Dear Brothers and Sisters in the Lord,

If I were to ask you to choose your favorite passages in the Bible about God’s grace, which ones would you think of?

Well, let me add one passage for your consideration. And it’s one that is likely absent from all our lists of verses.

Check out the words that follow from 2 Samuel 12.

And the Lord sent Nathan to David(v. 1)

Nathan said to David, “You are the man!”(v. 7)

“Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?(v. 9)

It may surprise you that I’ve included these verses among those from the Bible that speak of God’s grace. But I believe that, while the word ‘grace’ does not appear here, what we see in action is nothing less than a powerful example of God’s marvelous grace!

Of course, when we first think of grace we think of saving grace, and rightly so. But the saving or redeeming grace that we know from our Father through His Son is also a sanctifying grace. So this divine grace not only reclaims the sinner from guilt, death, and hell, it also begins to transform the sinner into a son of God, one who is holy and obedient.

It is this sanctifying grace that we encounter in this passage from 2 Samuel 12:1-9. David, the believer, but also the great sinner who is far from the Lord, will experience this grace in a most powerful and even embarrassing way. You can read about this in verses 1-7.

Our message on Sunday will deal with three components of the grace that we discover in this passage.

1) God’s grace seeks the disobedient, sinful believer.

2) God’s grace illuminates the sin in the believer’s life.

3) God’s grace convicts the believer of his or her sin.

So we might think of sanctifying grace as seeking, illuminating, and convicting.

Let’s pray that as we explore the riches of this passage from the Lord’s Word that our view of His amazing grace will be made much deeper for His glory and honor.