So much of our lives runs on a score. Credit scores, performance reviews, star ratings. And somewhere along the way, most of us assume God keeps one too. Genesis 6 shows us what that score actually looks like: “every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.” Nobody gets in on points. Not the bad people, and not the good ones either.
The problem with sin isn’t that we’re a little sick and need to try harder. Our hearts face the wrong way, and we can’t turn them around with the same hearts that turned away. But then one word changes everything: “But Noah found favor in the eyes of the LORD.” The Bible’s first mention of grace lands on one man in a dead world. And the order matters. Grace comes in verse 8, before Noah is called righteous in verse 9. Noah didn’t find grace. Grace found Noah. Moses heard the same words at Sinai, standing over a golden calf. Ruth, a foreign widow, asked, “Why have I found favor in your eyes?” Why them? Because, as God tells Moses, “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.” Grace starts in God, not in us, and that means it won’t run out.
Still, many of us drift back to keeping score. Sometimes our good days become a way to manage God. Sometimes our bad days become a way to pay him back. Both are exhausting. But the score has already been settled. On the cross, Jesus took our score and gave us his. He was treated as we deserved so we could be treated as he deserves. In him we have been made alive, raised, and seated with Christ in the heavenly places. We can’t earn a seat we’re already sitting in.
On this All Saints Sunday, we remember that every saint got in the same way: grace found them. And the grace that found Noah in a dead world has found us. It is not going to let us go.