What’s so amazing about ‘Amazing Grace’?-Jones answers Challenge from Gay minister

Excellent column on Grace. I searched for the article this author references but couldn’t locate it…

From Greenville online: What’s so amazing about ‘Amazing Grace’?

When someone you love is misrepresented and slandered — as Jesus Christ was by James Lawson in Leonard Pitts’ Greenville News column Wednesday — to keep silent is traitorous and cowardly. In defending homosexuality, Lawson said: “I am a follower of Jesus. That’s what I’ve called myself for decades. And that is a radical faith that refuses to define any human being or group of human beings as being outside God’s grace.”

I have to ask, “What Jesus? — and where did he dream up his definition of ‘God’s grace’?”

His is a distortion of biblical Christianity that is increasingly appearing in the media. Lawson labels his position “radical faith” — and indeed it is. It is radically unbiblical, radically heretical. It unjustly represents man as inherently good and presents a god the Bible knows nothing about.

God’s grace does not extend to sinners outside of His Son, Jesus Christ. The kindness and love of God toward man appeared in the person of our Savior, Jesus Christ (Titus 3:4), Whom He sent by a virgin birth into the world. The only grace God extends to any of us is in His Son. Sinners like James Lawson, Leonard Pitts and Bob Jones will never see God without receiving Christ, Who is the “grace of God that bringeth salvation” (Titus 2:11).

For someone like Lawson to fabricate an idol out of his vain imagination and label it “Christianity” is radically preposterous. Only the Holy Scriptures can define authentic Christianity.

Those Scriptures declare that all of mankind apart from Christ are sinners condemned and under the wrath of God now and eternally. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36). “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus …” (Romans 8:1). “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). “There is none righteousness, no, not one” (Romans 3:10). God in Christ reconciles the world to Himself (II Corinthians 5:18).

If none of us is outside of God’s grace, as Lawson claims, the death of Jesus Christ is a wasted mockery. If all men are already reconciled to God just because they are members of the human race, God did not need to send His Son to be the reconciler. Reconciliation implies prior alienation. Man’s sin has separated him from God (Isaiah. 59:2).

If “no human being or group of human beings” is outside of God’s grace, the Bible is a colossal deceit. On the other hand, if the Bible is true, we all know what that makes James Lawson.

“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” The words of that moving gospel hymn tell us what’s so amazing about God’s amazing grace. It saves “wretches” like us.

Amazingly, it opens our eyes so that we can see ourselves as the wretches we are — in need of grace, His undeserved favor.

Amazingly, the holy God of Heaven, Whom we have offended by our sins, showed “his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

If Christ’s saving grace does not seem amazing to us, it is only because we refuse to see ourselves as alienated sinners apart from His grace, as condemned sinners whose religious affiliations and self-righteousness can never achieve what grace alone does — the pardon of sins in Christ alone, by faith alone.

God would have every man everywhere to be saved (Acts 17:30). There is room at the cross of Christ for every Buddhist, Catholic, Protestant, Jew, Muslim or Hindu. There is room for every adulterer, pornographer, homosexual, liar and murderer. The grace of God is amazing in its reach; it is amazing in its release. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1).