What is grace?

Question 07018.

God’s grace is favour shown to people who have earned the opposite, and that definition is worth memorising because almost every popular version of it is softer than the real thing. Grace is not God being lenient. Leniency overlooks the offence. Grace deals with the offence at enormous cost and then treats the offender as though it had never happened.

The Greek word is charis, which in ordinary usage meant a favour, a gift, something pleasing given freely. The New Testament takes that everyday word and loads it with the weight of the cross.

Grace Assumes You Do Not Deserve It

The whole idea collapses the moment merit enters. Romans 11:6 puts it sharply: if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works, otherwise grace would no longer be grace. Paul treats the two as chemically incompatible.

That is why God’s grace is offensive to respectable people and wonderful to disreputable ones. If you believe you have been broadly decent, grace feels like an insult, because it insists that your decency was never going to be enough. If you know perfectly well what you are, grace is the best news you will ever hear.

The tax collector in the temple in Luke 18 could not lift his eyes and beat his breast and asked God to be merciful to him, a sinner. Jesus said that man went home justified. The Pharisee, who had a genuinely impressive record, did not.

Grace Is Not Weakness

There is a version of God’s grace floating about that amounts to God shrugging. That is not grace, and it would be no comfort at all if it were, because a God who does not take evil seriously is a God who does nothing about the evil done to you.

The cross is where you see how seriously he takes it. God’s grace towards sinners cost him the death of his Son. Romans 3:24-25 speaks of being justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood. Grace and propitiation belong in the same sentence.

So grace is not the suspension of justice. It is justice satisfied elsewhere so that mercy can be extended here.

God’s Grace in Salvation

Ephesians 2:8-9 is the classic statement: by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast. Every clause is closing a door that human pride keeps trying to open.

Notice how the passage begins, though. It starts with people dead in trespasses and sins, and then comes the great turn: but God, being rich in mercy. Everything hinges on those two words. Nothing was moving until God moved.

And notice the purpose clause at the end. God arranged salvation this way deliberately, so that boasting would be impossible. Heaven will contain no comparison of credentials.

Grace After Conversion

A great many Christians believe in grace for getting in and law for staying in, and it wrecks them. Paul asks the Galatians whether, having begun by the Spirit, they are now being perfected by the flesh, and the question is meant to sting.

God’s grace is not the doorway you pass through and then leave behind. It is the whole house. 2 Corinthians 12:9 has the Lord telling Paul that his grace is sufficient, for his power is made perfect in weakness, and Paul was talking about an ongoing affliction rather than his conversion.

This is why Hebrews 4:16 tells believers to draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. The invitation is to come boldly, and it is issued to people who have just failed.

Grace Is Not a Licence

Paul knew exactly what objection his teaching would provoke, which is why he raises it himself in Romans 6. Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? His answer is by no means, and the reason he gives is not a threat but a change of identity. How can we who died to sin still live in it?

So the New Testament does not restrain grace by adding law. It restrains it by pointing to what grace has actually done to you. A person genuinely changed does not want to trade on the change.

Titus 2:11-12 makes the same move: the grace of God has appeared, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives. Grace is a teacher, not a loophole.

Grace in the Old Testament

People sometimes speak as though God had a law period followed by a grace period, and that is not how the Bible reads. The Hebrew word chen and its companion chesed, usually rendered steadfast love, run right through the Old Testament. Noah found favour in the eyes of the Lord before he did anything, and the sentence is deliberately placed before the account of his obedience.

Israel was told plainly that the Lord did not set his love on them because they were more numerous than other peoples, for they were the fewest of all, but because he loved them. That is grace, stated in as many words, centuries before Paul. The exodus came first and Sinai came second, which is the same order the New Testament keeps: rescue, then instruction.

So the law was never a rival system for earning God’s favour. It was given to a people already redeemed, to show them how a redeemed people lives and to expose how far short of it they fell. I have written about the relationship in the relationship between law and grace.

What Grace Actually Produces

If God’s grace were only a legal transaction it would leave us forgiven and unchanged, and Scripture never speaks that way. Grace produces gratitude, and gratitude is the most durable motive there is. Fear runs out. Duty wears thin. Gratitude, oddly, tends to grow with use.

It also produces generosity. Paul’s fundraising appeal in 2 Corinthians 8 does not use guilt at all. He points to the grace of our Lord Jesus, who though he was rich became poor, and lets that do the work. People who have received freely find it easier to give freely, and people who feel they have earned everything tend to hold on to it.

And it produces courage. If your standing does not depend on your performance, you can afford to take risks, admit mistakes and tell the truth about yourself. A great deal of the fearfulness in church life comes from people quietly believing that God’s grace has limits and that they are close to them. It does not, and they are not. See what eternal security is for why.

Common Grace and Saving Grace

Theologians distinguish between the kindness God shows to everybody and the grace by which he saves. Jesus said the Father makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Every breath drawn by every person is a mercy nobody has earned.

That general kindness does not save anyone, but it is not nothing. It restrains evil, sustains societies, and gives people time. Romans 2:4 says that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, which means every good thing in an unbeliever’s life is a signpost.

Saving grace goes further. It does not simply give time; it gives life, forgiveness and a family.

How Wide Does Grace Reach?

As far as the human race extends. I hold that Jesus died sufficiently for every person who has ever lived, and that the offer of God’s grace is genuine to everyone who hears it. When Titus 2:11 says the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, I take that at face value.

That conviction shapes how I preach. I can tell any person in any condition that there is grace for them, without qualification and without a private mental reservation. I have never had to say, well, perhaps, if you happen to be among a certain number.

The only people who miss God’s grace are those who will not have it, and even they are being urged right to the end.

Living Out of Grace Rather Than Towards It

The practical difference is enormous and it shows up on ordinary days. A person working towards acceptance measures every day and never rests. A person working out of acceptance can fail badly on Tuesday and still be certain of their standing on Wednesday.

It changes how you handle other people too. Those who know they are living on unearned kindness tend to be gentler with everyone else. Churches full of grace are restful places; churches that have quietly reverted to performance are exhausting ones, and you can usually tell which is which within twenty minutes.

It also changes prayer. You stop trying to establish your credentials at the start of every request and simply come, which is what the throne of grace was set up for.

So, now what?

So do not domesticate this. God’s grace is not a mild religious sentiment. It is the astonishing decision of a holy God to bear in himself the cost of our rebellion so that he could have us back.

If you have been trying to earn something that was always going to be a gift, would you consider stopping? And if you have received it, when did you last simply sit and be amazed by it?

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (ESV)