Grace is the most glorious concept in Christianity and is why I am a Christian. It is only over the past few years of my life as a disciple of Jesus Christ that I have begun to comprehend the significance of this wonderful reality.
There is a story from the life of C.S. Lewis, the renowned Christian novelist and apologist (The Chronicles of Narnia), that occurred during his attendance at a British conference on comparative religion. Experts from around the world were vigorously debating what if any belief was unique to the Christian faith. Lewis wandered into the discussion late and asked. “What’s the rumpus about?” And when he was told that they were attempting to identify Christianity’s uniqueness in relationship to all of the other religions of the world, Lewis reportedly replied, “Oh that’s easy, It’s grace.” What Lewis was pointing to, was the fact that all other religions in the world proclaim what a man must do to earn their deity’s acceptance, approval and favor as well as entrance into a desirable afterlife. Only Christianity dares to make our receipt of God’s love and goodness in this life and entry into Heaven in the next a gift of His grace, not based on who we are or what we have done, but on who God is and what He has done on our behalf in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
In a generic/general sense GRACE is:
- The goodness we receive from someone who owes us absolutely nothing.
- The provision, without cost, of that which is essential to our happiness and wellbeing.
- The free gift of a costly object or highly desired position to someone who has done absolutely nothing to deserve it.
- The favor and kindness shown by one person to another that is motivated solely out of love for that person.
The term grace as used in the Bible describes how God freely and gladly displays His infinite goodness, wisdom and power on behalf of his creation, particularly mankind, for our eternal joy and pleasure and satisfaction in Him.
It can hardly be argued that God’s ultimate purpose in creation was for magnifying the glory of His grace. God’s creating beings in His image and likeness to have life in His presence where they would know only fulness of joy and pleasures forevermore was most certainly an infinitely valuable act of grace. All of the awesome wonders of nature that God heralded as “very good” were graciously provided by God for man to rule over, protect, and fully and freely enjoy under God’s loving authority (Genesis Chapters 1 and 2).
And even when mankind spurns His grace and goes after other gods (idols); and come under His just judgement for doing so, cut off from the glorious life with God for which we were created (Genesis 3); God will, in the ultimate expression of His grace, provide a means for man to escape that judgment and to be reconciled and restored to the glorious grace-centered relationship with Him for which we were created.
However, the fullness of that restoration would not take place immediately, and in the interim, from the time of Adam’s sin to the consummation of this present evil age described in Revelation Chapters 20-22, all of mankind will be born into a world of sin and rebellion, suffering the temporal consequences of the same, manifested in all the pain, sorrow, misery and death inherent in a world of people who have fallen from grace. Yet, in the midst of the pain, sorrow and suffering of this world, even in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, God graciously provides good things for our joy and pleasure and comfort in Him, through what is referred to by theologians as “common grace;” the free and spontaneous expression of His goodness to all mankind and to all of His creation in the daily providences of life which make Him alone worthy of our praise and thanksgiving.
James 1:17 states clearly and emphatically that every good thing we enjoy and benefit from comes by God’s unchanging grace. Everything that enriches and sustains our life in this world is a divine gift given to point us to the giver of that gift, the author and source of all good, namely God. This includes every meal, every valued possession, every job, every paycheck, every moment of health and safety, every child born, every event that brings us legitimate pleasure and delight as well as every sinful word or action for which God does not immediately kill us and send us to hell.
We are told in Romans 2:4 that it is God’s goodness and kindness to us while in this world, in the midst of our sin and rebellion, that is meant to lead us to repentance; to turn from a self-centered, God ignoring lifestyle to a God centered, God honoring lifestyle wherein God, who longs to be gracious to us (Isaiah 30:18), becomes the object of our deepest love and the source of our greatest joy. More on this in my next (and much shorter) post.
Grace and Peace ×