The Incapacity of Life

by Rev Greg Obong-Oshotse 13 July 2020

Text: Ephesians 2:8-9

“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.”

At the end of his Greater London Crusade at the Harringay Arena in May 1954, Billy Graham was summoned to see the Prime Minister Winston Churchill. In his pictorial biography of Graham, his photographer Russ Busby reports, “Sir Winston pointed at the early editions of three London evening newspapers lying on the table. They were filled with reports of rape, murder, and hate. When he was a boy it was different, he told Billy. “I am an old man,” he said, “and without hope for the world.” Billy replied, “Life is very exciting because I know what is going to happen in future.” He paged through the New Testament and explained the meaning of Christ’s birth, His death, and His resurrection. He then went on to speak of the Second Coming of Christ. . . At last Sir Winston said, “I do not see much hope for the future unless it is the hope you are talking about, young man. we must have a return to God.” That encounter is a touching acknowledgement of humanity’s inability to save itself. All human life is hopeless unless renewed by the hope that is only to be found on the pages of the Holy Bible, for this life is naturally incapable of self-transformation. And only in this hope do we transcend the vanity, finality, infinity, brevity, perfidy, fragility, and incapacity of this life.