Carter, who leads a Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, said it was the first time he was late due to the death of Jeremy Carter, 28, just hours earlier.
Former US president Jimmy Carter, who recently battled cancer, was late to his church service Sunday, he told parishoners, because his grandson passed away at the age of 28, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported.
Carter, who leads a Sunday school class at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, said it was the first time he was late due to the death of Jeremy Carter, 28, just hours earlier.
No cause of death was immediately given.
"But the fact that he appeared at all was the real message," the report cited parishoners as saying.
"I'm not surprised," Maranatha member Jan Williams said.
"That's the kind of Christian he is. Everything that happens in life, good or bad, he uses as a teaching experience. He lives his life as a lesson for other people to see'," the Journal Constitution quoted Williams as saying.
Earlier this month, the 91-year-old Nobel peace laureate and global humanitarian disclosed that he appears to have been cured of cancer.
After undergoing treatment, there were no signs of melanoma that doctos had found on his brain.
Carter, a Democrat and one-time peanut farmer and former Georgia governor, served one term as US president, from 1977 to 1981.