“Amazing grace how sweet the sound…” wrote John Newton. Newton understood the sweetness of the sound of grace because he confronted head-on the enormity of his sin before the holy God. To know that even he could be pardoned, clothed with the perfect righteousness of Christ, adopted as a child of God, raised up to sit with Christ in the heavenlies, and be assured of eternal life was a sweet sound to his heart.

The degree to which a believer perceives the sweetness of the sound of grace is proportional to the degree to which he understands his salvation. Unbelievers do not find the gospel sweet; it is a savor of death to them, Paul tells us. Unfortunately, there are many believers who do not perceive of their salvation as sweet, but as duty, drudgery, obligation, and stretching to reach an impossible goal. Legalism robs the believer of his/her joy and takes all the sweetness out of the gospel. Grace is only a word, perhaps mechanically defined as “unmerited favor,” but devoid of any true meaning.

Paul prayed that the believers in Ephesus would come to know the hope to which they were called and the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe (Eph. 1:18-19), and later that they would “have strength to comprehend the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God” (Eph. 3:18-19).

Why this prayer? Because only by understanding the extent of God’s love for us in Christ, and only by understanding the hope, the glory, and the power of our salvation will we ever savor the sweetness of it. The gospel is good news! We have been saved, we have been delivered, and we have been granted eternal life that is forever! And it is all by grace! None of it is because of our works or performance. That’s amazing. And that is a sweet sound in a sinner’s ear!

May God grant us the ability to enjoy and taste the sweetness of God’s grace! How much different life becomes. How much better able we are to bear the pain and suffering of life. How much more we appreciate everything and everyone God gas given us. The sweetness of grace sweetens all of life.