said, “What is this? There has never been before such a wonderful creation. Who has done this?” It was the young apprentice, with the broken and rejected fragments of the painted glass which he found on the floor of his master’s studio.’

(2) ‘The last words of Mr. Honest were, “Grace reigns.” So he left the world. As I hear Old Honest shouting, “Grace reigns!” I always remember what a lady told me about a saying of her poor Irish scullery-girl. The mistress and the servant were reading George Eliot’s Life together in the kitchen, and when they came to her death-bed, on the pillow of which Thomas à Kempis lay open, “Mem,” said the girl,” I used to read that old book in the convent; but it is a better book to live upon than to die upon.” Now that was exactly Old Honest’s mind. He lived upon one book, and then he died upon another. He lived according to the commandments of God, but he died according to the comforts of the Gospel.’