male announcer: In Touch, the teaching ministry of Dr. Charles Stanley. Next on “In Touch,” “A Second Chance Now.” Dr. Charles Stanley: Have you ever looked around you, at your circumstances and thought, “My, how I would like to have another chance to do that again”? Or looked over the past few days and have thought, “Lord, if I could just change that, if I could just have another chance”? What you were really asking for is grace because that’s what grace is all about.
Grace is God’s second chance. All of us would like to have those second chances in life. All of us can look back over the years of maybe not too many years or just a few days and think, “Lord, if I could just do that again, I would do that a lot better,” or, “Lord, I wouldn’t have done that,” or, “I would have changed this.
” You see, a second chance is what grace is all about. And that’s what I want to begin today, is a series on Grace: God’s Second Chance. All of us have experienced it and all of us need it. And when you and I think about grace, we think about the most favorite song of all, and that is, “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.” All of us who are saved have had that second chance. I don’t mean by a second chance that when you die, that one of these days after you have died that God will give you another chance to be saved after death. I don’t mean that. I’m just talking about those opportunities that God gives us over and over and over again when we blow it in life.
And His forgiveness is so amazing. His grace is so amazing. That’s what amazing grace is all about, it is God’s second chance. So, I want you to turn, if you will, to Romans chapter 5. And this is the first message in this series, “A Second Chance Now.” And today, I want to sort of lay the foundation of all of this series because he says in this passage that you and I now have been introduced into a standing which is called grace.
And so, chapter 5 of Romans, beginning in verse 1 and reading through verse 6. When Paul says therefore–what he’s doing, he’s referring to what he has been saying beforehand in these first four chapters. He’s talked about the sinfulness of mankind and that God has provided for our sinfulness. And so, he says in verse 1: “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have obtained our introduction by faith into this grace in which we stand;
