Dr. Adrian Rogers: God’s Grace – From Sanctification to Glorification

Grace That Pursues You: From Lostness to Glory

Grace is unlike anything this world has ever known. Imagine a doctor who goes out searching—not for patients, but for enemies. He heals them freely, takes their sickness upon Himself, and pays the full cost so they may be restored. That is grace. Love that gives where there is no merit. Love that gives even where there is deep guilt. Love that blesses an enemy at great cost to itself. This is what Jesus has done for you.

Titus 2:11–15 declares that “the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men.” This grace teaches us to deny ungodliness, to live soberly and righteously, and to look with hope for the glorious return of our Savior. Grace saves us—but it also shapes us and prepares us for glory.

Few understood grace more deeply than John Newton, the author of “Amazing Grace.” As a child he had a godly mother and an ungodly father. After his mother died, Newton followed his father to sea at eleven years old and plunged into sin. He became part of the slave trade—and eventually sank so low that he himself became a slave. Chained under the table of a cruel mistress, eating crumbs, he tasted the lowest depths a soul can reach.

But God was not done with him.

Some Christian sailors handed him The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Newton read it half out of curiosity, half in mockery—but it stirred something within him. Then came the storm. A massive wave hurled him overboard, and another wave swept him back onto the ship. In that terrifying moment, he cried out to God for mercy. Grace found him, rescued him, and made him a trophy of redemption. That rescued slave trader later wrote, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”

The same God who saved John Newton reaches for you today.

Scripture says we needed saving because we were spiritually dead—separated from the life of God. Not only dead, but under the influence of the enemy, living in disobedience, driven by sinful desires we inherited from Adam. We were not neutral; we were lost, broken, and unable to raise ourselves. A dead man cannot respond to encouragement, education, or environment. He cannot raise himself by trying harder or learning more.

But then come two of the most beautiful words in Scripture: “But God.”

“But God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ—for by grace you have been saved.”

Grace is not merely God loving the lovely. It is God loving the unlovely. It is love that gives where there is no merit—and where there is great demerit. Grace gives to an enemy who resists, who runs, who wants nothing to do with God. It is love that chases us down.
“There is none that seeks after God,” Scripture says. We seek Him only because He first sought us.

Grace begins with God. Grace moves toward the sinner. Grace lifts the dead to life. Grace sanctifies us in the present and points us toward the glory to come.

From the depths of our lostness to the heights of eternal glory—that is the journey of grace.