But is not usually a word we like, you know what I mean- “I love you but,” “I am sorry but,” or “I would love to help but.” When I hear “but” I always feel that great letdown that I know is coming. I know the speaker is trying to let me down nice and easy. It is the word that lets us know that an exception is coming. But recently I read “But God” and wow I loved to hear these words. As I was pondering my own sin and the sins of others against me, I began to despair. How is it that I can sin as I do? What hope is there that I or others will really change? Of courses in my self centeredness I was focusing far more on the other’s sins than my own, wondering if there was really any hope. Are we just doomed to continue in our sins? But than I read Ephesians 2. What hope is there for us? It is “but God,” Paul writes “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.” We were dead, we were following our own desires, we were children of wrath, but God, by His mercy and love saved us! It was not us, it does not say they were dead but decided to follow Jesus, it was Him and Him alone. It was not dependent on us or our willingness to turn to Him, in fact we were dead. A dead person does not choose to come to life, he can not, but God could and did. We need not fret it is God who saves the dead. And why does he do this because his great love and because He wants to show the immeasurable riches of His grace and kindness. It is about God, not us and because of this we have great hope in “But God.”
