Biography
The Rev. Dr. Lewis Smedes is an ordained minister in the Christian Reformed Church and was Professor of Theology at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, for many years. He’s the author of many books, including Forgive and Forget and Caring and Commitment, as well as articles in publications like Christianity Today and the Reformed Journal. Lew lives in Sierra Madre, California, where he continues to write and travel as a speaker who is much in demand. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date.]

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          and 30 Good Minutes.

"Amazing Grace"
I want to begin by telling you a little bit about myself. My wife, Doris, and I live in a small village called Sierra Madre, a foothill town nestled next to the San Gabriel Mountains of Southern California. Our family moved there from Grand Rapids, Michigan thirty-four years ago. It was a hard move and it was sad because we both grew up there and we were moving away from our oldest and best friends. Now comes the tough part. After we had been living in California just for a few years, I had a phone call from a doctor in Grand Rapids who told me that my closest and dearest friend was dying of cancer and that if I wanted to see him before he died, I had better come right away. So the very next day I flew to Michigan to see my dying friend.

I spent six days at the hospital with him. From the first day we dug right in and talked about many deep things that only long time friends could talk about when death is at the door. Those six days are among the most treasured days of my life. Then the time came for me to leave, and we both knew we never see each other on Earth again. I got up off my chair next to his bed, bent over and kissed his cheek, and said goodbye. When I got to the door, I paused and took one more look at him. He lifted his head up just an inch or two and said to me, "It’s all right. Lew, it’s all right."

If you have read the letters of Saint Paul in the New Testament, you may have noticed that he signs off each of his letters with these words, or words like these: "Grace be to you." In the Greek world where Paul lived, before Jesus Christ had come, the word, grace, was used just as a way to say goodbye or "sincerely yours." Then St. Paul took that no account word, grace, and turned it into the flagship word of the Good News of salvation. Since then it has become the most amazing, the most beautiful, the most powerful, the most healing word ever spoken in any language. Grace is what God is; grace is about what God feels and about what God is. Grace is God’s desire to make things that we feel are all wrong, to turn them over into something that’s very right.

Sometimes grace comes when the one thing you needed most to make life all right for you is ripped away from you. I will never forget the days after we lost our only infant child. Some days Doris and I felt as if God had gone on leave of absence and left no forwarding address and that we would never, ever smile again. We cried. We held each other. We thought that we would never smile and it seemed so wrong that we could hardly stand it. We asked God, "Why?" And received no answer. But then, after a few days, when we were looking at each other through tear moistened eyes, the wonderful word came to us from God: "Grace be to you. My grace will be sufficient for you. Your life is going to be good again. You will smile again." Even though our dream seemed crushed, we learned that life could still be good because God’s grace will make it right.

But grace, in my experience, is especially for people who feel, not that things on the outside are all wrong, but that they are all wrong on the inside. When we have gummed up our own lives, and we can’t seem to find a good word to say for ourselves, grace says that God will accept us and never reject us. Acceptance, you see, is what grace is really all about. I believe that deepest need that any of us have is to know that we are accepted and we will never be rejected.

Doris and I have three wonderful children, all three adopted. Down deep in the heart of every adopted child, whether he or she knows it or not, is an anxiety that since they were rejected by their biological parents they could be rejected again by their adoptive parents. And the most important thing in their lives to them, whether they express it or not, is to know deep inside of them that they are accepted and that their adoptive parents will never let them go. No matter what. But you don’t have to be an adopted child to have that feeling.

But most of us have an underground trembling anxiety that, if people could see us for what we really are, they would not accept us. And we are also anxious that God, who does see us for what we really are will look at us and say: "You are not acceptable." But God comes with another word. Whether you’re acceptable or not doesn’t matter. What matters is this: "You are accepted no matter what." Grace means that when God says Yes to us even when we say No to ourselves. His Yes is so strong that our No about ourselves does not have a chance.

I do not know what faith you have or what religion you follow. I do know this: If your religion only clobbers you for not living up to God’s standards or your Mother’s or your own, your religion has no grace in it. A religion without grace says to people who have messed up their lives: Tough luck. You are stuck with what you stuck yourself with.

Grace says: No, you are never stuck with what you have stuck yourself with. You are accepted. You are accepted no matter how much you have gummed things up.

I admit that grace cuts through the hard crust of logic. Hard boiled common sense will tell you that there is too much wrong with you for you to be acceptable to the demanding Maker of the universe. Common sense tells us that we are stuck with whatever we stuck ourselves with. Grace is the revolutionary reality. It’s God’s desire to unstick us from whatever we have stuck ourselves with.

Let me say it again: Grace is God’s resounding yes to you while you are saying no to yourself. And his yes to you is so resounding that it drowns out your no that you say to yourself.

Grace means that God will always be for you; he will never be against you. God will always say yes to you, he will never say no to you even when you are saying no to yourself. You will never mess up your life so badly that God will say no to you. You can live each day breathing the fresh air of his grace.

The grace of God does not always come to us in a church where we might expect it. It may come through to you as you are stuck in heavy traffic. It may slide silently up beside you while a crowd around you is busy chattering. Then again it could come to when you are all alone with yourself and the window of your spirit is open to God’s grace. Then you will be lifted by the word of grace: You are accepted. You are accepted. You are accepted. Yes, you are accepted. That’s grace.

Interview with Lewis Smedes
Interviewed by Lydia Talbot

Lydia Talbot: Lew, your profound message on amazing grace—which you called the most healing word in our language—centers on God’s unconditional acceptance of us.

Lewis Smedes: Absolutely. That’s the most amazing reality that a human being has ever experienced.

Talbot: But when you and your wife, Doris, experienced the loss of your only infant child, you said grace came to you. There are many people who would not be able to say that. What do you say to people who don’t recognize grace?

Smedes: I just tell them the story of Jesus and his love. I think of "Tell Me the Old, Old Story of Jesus and His Love." We sang that at my church when I was a boy. You can’t make people open up the windows of their spirits to grace. All you can do is tell them about it and pray that they will experience it. Sometimes they do and, sadly, sometimes they remain bitter. But when they do, it’s one of those wonderful things that happens that you’re not in control of. It just opens up to you and the reality is so great.

Talbot: The windows of the spirit. But grace comes, doesn’t it, at the least expected moments?

Smedes: Very often. On that particular occasion, I wanted it too much. We had been trying to have a child for ten years, in the first ten years of our marriage and I wanted it too much. No question about it. So when I lost it, it was very hard. Then without asking for it or without thinking about it, we just felt: Aha! We are experiencing God as grace. It’s going to be all right.

Talbot: And it was there. Thank you, Lew.