The following is from “Open Your Hymnal Again: More Devotions that Harmonize Scripture with Song”. By Denise Loock – A freelance writer.
The grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly, along with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. I Timothy 1:14
“Do you remember using the phrase “very, very” as a child to describe the magnitude of something? A “very, very big dog”, perhaps? Or at the conclusion of a school essay did you ever write, “the very, very end”?
I used the phrase often until one of my teachers declared war on my “very” habit. “One very is enough,” she wrote on my papers and drew blood red lines through the extra ones. After that, I stopped including the extra very’s in my stories, but mentally I still used them. In certain situations Paul used a Greek version of “very, very” in I Timothy 1:14. He was reflecting on his life before Jesus confronted him on the road to Damascus. Paul said, “I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man” (v.13). But he added, “the grace of our Lord was poured out on me abundantly” (v.14). In the Greek “abundantly” is hyperpleonazo, which literally means “abundantly abundant.” That’s the reason the KJV uses “exceeding abundant” and the ASV uses “abounded exceedingly” in this verse. For Paul, one abundant just wasn’t enough to describe the grace that God had poured out on him, the self-acknowledged “chief of sinners” (v.15).
Julia Harriet Johnston also understood the “very, very” aspect of God’s grace. She wrote the lyrics to “Grace Greater Than Our Sin.” However, her life story was nothing like Paul’s. In fact, I doubted that anyone ever used the words blasphemer, persecutor, or violent in reference to her.
She was raised in a Christian home and headed the Sunday school department in her church for 40 years. She also served as the president of the local chapter of the Presbyterian Missionary Society and wrote over 500 hymns. But just like you and me, Julia Johnston still needed God’s abundantly abundant grace, the grace that “exceeds our sin and our guilt,” the grace that “points to the Refuge, the mighty Cross.”
Johnston doesn’t use “very, very” or “abundantly abundant” in her hymns, she uses her own seemingly redundant phrase: “Marvelous, infinite, matchless grace.” The repetition of grace in the refrain suggests that she too was overwhelmed by the magnitude of the grace that flowed into her life, and that she also had difficulty finding suitable words to express her wonder and her gratitude:
Grace, grace, God’s grace, Grace that will pardon and cleanse within; Grace, grace, God’s grace, Grace that is greater than all our sin.
As a child, I used “very, very” because words like gargantuan and delectable weren’t part of my vocabulary. But when it comes to God’s grace, no words can describe its immensity or infinity. That’s why Paul resorted to redundancy and Johnston to repetition. Which is fine with me: After all, if God’s grace was describable, it wouldn’t be able to cover my sins and yours. And that’s the kind of grace we need. Abundantly, abundant, very, very big grace.”
May this year be a year of God’s abundant grace in your life: a grace that will pardon and cleanse within; a grace that is greater than all our sin.
Victory Call 