While watching a baseball game this weekend, I heard one of the announcers say: “Boy he really nailed that pitch.” His play by play analysis of the game reminds me that English can be a curious language.

Think about how many different ways the word “nail” is used:
• You can buy a box of 16 penny nails.
• You can use a hammer to hit a nail, but you never want to hit a fingernail or drop the box of nails on your toenail.
• You can get so frightened that you experience “a real nail-biter.”
• You can test the firmness of something and find it to be “as hard as a nail.”
• When you get your point across in a discussion you really “nail it on the head.”

If you have ever watched a carpenter build a house, you know the importance of a nail. The framer will skillfully attach one 2X4 to another by hammering a nail through one and into the other. Without this framework, the house would soon crumble and fall to the ground.

Nails are also an essential element to the foundation of Christianity. Paul called this truth to the attention of the Colossians: “God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross (2:14).”

Jesus died for you when He was nailed to the cross as a sacrifice to pay for your sins. Because He had lived a sinless life, He fulfilled the requirements of the Old Testament Law, and the Law was nailed to the cross with Him.
In the New Testament, the death of the Law is carefully interlaced with the power of grace—“For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

Take a look at your hand. On the nail of your pinky visualize a red “G.” On the ring finger, paint a big red “R,” on the middle finger take some red ink and print a large “A.” On your index finger a “C” and then polish your thumb with a red “E.”

Every time you feel a sensation in a finger, hold your hand up, and see the message in the nails: It is Grace! Every time you see GRACE, remember the nail-pierced hand from which it flows.