With all of today’s divisions, debates and displays of ungraciousness characterizing those who profess to believe the gospel of the grace of God in Christ Jesus, is it any wonder there are so many instructions, reproofs, admonitions, warnings and rebukes in the epistles pertaining to these very things? God knew and knows what we are! What was present even in the early church seems to have reached epidemic proportions in it today. Is it any wonder that Paul asked the church at Corinth what must be asked today?  “Is Christ divided, was ______ crucified for you? or were you baptized in the name of ______?” Is it not a wonder that those who say they love Christ must be told to “love the brethren?” That those forgiven of all their sins must be told to forgive and forbear one another? That those who had to be justified through the shedding of Christ’s blood would be so quick to condemn another?

     Such wretched creatures could only have been saved by God Almighty alone, by His free and sovereign grace alone and in One outside of themselves which was Christ alone! Perhaps even more than we are proclaiming in the gospel message we preach, we are showing (to our shame) in our attitudes toward each other that the absolute only way a sinner can be saved is by GRACE! How we ought to bow down as low as we possibly can in heart and mind before God and men and confess our utter wretchedness in light of such grace shown to us! I do so this day, “God have mercy on me THE SINNER!”