God has revealed Himself to us as the "God of all grace" (1 Peter 5:10), and He has set us in the
position of "having tasted that the Lord is gracious" (1 Peter 2:3). How hard it is for us to believe
that the Lord is gracious I The natural feeling of our hearts is, "I know that thou art an austere
man" (see Luke 19:21). There is in all of us naturally a lack of understanding of the grace of God.

There is sometimes the thought that grace implies God’s passing over sin. To the contrary! The
thought of grace sup-poses sin to be such a horribly bad thing that God cannot tolerate it. If it
were in the power of unrighteous, evil man to patch up his ways and mend himself so that he
could stand before God, there would be no need of grace. The very fact that the Lord is gracious
shows man’s state as a sinner so utterly ruined and hopeless that nothing but free grace can meet
his need. The moment I understand that I am a sinful man, and that the Lord came to me because
He knew the full extent and hatefulness of my sin, I understand what grace is. Faith makes me see
that God is greater than my sin, and not that my sin is greater than God.

Now it is good to realize that the Lord who lay down His life for me is the same Lord with whom
I have to do every day of my life. All His dealings with me are on the same principles of grace.
The great secret of growth is the looking up to the Lord as gracious. How precious, how
strengthening it is to know that Jesus is at this moment feeling and exercising the same love
toward me as when He died on the cross for me.

This is a truth that should be applied by us in the most common everyday circumstances of life.
Suppose, for instance, I have a bad temper which I find difficult to overcome. If I bring it to Jesus
as my Friend, virtue goes out of Him for my need. My faith should thus be ever in exercise
against temptations, and not simply my own effort. My own effort will never be sufficient. The
source of real strength is in the sense of the Lord’s being gracious.

The natural man in us always disbelieves Christ as the only source of strength and of every
blessing. Suppose my soul is out of communion and the natural heart says, "I must correct the
cause of this before I can come to Christ." But He is gracious! And knowing this, we should
return to Him at once, just as we are, and then humble ourselves deeply before Him. It is only in
Him and from Him that we shall find that which will restore our souls. Humbleness in His
presence is the only real humbleness. If we own ourselves in His presence to be just what we are,
we shall find that He will show us nothing but grace.

It is Jesus who gives abiding rest to our souls, and not what our thoughts about ourselves may be.
Faith never thinks about that which is in ourselves as its ground of rest. Rather, it receives and
loves what God has revealed, and what are God’s thoughts about Jesus, in whom is His rest. In
knowing Jesus to be precious to our souls, and having our eyes and our hearts occupied with Him,
we will be effectually prevented from being taken up with the vanity and sin around. And this,
too, will be our strength against the sin and corruption of our own hearts.

WHATEVER I SEE IN MYSELF THAT IS NOT IN HIM, IS SIN. But it is not thinking of my
own sins and my own vileness that will humble me, but thinking of the Lord Jesus_dwelling upon

the excellency in Him. It is well to be done with ourselves, and to be taken up with Jesus. We are
entitled to forget ourselves; we are entitled to forget our sins; we are entitled to forget all but
Jesus.

There is nothing so hard for our hearts as to abide in the sense of grace, to continue practically
conscious that we are not under law, but under grace. There is nothing more difficult for us to
comprehend than the fulness of that "grace of God wherein [we] stand," and to walk in the power
and consciousness of it. It is only in the presence of God that we can know it. The moment we get
away from the presence of God there will always be certain workings of our own thoughts within
us, and our own thoughts can never reach up to the thoughts of God about us, to the "grace of
God."

The having very simple thoughts of grace is the source of our strength as Christians. The abiding
in the sense of grace, in the presence of God, is the secret of all holiness, peace, and quietness of
spirit.

In Romans 7 we find a description of a person born again, but whose whole set of reasonings
centers in himself. He stops short of grace. He stops short of the simple fact that, however bad
he may be, God is love, and only love towards him. Instead of looking at God, it is all /, I, I.
Faith looks at God as He has revealed Himself in grace.

Grace has reference to what God is, and not to what we are, except indeed that the very greatness
of our sins magnifies the extent of the "grace of God." At the same time we must remember that
the object of grace is to bring our souls into communion with God_to sanctify us by bringing our
souls to know God and to love Him. Therefore the knowledge of grace is the true source of
sanctification.

It is better to be thinking of what God is than of what we are. The looking at ourselves is really
pride, a want of the thorough consciousness that we are good for nothing. Until we see this we
never quite look away from self to God. In looking to Christ, it is our privilege to forget
ourselves. True humility does not so much consist in thinking badly of ourselves, as in not
thinking of ourselves at all. I am too bad to be worth thinking about. What I want is to forget
myself and look to God, who is indeed worth all my thoughts.

Beloved, if we can say as in Romans 7, "In me (that is, in my flesh) dwelleth no good thing," we
have thought quite long enough about ourselves. Let us then think about Him who thought about
us with thoughts of good and not of evil, long before we had thought of ourselves at all. Let us
see what His thoughts of grace about us are, and take up the words of faith, "If God be for us,
who can be against us?" (Romans 8:31).