Insight for Living

Guest (Male): What do you do with a word that's been borrowed, diluted, and domesticated until it means almost nothing? We name our daughters with it. We mutter it before meals. We invoke it in courtrooms. But the grace that the Bible speaks of is something else entirely. Something so radical that it stops proud people cold and reduces the self-sufficient to silence.

Bill Meyer: Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll takes us to two passages of scripture. One ancient story, one doctrinal masterpiece, and rebuilds the word from the ground up. Chuck titled today's message, "The Grace of God."

Chuck Swindoll: Today we're on the grace of God as we continue our work in the subject of the majesty of our triune God. Over in 2 Samuel chapter 9, there is a wonderful story most people have never read. In your worship folder today, you will find an outline of the message. As you do, will you place it please at Romans chapter 5, and then having done that, turn back in the Old Testament to 2 Samuel chapter 9. Outline at Romans chapter 5 where we'll begin in a moment and then turn if you will back to 2 Samuel chapter 9.

"Then David said, 'Is there yet anyone left of the house of Saul that I may show him kindness for Jonathan's sake?' Now there was a servant of the house of Saul whose name was Ziba, and they called him to David and the king said to him, 'Are you Ziba?' And he said, 'I am your servant.' The king said, 'Is there not yet anyone of the house of Saul to whom I may show the kindness of God?' And Ziba said to the king, 'There is still a son of Jonathan who is crippled in both feet.'"

"So the king said, 'Where is he?' And Ziba said to the king, 'Behold, he is in the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, in Lo-debar.' Then King David sent and brought him from the house of Machir, the son of Ammiel, from Lo-debar. Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David and fell on his face and prostrated himself. And David said, 'Mephibosheth.' And he said, 'Here is your servant.' David said to him, 'Do not fear, for I will surely show kindness to you for the sake of your father Jonathan and will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you shall eat at my table regularly.'"

"Then Ziba said to the king, 'According to all that my lord the king commands his servant, so your servant will do.' So Mephibosheth ate at David's table as one of the king's sons. So Mephibosheth lived in Jerusalem and he ate at the king's table regularly. Now he was lame in both feet."

Bill Meyer: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into the attributes of God on your own, be sure to purchase our searching the scriptures bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message "The Grace of God."

Chuck Swindoll: The word grace means different things to different people, especially when we think of horizontal grace. This is epitomized rather cleverly in a book title that came out a number of years ago written by Lofton Hudson. He titled his book, "Grace is Not a Blue-Eyed Blonde." Grace, as we refer to it today, is not a prayer we offer at a meal. Grace is not what the attorney pleads for as he brings his client before the bench. Grace is not what the Queen of England brings in all of her elegance to the event that she attends. That's not the grace we have in mind.

We're referring to that which is undeserved, given to one who could never be able to pay it back or earn it for that matter. Wrapped around it, of course, is the whole concept of complete and thorough forgiveness. Perhaps a story from everyday life would help. As I give you the story, which is a true one, we go back to the days just following World War II, where all of us living at the time were shocked to hear of the dreadful Nazi concentration camps where so many had been exterminated.

Corrie ten Boom lived through the horror of such, and she wrote of that account in her book, "The Hiding Place." From the emotion of all of that and the backwash that followed, she remembered an event that happened in her life. Shortly after the Holocaust and in the passing of several years, Corrie was asked to take her message on the road, if you will, and she spoke not only around the country but around the world. She told of the loss of her parents and the dreadful experience of starvation as she watched her own beloved Betsy die slowly and painfully.

But all of that was past. However, the memory still lingered. While she was speaking in a particular church, something occurred that she felt ought to be remembered, and so she put it in her book. Following her message, she was greeted by a man she recognized as the SS guard at the shower room from her concentration camp. Suddenly it all came back over her. The room full of mocking men looking in on the women. The heaps of clothing piled randomly to the side and her sister Betsy's pain-blanched face.

She writes, "He came up to me as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. 'How grateful I am for your message, Fraulein,' he said. 'To think that, as you say, he has washed my sins away.' His hand was thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often to the people the need to forgive, kept my hand at my side. Even as the angry vengeful thoughts boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had died for this man. Was I going to ask for more?"

"Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him." She prays this in her mind, facing the camp guard. "I tried to smile," she adds. "I struggled to raise my hand. I could not. I felt nothing. Not the slightest spark of warmth or charity or grace. And so again I breathed a silent prayer. 'Jesus, oh Jesus, I cannot forgive him. Give me your forgiveness.'"

"As I finally took his hand, a most incredible thing happened to me. From my shoulder, along my arm and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him, while into my heart sprang a love for this stranger that almost overwhelmed. And so I discovered that it is not on our forgiveness any more than on our goodness that the world's healing hinges, but on his, meaning our God's. When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with that command the love itself and the necessary grace."

I wrote into the margin of her book these words: "When love springs into action, grace kicks in." She saw herself at that moment an instrument of grace. And we all sit hearing that story, hopefully putting ourselves in her place and asking, "Would I have reached out my hand?" Но the remarkable thing about God's grace is that it is not grace extended to one who is not deserving, but to all of us. All of us who continue to operate our lives so often against his will. Think of it. That kind of grace is a whole different genre from human grace, though we need human grace to illustrate what God has done for us.

We learned our last time together that God loves us. Remember, we even stood to our feet and we said it: "God loves me." And we turned to another: "God loves you." And we said in unison: "God loves us." Still true. It's been going on all week. All our lives. It never ceases and never diminishes. When that love is activated, grace kicks in. That's the beauty of God's grace.

Bill Meyer: When love is activated, grace kicks in. Now, we need a definition.

Chuck Swindoll: We need one better than that, and I'm indebted to B.B. Warfield, a great theologian of yesteryear, for this simple, brief definition. Write it down, will you? It'll help you. "Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving." Grace is free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving. Sovereign. God sovereignly, apart from anything from us, any goodness, any effort, any attempt to win his favor or friendship, God in his grace reaches down to lift us up, even while we fight him in the process. Amazing. Amazing.

Before you find yourself wanting to counsel Corrie not to reach out and shake the man's hand, check your heart. You'll find pride there. And you'll find a host of other sins that make you and me resist people who are ill-deserving of our love. It is so like us to be like that. To illustrate that, look at Romans chapter 5. Isn't it amazing how we keep coming back to Romans? Some of you said, "I thought we were here a decade," but it was only a few months. Well, okay, over a year. And we're back, and we'll keep coming back. It is the Christian's constitution. It is doctrine at work in our everyday lives.

And you come back to it because no other letter says it better. Look at chapter 5, verse 8. Just the one verse for a moment. "But God demonstrates his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." The key word is "demonstrates." God doesn't stand back in his heaven, fold his arms and frown, waiting for us to meet him halfway. He demonstrates. Interesting word *sunistemi* is the Greek term. Bauer tells me it means to provide evidence of a personal characteristic.

God provides evidence of this characteristic of his love as he reaches out to sinners like us. He demonstrates his own love toward us. To whom does he demonstrate that love? To us. And who are we? I was reading this over this past week and came across three lines that I've underscored in my Bible. You may want to do the same. It answers the question who we are, the ones that God loved and extended his mercy.

Look at verse 6: "While we were still helpless," I've underscored the word "helpless," "at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Helpless. Verse 8: "While we were yet sinners," underscore "sinners," "Christ died for us." Helpless. Sinful. Verse 10: "For while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his son." Underscore that word. Helpless. Sinners. Enemies.

So, it stands to reason grace is not talking about God helping those who help themselves. Will you please take that line out of your life? You will hear it all the time from our humanistic world. "God helps those who help themselves," like the Bible says. You can go from page to page all the way through the Bible and you will never find that phrase. Why? Because he helps the helpless. Grace is God extending his favor to those who can't help themselves.

When you lose a loved one and you can't make it through, his grace gets you through it because you're helpless. When you cannot make yourself well and you're suffering and suffering over a long period of painful time in your life, you're helpless to make yourself well. God comes to your rescue in his grace. Gets you through it. Gets you beyond it. He helps the helpless.

Grace does not mean that God is rewarding us for what we've earned. You see, we saw it in verse 8, we're sinful. Sinners don't earn God's favor. He can have nothing to do with sin. Because of his son's death on the cross, God now has been satisfied and through his son, he can forgive and he can extend his grace to us. But we haven't earned it. It's what Christ did on our behalf at the cross.

And by the way, grace does not mean that God's being kind to his friends. We're enemies. Look at verse 10 again. "While we were enemies." Grace is God's undeserved favor extended to those who could never earn it and are unable to repay it. We said it best with "it is the free sovereign favor to the ill-deserving." Why ill-deserving? Because we are sinful to the core. To the core.

Bill Meyer: We're rebels. We're rebels at heart.

Chuck Swindoll: We're not kind. I mean, look at the way you drive. Look at the way you handle yourself in the church parking lot while we're at it. Look at your reaction to that guy at work that's not easy to love. Look at your response. And I could name whatever situation. Normally it isn't positive. It isn't good. Why? Because you're an enemy to good and you're helpless to change yourself. Why? Because you are sinful all the way to the core. Not very pleasant, but it's real.

As I've said so many times, if depravity were blue, we'd be blue all over. Cut someone anywhere and they ooze blue all over. It's true of the tiny little one as he's growing up. You never have to teach a child to do wrong. Have you noticed? "Now honey, if you really want to disobey, here's how you go about it." You never have to do that. Why? Because built into them are the weeds of depravity. By the way, they got it from you, and you got it from your folks, and your folks got it from theirs.

In fact, verse 12: "Through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, all women, all children, all teenagers." Why? "Because all sinned." Well, what we need then is the law. We need commandments. We need to be told what's right and what's wrong. That'll help us. No one was ever helped by having the Ten Commandments in front of him. It just reminds you of the things you're doing that are wrong.

As soon as you see "do not do this," you're encouraged to think about doing it. Sounds kind of exciting. "Do not touch wet paint." Tell me you have never touched wet paint. There's a sign in San Francisco at one of the parks that says, "Try not to walk on the grass." Don't you love that? "Try not." I mean you just have to put at least one foot on the grass. Why? Because the law says don't do it. The law doesn't help us. The law only creates more lawbreakers. It prompts us to sin.

Verse 19 in the same chapter of Romans 5: "As through one man's disobedience the many were made sinners." Don't go any further. There is Adam. There are your grandparents, your great-grandparents. There's your heritage. There's your progeny. The whole family of us, sinful. Every one of us because one man sinned, acting as our federal head, when he sinned, we sinned.

"The many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of one." I can't speak for your Bible, but in mine, the O is capitalized. It's referring to Christ. "Through the obedience of one, Christ Jesus our Lord, many," we read, "many will be made righteous." You can't do it on your own. It must come through Christ.

Look at the next verse: "The law came in." Why? "So that the transgression would increase." Amazing. Even among Christians, transgressions increase. We're in this fixed state where we believe we're alive spiritually. In fact, we are dead spiritually. No hope to get to heaven on our own without coming through the cross.

Bill Meyer: The law tells us what to do, but it doesn't enable us to do it. Only grace through Christ can do that. And that's exactly what Chuck Swindoll has been unpacking today from Romans chapter 5. That apart from the obedience of one, we are helpless, sinful, and spiritually dead.

You may have heard it said that a sermon heard and forgotten is an opportunity lost. So here's a question worth thinking about. When was the last time you dug into a passage on your own with a notebook open, cross references spread out, the silence between you and the text? Insight for Living wants to help you get there. The Searching the Scriptures bible study workbook for this series is designed to make that kind of focused study not only possible but richly rewarding.

Combined with the complete audio collection, it's everything you need to move from listener to learner. The series is called "How Great Is Our God," and to purchase these resources right now, go to insight.org/offer. Chuck?

Chuck Swindoll: I've been reading the Bible my entire life, and I mean that literally. From childhood until now, through seminary, through decades of preaching, through every season life has thrown at me. I have never once opened my Bible and walked away empty. Not once. You know why? Because this book is inexhaustible. There is always more. Always deeper. Always something that stops you cold and makes you whisper, "I never saw that before."

But here's another important fact. The Bible is not simply a collection of wise writings randomly sorted into a thick, ancient volume. That misses the whole point completely. Every book from Genesis to Revelation is telling one story. One magnificent, unfolding, breathtaking story. And at the center of that story is a person: Jesus Christ. His life, his death, his resurrection. The thread of the cross is woven through the entire tapestry of scripture.

And it all boils down to three days. Three days that changed everything. The death of Jesus on the cross, bearing the full weight of human sin. His burial, silent, sealed, finished. And then, the third day. Empty tomb. Folded grave clothes. "He is not here. He is risen." That's it. That's the whole story. That's the cross we proclaim, and that is the beating heart of Insight for Living.

June 30th is almost here. Would you give generously so that the most important story ever told keeps traveling? The world is waiting. Give today. Give generously. Give joyfully. It matters more than you know.

Bill Meyer: As Christians, God has called us to take his story far and wide. And today, we're inviting you to join Chuck Swindoll and the entire team here at Insight for Living on this sacred responsibility to proclaim the cross. Here's how to get in touch. Call us at 800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org/donate.

To express our gratitude for your partnership, we'd like to send you a brand new booklet that Chuck's written called "The Cross We Proclaim." In it, Chuck returns to the ancient words of the apostle Paul and asks a searching question: Have you truly come to grips with the message of the cross? Not as a doctrine to affirm, but as a transforming reality to live by.

To send a contribution in the mail, just address your envelope to: Insight for Living, Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas 75034. That's Post Office Box 5000, Frisco, Texas 75034. You can also call us at 800-772-8888 or give online at insight.org/donate. I'm Bill Meyer. Chuck Swindoll illustrates the radical, life-changing gift of God's unlimited grace, Friday on Insight for Living.

The preceding message, "The Grace of God," was copyrighted in 2008, 2009, 2016, 2019, and 2026. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.