What is
grace? The most basic definition is
“unmerited favor.” God has been
stretching my understanding of grace for the past ten years. I was amazed to realize the incomprehensible
depth of God’s grace toward me. His
grace not only saved me from eternal death by forgiving me of all my sins and making
me a new creature, but His grace also enables me to live the Christian life.
It is this second
part, grace for living, which was completely new to me. As a minister of music, I sang many songs
about grace from the hymnbooks. Most of
those hymns were about God’s saving grace, but they didn’t mention God’s grace
for living. I was dependent on His grace
for salvation, but I was depending on my self-effort to be obedient to God’s
commandments for living. I didn’t
realize that was a broken system, even though the outcome of my Christian walk
was very broken.
Over the next
few years I began to get connected with more people of like-mind. They too understood this amazing grace and
were experiencing the power of God’s grace to effect real victory in living the
Christian life. As I shared what God was
showing me, there were many who received this news with gladness. However, there were also those who were
suspect of this “freedom” and saw it either as license or sinless
perfection. Through those two distorted
lenses, even I could see how “grace for living” could be rejected.
I began to
notice among the “grace” crowd this “us and them” language. There was something that bothered me deeply
about this; something deep inside that said this wasn’t right. Others noticed this also and sadly abandoned
the truth of God’s life giving grace for a watered-down version of grace. It was a mix of law and grace. To them that sounded and felt safer.
Within this mixed law
and grace thinking, grace becomes nothing more than an action word. “I should show them grace.” Or “I didn’t mean
to do that. Please give me some grace.” In this system, grace is a commodity to be
given as you deem the other worthy. Of
course, in this system you hope others will give you this grace if you make a
mistake.
Within the
“grace” crowd, grace sometimes seems to be a secret knowledge given to those
who have understanding. I have been guilty of saying, “I wish they would get grace.” It
is almost assumed that you can only practice grace if you understand it. For those who don’t consider themselves a
part of this “grace” crowd, they have felt criticized by those of us who
understand what it means to live by God’s grace. They feel like they are on the outside of
some exclusive club. (Of course, when we
look down on those who don’t understand grace, we are not expressing God’s
grace!)
The greatest
revelation of God’s grace for me is when I understood grace to be a
person. Jesus Christ is the
personification of God’s grace. Grace is
Jesus and Jesus is grace. The scripture
says every believer is in-dwelt by Christ (Rom. 8:10; Gal. 2:20; Col. 1:27). God’s grace is not based on knowledge, but on
the person of Jesus Christ. Whether I
understand grace or not doesn’t determine if I have grace. If I am a container of Christ’s Life, then I
have grace.
I have seen the
most legalistic Christians display grace.
I now realize they are expressing Christ in those moments. I have seen Christians with a deep
understanding of God’s grace display the nastiest flesh. In those moments they are not walking in the
Spirit (Gal. 5:16-17).
There is no “us
and them” among believers, we are all one in Christ. Our Source to live the Christian life is the
same. Our Source is Christ. We cannot intellectualize grace and then live
a life of grace without the empowerment of Christ in us. That is Paul’s confession in Galatians 2:20,
“it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.”
So what is the
advantage of “knowing” about grace? It
can be compared to having a bank account with a million dollars. If you know about the account, you can
intentionally spend money from the account.
If you don’t know about the account, you can’t intentionally spend from
it. But more importantly, God wants us
to know about His amazing gift of grace, a gift He has given in abundance (Rom.
5:17).
What does grace
or this unmerited favor look like? It
looks like love, joy, peace patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control, humility, and forbearance (Gal. 5:22-23; Eph.
4:2). Grace looks at the heart before it
looks at the behavior. Grace works from
the inside-out, not the other way around.
God did not change our behavior in order to draw us into a relationship
with Him; He changed our nature. Now,
His grace pulls that nature out of us and changes our behavior!
Whether one
believes this about grace or not doesn’t change the fact that we have a
spiritual account with unfathomable riches.
We are all people of grace because we have grace personified living in
us. Now, go out there and spend your
inheritance!
