What Grace Looks Like in Real Life

Go take 3 minutes and watch this video of one of my favorite guys in the world, Willy Robertson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K058jdOpvAI

As we've been walking through our daily readings in Acts the past week or so, we've seen God preparing and calling his apostles to preach the Good News to the Gentiles.  I've talked about what a monumental shift this was in thinking for men like Paul and Peter.  I've talked about how difficult it would have been for these Jews to not only associate with Gentiles, but to share a message with them that would include them in the family of God.

Simply put, all the struggles of the apostles in the Gentile world were a struggle to understand grace.  What Willy Robertson said in 3 minutes is what took men like Peter and Paul years to understand.  What Willy Robertson explained is what grace looks like in real life.  

In today's reading from Acts 15, we see God's plan for adopting the Gentiles into his family continue to unfold.  In Jerusalem, as Jesus' Church was growing, their was constant conflict about what to do with the Gentiles.  Some of the Jews who were leading the church were telling the Gentiles that they had to be circumcised (and circumcision was EVERYTHING to a Jew) in order to be a part of God's family.  V2. tells us, "This brought Paul and Barnabas into sharp dispute and debate with them. So Paul and Barnabas were appointed, along with some other believers, to go up to Jerusalem to see the apostles and elders about this question."

And then Paul swallows what remnants of his Jewish pride that may have remained and made it clear that salvation and membership in the family of God isn't about circumcision or what we do externally.  It's about grace - about what Jesus does in our hearts.  Look at v.v. 8-10

 God, who knows the heart, showed that he accepted them by giving the Holy Spirit to them, just as he did to us.  He did not discriminate between us and them, for he purified their hearts by faith. Now then, why do you try to test God by putting on the necks of Gentiles a yoke that neither we nor our ancestors have been able to bear?   No! We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved, just as they are.” 

This is incredibly liberating and freeing news - in Jesus Christ, the gates of heaven have been thrown open to all who would call on his name for salvation.  Heritage, race and nationality didn't matter.  What mattered was faith in this grace that has been revealed.

One of the things that I love about Duck Dynasty is the emphasis on faith and living for God's glory.  Every time I see snippets of talks or speeches that Willy, Jase and Phil provide, I love that God has elevated these men to the position in our culture that they occupy.  Are they perfect?  Absolutely not, and they'd be the first to tell you that.  But they get it!  They get grace.

In the video link above, we see the reality of what grace looks like in real life.  When Willy says, "He's bi-racial, he doesn't look like us . . . That's what God did with us, he took us in . . .
I can look at my 2 sons I have and literally see the New Testament unfolded right there;" he's describing what every single follower of Jesus Christ has experienced because of his grace.

God doesn't hang an unbearable yoke around our necks.  He invites us, by faith, to come and trust what he's done for us through his precious son Jesus Christ.  We don't look like Jesus before he saves us - far from it!  But he saves us anyway.  He takes us in to the family of God, and adopts us not just as children but of heirs of the riches of heaven.  

Sometimes it's difficult in the times we live in to look at different people and think that God wants them to be a part of his family.  They don't look like us.  They don't act like us.  They don't have the same values that we have.  But that is where the beauty of grace comes in - it's not about the outside, it's about the heart.  It's about the fact that every person, from the moment of conception, has been made in the image of God and has infinite worth and value in God's sight.  

The next time you're tempted to look scornfully on people who are different than you, remember Willy Robertson and remember Paul's words here in Acts 15 about what grace looks like in real life.