What’s So Amazing About Grace: The Power of The Cross.


Summary & Key points
Dr. Keith White begins by greeting the audience and reflecting on a previous visit, also sharing greetings from his wife, Ruth. He recalls a recent trip to London where they visited John Newton's church, the writer of "Amazing Grace," and reflects on the profound meaning of grace. Dr. White discusses C.S. Lewis's view of grace as a unique aspect of Christianity and emphasizes the importance of understanding and living by grace. He explores various roles in the Crucifixion story, reflecting on how everyone was spiritually present at the event, whether as the crowd, criminals, soldiers, disciples, or bystanders. Dr. White then highlights Jesus' first prayer on the cross from Luke 23:34, where Jesus asks for forgiveness for those who are executing Him, illustrating the boundless nature of divine forgiveness. The second prayer, from Mark 15:34, expresses Jesus' deep suffering and feeling of abandonment as He bears the sins of the world, showcasing the incomprehensibility of His sacrifice and grace. Dr. White underscores the centrality of forgiveness in experiencing God's love, using the story of the prodigal son to highlight the importance of repentance and forgiveness. He calls on the audience to embrace the grace and forgiveness offered through Jesus, sharing a personal story to illustrate the depth of a father's love and sacrifice. He concludes by urging everyone to accept the gift of forgiveness and live in the light of God's grace, reinforcing that the message of the cross is one of amazing grace.
Show Transcript

So good to be back. How many of you now, looking at me, recognize me? Can you raise a hand? Please, thank you. How many do not recognize me? All right, there we are. I’m not David Beckham then. All right, how many of you are not sure if you recognize me? All right, so greetings to you from London, UK, and from my wife, Ruth. Last time I was here, I think she was actually with me, which was very special. Recently, Ruth and I were walking around the city of London, which has 50 parish churches, and one of them was the church where John Newton was the rector. You might say, well, what’s that got to do with this morning? You’ve been singing his testimony. He was the one who wrote Amazing Grace. In the church, there’s a piano, and you are able, if you’d like to, to go to the piano and play Amazing Grace. So that’s what I did when I was there, aware that I was coming to you in the UK when you were singing that song, Amazing Grace. I don’t know whether you stopped over these words: “It was grace that taught my heart to fear.” I wonder whether your pastor has preached on that. What does that mean, “grace taught my heart to fear”? And “grace my fear”? That’s what you sang, assuming you meant it, then it’s important. “And grace my fear relieved.” I leave that with you as questions, but I’m going to stick around. We’re going to share about grace today because Pastor has asked me to do so. So I’m a man under authority. Elisha says to one, come, and he cometh, and to another, go, and she goeth. There we are, except P, except Patrina, I think. There we are. So let’s have, thank you, my brother, let’s have grace in our minds for a moment, and because we’re where we are, we’re in Malaysia. I’ve just come from dear friends in Manila, in the Philippines. Just adjusting languages in my mind, they seem so similar, Tagalog and Bahasa, but when I start looking at them, they’re not quite as similar as I thought they were.

 

C.S. Lewis, who helped my studies at Oxford University, this is a description, this is just about grace, this is an introduction. There was a conference on comparative religions where people from around the world, Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and Christians and Jews, were discussing whether there was anything unique to each of their faiths. So the question came, is there anything unique about the Christian faith? And they began to discuss things like the Incarnation, and my dear Hindu friends pointed out there are lots of examples of avatars and something like Incarnation and reincarnation in Hinduism. They talked about resurrection, and again in different religions, there are different forms of resurrection. C.S. Lewis walked into the conference and said, “What is all this rumpus about?” And his colleagues said, “Well, we’re trying to discuss what is unique about Christianity.” He replied, “That’s easy, get ready: Grace.” I’m so grateful to have had a mentor who could speak so simply. The answer is grace. And so I’ve been asked to share with you from the scriptures about grace. Amazing grace and the cross of Christ. “Were you there when they crucified my Lord?” Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble. If you were there, what was your role? Who were those who were closest to you? What were you thinking? Just let me give you some examples. Were you among the crowd? Are you one of those who would like to be in the Kop at Liverpool, just to mention a random team, shouting “You’ll never walk alone”? Lovely to be in a crowd, or better still, to be at White Hart Lane singing “Glory, Glory, Tottenham Hotspur.” Good to be in a crowd, but so difficult when the crowd starts shouting “Crucify him, crucify him.” Then it’s more difficult.

 

Were you perhaps one of the criminals? Do you feel as though you’re one of the criminals in the story? I don’t know. Two executed with him and another criminal called Barabbas. I always have that sense that when he was set free, although everything in him said, “I’ve got to run away from here,” when he was set free and then saw someone else taking the cross that was designed for him to Golgotha, I wonder whether he stopped and looked back. “He’s the one who died on the cross that was designed for me. He took my place.” I wonder. I’m sure you don’t think you’re one of the soldiers executing Jesus or mocking him. What about one of his disciples? One of his family? Were you there when they crucified my Lord? You wouldn’t like to think of yourself as one of the mockers: “He saved others; let him save himself if he really is God’s son.” Or

perhaps, if you’re none of these, then you’re a bystander like Shakespeare’s character Enobarbus in Antony and Cleopatra, watching what is going on but not involved. Perhaps that’s you. I don’t know. My sisters and brothers, this morning, it will become clear that you were there. You were closer to the action than you might think, closer even than Mary, the mother of Jesus, and John, the one who loved him. By the help of God’s spirit this morning, we’ll understand why we were there. By the help of God’s grace, we will respond, perhaps for the first time, perhaps with more of our heart, soul, mind, and strength than ever before.

 

Wherever we were, whatever we were doing or thought, even bystanders, there were two cries of Jesus, two prayers that we heard, and that’s what we’re going to explore this morning. The first is in Luke’s gospel and chapter 23, so if you have a Bible in whichever form, Luke 23 and verse 34. Just so you know the scene, Jesus has been, this is painful for a minister of the gospel to say, nailed to a cross, and he’s in the middle of two criminals. Just to get your minds thinking, if you like to think, K. Barth said that was the beginning of the church where two or three were gathered with Jesus in the midst. My, wow. When they came to a place called The Skull, I’ve been there as a student. They crucified him along with criminals, one on his right, the other on his left. And Jesus said, verse 34, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they are doing.” And they, that’s the Roman soldiers, divided up his clothes by casting lots. So that’s the first of the two prayers. The second isn’t in Luke’s gospel, so we need to go to Mark 15. As a minister of the gospel, I don’t like to move around the Bible, but this is necessary at this moment because this is not in Luke’s gospel. This is in Mark chapter 15. This is the second of the prayers or the cries of Jesus. Mark 15:34. Those of you online, I hope you’re able to follow. It’s now three hours, and there has been darkness over the whole land. At three o’clock, that’s three hours after Jesus was nailed to the cross, Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” which means, that’s Aramaic, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

 

Sisters and brothers, we’re going to stand between those two cries of Jesus today, those two prayers, just three hours in chronological time, but in the heart of the Father and the Son, an eternity, kairos, eternity. So let’s stay with the first of the cries, that’s the one in Luke’s gospel. We’re only going to go from one gospel to the other. Luke 23: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” I’m asking you to come closer to this man who is speaking this prayer, and I ask the question: Can this be true? For he’s not being specific and saying, “Forgive that person” or “Forgive that person,” but “Father, forgive them.” There’s no boundary around the words. It doesn’t exclude the criminals, it doesn’t exclude the Pharisees, it doesn’t exclude Pilate or his wife who saw the truth but didn’t feel she could do anything about it. There is no limit to the prayer: “Father, forgive them.” So wherever you were when they crucified my Lord, that prayer was for you, whatever you did, whatever you thought, including Barabbas. So what can possibly be going on in the heart and mind of Jesus to say, “Father, forgive them”? He has come to bring good news to all people. Christmas wasn’t long ago, was it? The angels, “We bring you glad tidings, mega good news, which is for all people.” He’d come to have compassion, to heal, to release, to rescue, to save. And for three years, that’s what he did. And the response? He’s nailed to a cross, despised, rejected, spat upon, ridiculed. It is a complete human “no.” German “nein” always sounds quite serious, or French “non.” “No” to Jesus, to his message, to his actions, and to all that he stood for. When he was nailed to the cross, the human race said,

“No,” and they’re getting rid of him, or we’re getting rid of him, for good. This wasn’t a temporary measure. He’s not in the sin bin; he’s being executed. This is a clinical “no.” It’s a curious and terrible act, combining this “no.” It’s like all of the Shakespeare characters put together or all the characters of Dickens in all his novels, a whole host of players, some conscious, some not, who conspire in one devilish act of defiance and hate to God. No, we represent the whole of the human race for all time. With that in mind, and with Jesus understanding more than you and I will ever know, can Jesus really mean what he says, “Father, forgive them”? At the end of this message, I’ll explain to you why I ask the question: How is it remotely possible that Jesus said and meant, “Father, forgive them”?

 

Just to be clear, let’s hear what he actually says. For three years of his ministry, he has been forgiving the unforgivable, the outcasts, the untouchables. He’s proclaimed forgiveness on people; they can’t believe it. He’s not come to judge or condemn them. He’s not come to say, “Look at me, I’m so far beyond you.” He’s become one of us, Emmanuel. He’s moved into our neighborhood. He came to announce the coming of God’s kingdom: “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand.” This is the one speaking, “Father, forgive them.” That kingdom was a completely different way of living to anything ever before on earth or sadly ever after. That kingdom was Disney-recommended, brought, and shown forgiveness and grace. Now he is nailed to a cross. Jesus is still faithful to his mission. The writer to the Hebrews: “He endured the cross.” If ever there was a time to condemn people, it was surely now. If you can dare to put yourself beside Jesus on the cross, and I doubt whether you can, I put it to you, you would not be able to say, “Father, forgive them.” Every other human being would agree with you. This is unforgivable, but in the kingdom of heaven, it’s not unforgivable. His nature, his DNA, the nature of his Father is to have love and to show mercy to the loveless, the stony-hearted, mercy to the merciless. Here we see Jesus literally stripped bare. In the pictures of the cross, of course, we don’t dare to portray him as he was, naked, stripped bare. And we see who he really is. Sometimes, by God’s grace, followers of Jesus show that.

 

How many of you have heard of David Wilkerson, Nicky Cruz, the cross, and the switchblade? Okay, right. If you haven’t or if you have, here’s just one bit from the story. Nicky Cruz, a gangster, is holding a flick knife at the throat of the pastor, David Wilkerson, who’s come trying to bring good news to the gangsters. And Nicky Cruz shouts at him, or I don’t know what he shouts, but he says to him with the knife by the throat of the minister, “You come near me, and I’ll kill you.” And by God’s grace, David Wilkerson, the preacher on the turf of Nicky Cruz, replied, “Yeah, you can do that. You could cut me into a thousand pieces and lay them in the street, and every piece will still love you.” Sometimes, by God’s grace, followers of Jesus have been able to forgive, and it’s in moments like that we see into the heart of Jesus. You can cut him up, whatever you do, but his love is unchanged, not just for his friends or the righteous, not for the deserving, but for you and me. We can get this far, and it’s a long way if we can grasp it. But we need to hear the actual words of Jesus. He doesn’t say, “I forgive you.” He prays, “Father, forgive them.” The other words, please, as a student of the Bible, one who’s worked on the Bible all my life, trying to present it for Hindus and Muslims and Buddhists and atheists and Arsenal supporters, the whole lot, right, no one’s left out in this love to the utterly loveless shown, can even have a gun as your logo and still he will love you, or even a devil come to that

matter. And he said, “They know not what they’re doing.” This is something I don’t think we like. We like to think we know what we’re doing, but he’s trying to explain that the world doesn’t know what is going on. The soldiers don’t know what’s going on. Pilate, no one knows what’s going on. “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they’re doing.” This is the true message, his calling, the nature of forgiveness. We do not understand it. We can’t take it in. We don’t know what we’re doing, and God alone can forgive. It’s very significant through the life of Jesus. Who can forgive sins but God alone? “Father, forgive them.” That’s Jesus pleading with his Father to forgive us. My friends, I don’t think God is biased, but can you not hear that when his Son is pleading to him from the cross, “Forgive them,” can you not see that the Father’s heart is touched when Jesus mediates with the Father for me? I can somehow rely on him. My prayers don’t count for anything, as far as I can see, but Jesus is taking them to the Father and saying, “Please, even for the street boy Keith, can you?” Jesus is putting in a word for me. I think he does, even for you, Elijah, sometimes. Do I believe that?

 

Sometimes Jesus announces in his life forgiveness for the person he heals: “My son, my daughter, your sins are forgiven.” He’s pronouncing God’s forgiveness, and this is what he prays here. Perhaps, this is only a perhaps, I don’t have the mind of God on this, one of the reasons he prays this prayer is he hasn’t got it in him to say, “I forgive you,” and he’s saying, “Father, I have to hand over to you now. Please, this is where I need you, Father, because this is… I prayed, if it’s your will, I can’t go through with this. Now I’m going through with your will, but I need your help. Father, forgive them, for if you were where I am on this cross, and you were looking at them, you know they have no idea what they’re doing. Father, forgive them.” Either way, as they crucified and put to death the Lord of life, he prayed forgiveness. Can you hold on to that, not just for today? Hold on to that. And this is what he taught me to pray: “Forgive us our

sins as we forgive those who, what, sin against us.” There we have it. And in this prayer, there’s a great truth, the greatest of all truths. My dear sisters and brothers, wherever you are at this moment, just allow yourself to hear this truth: Jesus loves you, this I know, for the Bible tells me so. And you might say, “Keith, you don’t know who I am, you don’t know what my thoughts are, you just don’t know.” I don’t, but whoever you are, however far from God you are, or sadly, however near you think you are, but the very heart of this love is forgiveness. And without forgiveness, there is no way you or I can experience God’s love. There’s no way he can hold us close to his heart.

 

There’s a haunting story, which you know in the Bible, and it’s so haunting that most pastors and in most Bibles they call it the story of the Prodigal Son. Do you know the story of the Prodigal Son? It’s actually the story of a father with two sons, and only one of the sons repented and experienced the embrace of the father. The other one, the older son, who knew he was right, thought he was right, never enjoyed in the story the embrace of the father. He never experienced forgiveness. This morning, the arms of Jesus are outstretched in love and forgiveness on the cross. That’s one of the things the Romans didn’t think of, that their form of execution was one of the beautiful ways of expressing the gospel: the arms of the Savior outstretched, saying, “Father, forgive them.” All those arms are wide open to all people. This is the mega good news. Mega is the word that the angels actually used. If they spoke in Greek, I can’t say whether they did, but in the Bible, that’s the word. It is wholly undeserved. This does

not make any sense. I seem to find my life bumping into lawyers, not because they’re defending me, but I seem to see them. Even last night, there was someone talking to me. She was a lawyer, Elijah, I think you know her. By any human standards, what was going on was beyond forgiveness. If you had to pronounce a just verdict, it wouldn’t be “forgive,” it would be a life sentence. Frankly, it’s bizarre. And so John Newton used the word “amazing grace.” I don’t believe it’s because he was short of words. Charles Wesley wasn’t short of words: “Amazing love, how can it be that thou, my God, should die for me?” These are people who know words, and they’re using the word “amazing” because there’s nothing else for it. This morning, hear that my task as a preacher, thank God, is not to explain this, because it is inexplicable. My job is to proclaim it and to say this is true. I don’t want to be dramatic about this, but I will never know when it’s my last time to come to Centor. I don’t know. But I don’t want to leave the place this morning without proclaiming to each of you: Jesus loves you, and he forgives you. And the only way to describe this is grace. Hold on to it, and if you haven’t got there yet, then the first step is when grace teaches your heart to fear. That’s when it kicks in. If you’re not in some way fearful this morning about what you’ve conspired to do in killing Jesus, then you haven’t started on the road. So that’s the first of the two prayers of Jesus.

 

Three hours go by, as I’ve said, on earth. Three hours of horrific, unspeakable agony. You have to hand it to the Romans, they knew how to torture people. The whole purpose of crucifixion was to do that. But they mark an eternity, as I’ve said, in the relationship between God and Jesus, the Father and the Son. And this eternity includes all people all over the world, the whole universe, all peoples, all religions, all cultures. It was three hours of eternity with darkness covering the whole land. And then Mark records, and so does Matthew, the story of the last words of Jesus. So in their story, these were the last words: “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani.” Now you can tell, I mean, they’re different prayers: “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do,” and then, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” But this marks a world of difference. This is a cry of desperation. This is a cry of haunting pain and anguish. This is the cry of one who’s been abandoned. Only orphans and widows and migrants and refugees understand this abandonment. The darkness around mirrors the darkness in the heart of Jesus. Please, please don’t get into simplistic things saying he was the Son of God, so he didn’t feel pain, or something just ridiculous like that. There was darkness in the heart of Jesus. You can use whatever terms, if you want to say clinical depression, call it what you will. Nothing will do justice to that darkness. It was thick and black. And the cry is in Aramaic, the everyday language of Jesus and his people. Some of you who study the Bible know that the words of Psalm 22 begin in Hebrew or in the Septuagint begin in Greek: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And as I prepared for today, I discovered there’s a whole world of study of Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic, Old Testament, New Testament scholars all trying to compare and contrast. I’m not going to go there at all this morning. But two things I want to share with you. First, you have noticed, haven’t you, that Jesus doesn’t pray to God as Father? Hold it. There’s something serious here. All through his ministry, he called his Father “Father.” The Father sent the Son into the world, and he was his beloved Son, and the Son talked to him as Father. And

he taught you and me to pray, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father.'” Often, I hear Christians pray, and they seem to use all sorts of words for God, but Jesus said, “When you pray, say, ‘Our Father.'” Not “my Father,” by the way, “our Father.” So why is he not calling Father “Father”? Eloi, an ancient word going back way beyond any revelation of God as Father or Abba. And second, Jesus is crying as one abandoned. As it happens, in Psalm 22, the Hebrew is, “sacrificed, sacrificed.” Look between the first prayer, “Father, forgive,” and the second, this cry of anguish, “Eloi, Eloi, lama,” or “lama sabachthani.” It’s just, I can’t put it, I’m not enough of an actor. Something seismic, cosmic, tectonic has happened. Put bluntly, this cry reveals something desperate. Jesus has experienced a complete severing of his relationship with the Father. The relationship between Father and Son has been severed. Do justice to the text. Three hours before, he said, “Father,” and now he doesn’t say, “Father,” because he can’t say, “Father.” With his last call, he can no longer call him Father because the Father has abandoned him. This is how it seems to Jesus. It’s tragic, it’s horrible. How can it be? If it’s impossible to comprehend God’s love and forgive in the prayer, “Father, forgive them,” is it not more incomprehensible that the loving relationship above all others, that is true love, unconditional love on the part of the Father and Son, can be broken? How can this be? The love of the Father is for all and for all time. The love of Jesus is unconditional. And now we have two, Father and Son, and their relationship has been severed. How do we explain it?

 

This is how we understand it, my friends. This is where you and I come into the story. I’m not musing on this for myself. I call the scriptures to my witness: Psalm 22, Isaiah 53, John 3, Romans 3, Ephesians 2. This is not a place for a detailed study. What you want to know is this isn’t Keith White saying what he thinks. This is what the Word of God reveals. Between the first prayer, “Father, forgive,” and the second, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani,” the dirt, I’m going to speak straight now, the pain, the pride, the hurt, the guilt, the shame, the abuse, the suffering of the whole world, including yours and mine, that’s where you were. You weren’t a bystander. Your sin was being piled on Jesus. That’s why you were there, had been placed on Jesus, and he bore it. To use Moltmann’s term, he absorbed it. It was contaminating, ugly, disgusting beyond measure. I was, I don’t like to use the term slums, but in Manila, I spent most of my time there among the poor, and it’s the sewers, my friend, it’s the sewers. That’s what we’re talking about. That’s the smell, the same the world over. I can tell the smell of Delhi from the smell of Mumbai and all sorts of things like that, but the sewers have the same smell the world over, and that’s it. You might say, “This is horrible.” Well, it is horrible, and Jesus bore it. It was dark, black, just like the sky. I hesitate to say this, but it’s true: he, get ready for it, became sin for us. They’re not my words, he became sin. His identity was now sin. No longer the Son, no longer the whatever it is, the rabbi, rabboni in Aramaic, he was sin. And this isn’t just sort of abstract sin. He died bearing my sin. So where were you when they crucified my Lord? You were in him. You were on him. Don’t think you were at a distance. And the disciples are in hiding, including Peter. Their sin was on him too. If you read what Peter preached later on and you read his letter, you realize he never got over it. He caused his Savior pain. You were not only close to him, your sins were on him. He was bearing the wounds that you deserved. He became, this is a word for it, infected with your sin and mine, though we didn’t know it. And this is why he experienced separation from his Father, for his Father was the Holy God who could not tolerate sin, and now his Son had become sin, created a gulf between Father and Son that God should be willing for his Son, his beloved Son, that’s a beautiful phrase, “my Son, my beloved Son.” If you know the story of Abraham and Isaac and you know the Hebrew, it’s exactly the same sound, the same balance: “My son, my beloved son.” That’s how it is that he should be willing to endure this ignominy, this

horrible fate of his son, beggars belief. But that the Son should be willing to drink this dirty cup, the sewer cup, defies belief. The only word for it is, get ready, grace. Now, my friends, this is different to anything else in any religion. This is different to anything you can argue, but just hear what Paul says or the writer to the Ephesians in Ephesians 2: “Because of his great love for us,” this is Ephesians 2, “God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ while we were dead in transgressions.” Listen: “It is by grace we have been saved. God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus. It is by grace you’ve been saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast.” Grace, grace, grace. And so I close. You know, and I know, that this was not the end. You do know that, don’t you? Easter’s coming, just to remind you. This was not the final reality. This is not the whole truth. It was true but not the whole truth. The relationship had not been severed forever, and the reason for this is Easter Day. On the dark, evil Friday, the world said, “No.” On Easter morning, God responded, “Yes.” As daylight dawned and the darkness was lifted, as I saw it this morning from my room over the Twin Towers, or just to the left of the Twin Towers, actually, as the sun rose, every sunrise is God saying, “Yes, darkness has not won.” He announced he accepted the sacrifice of Jesus for the sins of the world. He answered the Son’s prayer. What was his prayer? “Father, forgive them.” On Easter Day, he announced, “Yes.” Yes, Son, through the death, the sacrifice of Jesus the Son, the Lamb of God, whose body was broken for us and whose blood was shed. I’m pointing to the wine and to the bread. There is forgiveness offered to us all, once and for all, completely, perfectly. An offering had been made for sin, and God had accepted it as finished. The whole price was paid. There was nothing more to do: no more penance, no more good works to try to buy it or add to it or top it up and go large, whatever it is. This was done. And this is where the gaze falls on us. There is nothing more or less that you and I can do at this point than to kneel at the foot of the cross and to accept the gift of forgiveness that God has made possible through the death of Jesus, his Son, and the price that Jesus himself paid. Together, in love, Father and Son, with the help of the Holy Spirit, opened a way to God’s very heart and his embrace to be part of God’s household. I, the filthy one, am invited to sit beside Jesus at the family table, and the Father smiles, and Jesus says, “Go on, with the help of the Spirit, go on.” “No, I’m too nervous.” “Go on.” “Well, if you really… Yes, I’ll say to the Father, ‘Abba.'” And the Father smiles. That’s how it is. That’s how it is: a way into his embrace with only one thing to do in deep sorrow for all the pain I caused you, Jesus, and the Father, for that awful separation. I accept that I am a sinner who caused you pain. Please cleanse me as you forgive me. Don’t try to understand it, my sisters and brothers, you won’t be able to take it in. If you really get it, you’ll say, “Amazing grace,” that shows you’ve got it. It is grace. One of my mentors, Pascal, said, “Love has its reasons that reason itself cannot fathom.” And this is where I stand, and the farther you walk in the footsteps of Jesus, the further you go on, the greater your awe and wonder. When I stood here for the first time and preached, I had not seen anything of the depths of the love of God or the desolation of Jesus compared to what I now feel. My heart continues to be broken and then stirred into awe and wonder.

I said I’d tell you a story, and with that, I close. Then Elisha, I’ll hand over to you. This is something that helped me to understand it. Many years ago, I was climbing, which is my natural habitat. As my mother said, “You’re basically a monkey. Your DNA is monkey.” I wanted to say, “Did I get it from you, Mom, or my father?” but I wasn’t bold enough to say that. But she was right. Either that, or in mountains and waterfalls and streams, swimming, kayaking, diving, sailing, whatever it is. I was with three of my children, including my only son. Hear that: my only son. And my wife was looking after our little one and another baby. So the three of the four of us, my two daughters and son, went on a mountain in North Wales, which we loved. It’s the only one you have to be able to climb using hands and so on, and usually take ropes. We climbed it, and we were enjoying it so much we took it in turns to do the next pitch. We got to near the summit, as it happened, and it was Jonathan’s turn to do the next pitch, the next, whatever, section. He scrambled up; it was just so joyful. The two daughters went up. I came over at the back, and as he reached the top, I noticed the cloud was coming down, so I thought I’d reach into my rucksack ready to give Jonathan a fleece. But my daughter said, “Where is Jonathan?” I said, “Well, he’s here somewhere.” And he wasn’t. It was completely inexplicable. We’d been climbing like this for two or three hours, and he’d just done a pitch, and then he was not there. We called and we cried, “Jonathan!” The cloud intensified, the wind got up. I looked at my watch; it was something like 4:30, it was beginning to get dark, and my son was just in a shirt. Where was he? Just inexplicable. We shouted and shouted. This was, I didn’t want my daughters to know, as a climber, a mountaineer, this was a devastating situation. I couldn’t get the mountain rescue out, and then there was the risk that if I went to try and find him, I might lose my two daughters. Don’t forget my wife is at home. So I had to spend, I don’t know, five or ten minutes as they were crying and weeping to say, “Look, I cannot help find Jonathan unless you promise me you will stay in this sort of shelter of a rock.” It wasn’t a cave. I had to leave them. Anyway, they agreed through their tears. I said, “Just keep on calling out for him, and I’ll go searching.” And then I entered the longest 47 minutes of my life. The adrenaline was pumping. I ran up to the top of the mountain, assuming he must have carried on because that’s what I used to do. But there in the dark was the top of the mountain, and there was not a soul, no Jonathan. I ran back, but in my desperation, I ran the wrong way. I had to run back to the top and come down again, and then down to the daughters. It was getting dark, and I tried to say, I said, “There’s good news.” They said, “Have you found him?” I said, “I haven’t found him, but he’s not at the top. We now know he’s not there.” And they said, “Dad, we think we’ve heard him cry.” And I said, “Where?” They pointed. Oh no. That is a 1,000-foot drop. And then we heard a cry again, and it seemed to come swirling around from over here. And I said, “Stay there.” And I went to try and find him. And believe it or not, down way, way down there in a crag, he’d fallen and he was trapped in a rock. And that had saved him because otherwise, he explained, he was trying to go down because he couldn’t find us, and this was the wrong way. I managed to get his swollen leg out of the rock and go back to my two daughters. And we were just together. I didn’t care about it being dark. And then we found our way down. We had to go over the top and down, and we got home. And I tried to explain, “We’ve got to be very careful what we say to Mom about this. Wow, this is not good.” Anyway, it happened, and I thought I’d sort of got over it. But then some years later, I was in a church listening to someone preach on John’s Gospel, John 3:16: “God so loved the world that he gave his only son.” Suddenly, I broke into tears, and I said, “I couldn’t do that. He’s too precious.” And that, sisters and brothers, was one of the ways God showed me that this is something I would never understand, I couldn’t do, but it was true. Listen, the cross of Christ is amazing grace.