Am I a wretch?

By Elizabeth Prata

Before I was saved, I used to like that hymn “Amazing Grace”. Go figure. Usually only at Christmas or Easter services I was dragged to, we were not a church going family. But that was where I’d heard the song, and I liked it.

But I decidedly did not like the part that said “a wretch like me”. I stubbornly clung to the notion that I, a good person, was in no way a wretch. I closed my mouth when that part came up. What self-pitying, low self-esteem these Christians were, I’d thought.

I was so deep in my sin, of course I could not see my own depravity. But His grace abounded. Now I’m saved, and far from thinking that Christians are being pitiable doormats with no self-esteem, now, acknowledging my position before Christ is a relief. I had been comparing myself to others, and comparatively I might have been slightly nicer than the other guy, who was also a thoroughly depraved wretch by the way, but at the judgment we do not compare ourselves to other people. We must be like Christ, who is perfectly holy. So, yes, I am a wretch. I had been strutting and roaming the earth in sin, proud of my sin, doing nothing for God and happy in my pigsty of a life.

Those who will humble themselves He will lift up, but the proud, He opposes.

It bears repeating, and repeating, and repeating, just how sinful we were before salvation – yet God loved us. He loved his enemies! We were His enemy, hating Him and rejecting Him at all points. No one seeks for God. We only seek for ourselves. Yet His grace descended on each person who is and will be in heaven, plucking us up from the sinner’s nest of sin, and cleaning us with his own blood, standing us upright, and bestowing on us all the benefits of heaven as His children.

Every human is made in the image of God but only people that His grace opened their eyes to repent are His children.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gracious gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

Do not let the wonder of salvation dwindle in your mind. Allow the beauty and eternal gift of His Spirit in us to dwell richly in a bed of gratitude deep within, welling up at all points to share the glory that is Jesus.