This was originally posted in December 2022. I have made some minor revisions,
Grace is one of the most glorious, pervasive and essential truths in the Bible. It is why I am a Christian. And, according to scripture, it is the only reason anyone is a Christian (Ephesians 2:4-5). I previously wrote on the glory of God’s amazing and abundant grace in my May and June 2020 posts and could fill my next 50 posts with the same and not exhaust the glory of it. However, for now I will limit it to my next two or three posts, as we prepare to celebrate the ultimate and eternal expression of God’s awesome and wonderous grace found in the person and work of Jesus Christ.
The simplest and most general definition of grace is that of a gift, freely given. It is the goodness or kind benefit willingly and freely granted to us from someone who owes us absolutely nothing, and for which we have done nothing to merit or deserve. The term grace as used in the Bible describes how God freely and gladly displays His glory, the infinite perfections of His being, for our eternal joy, pleasure and satisfaction in Him. We are told in James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.
The history of mankind is one of grace. We have the grace of creation in which the eternal God, existing in an eternal love relationship between God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit, freely chose to create beings in their image and likeness to share in that relationship, not as divine equals but as beloved children. God created a wonderous universe and glorious earth for man to freely enjoy and rule over in which God Himself would enjoy men and women enjoying Him, His creation and one another (Isaiah 43:7) (Zephaniah 3:17).
Tragically, as well as fortunately, human history is one of mankind despising, disdaining, suppressing or presuming upon God’s grace, and God continuing to be gracious to us in spite of that. And the first place we see this is grace is in the Garden of Eden.
We read in Genesis Chapters 1-2 that God, the holy, eternal, self-existent, self-sufficient, self-determining, infinitely wise, infinitely good, infinitely powerful, infinitely happy God, graciously creates mankind, beginning with Adam and Eve, in His image and likeness, which would be displayed in our righteous nature and character and in the beauty and excellence of our physical bodies (Genesis 1:26-28) (Genesis 2:25) (Ecclesiastes 7:29).
We would live in God’s immediate presence, trusting in His love, willingly submitting to His good and wise authority, enjoying throughout eternity all that the infinitely glorious Creator and Sovereign ruler of the universe would graciously give to those He loved – and who trusted and delighted in that love (Psalm 16:11) (Psalm 36:7-9).
All that God created was good, the universe, the earth and everything in it were made to proclaim and display the glory of God, the infinite perfections of His being. It was given to man to rule over and to richly and freely enjoy, with both our work and play being unto the glory of God (Genesis 1:31) (Psalm 19:1-6) (1 Timothy 6:17) (1 Corinthians 10:31) (2 Corinthians 4:15).
Thus, our existence and everything that God created and intended for our enjoyment, pleasure and fulfillment – for our happiness and sense of wellbeing in Him – was a gift, freely given to us by our gracious and glorious God (Revelation 15:2-4).
Yet all mankind beginning with Adam have, in pride, spurned God’s grace, looking to ourselves and the world around us as the ultimate source of our good, believing the devil’s lie that originated in the Garden of Eden that we would have the wisdom within ourselves to know what is truly right and wrong, good and evil, thus able to determine for ourselves the path to our happiness and wellbeing, independent of God and ultimately in opposition to God (Genesis 3:1-4).
This is what was offered to Adam by the devil, as he successfully tempted Adam to sin, to disobey God, to reject God’s gracious purpose for and rule over His life, and thus bring upon himself and all who will proceed from his loins, God’s just and certain promise of death, the forfeiture of the glorious life with God for which man was created, with a final destiny of Hell. (Genesis 2:15-17) (Genesis 3:4-5) (Genesis 3:17-19) (Genesis 3:23-24) (2 Thessalonians 1:9).
And now, instead of being objects of God’s grace and love, in our sin we have made ourselves the objects of God’s wrath and judgement, corrupted in our nature and character, mortal and disfigured in our bodies, destined for a life and eternity of futility, misery, and sorrow, unable in ourselves to do anything about it (Romans 1:18-25) (Ecclesiastes 1:1-3) (Ephesians 2:1-3).
However, the Bible reveals this holy and righteous God, whose grace we have spurned and whose glory we have suppressed in doing so is, in His very nature and character, gracious and merciful (Psalm 145:8) Exodus 34:5-7). In Ephesians 2:4 we are told that He is rich in mercy, and in Micah 7:18 that He delights in displaying His mercy.
Mercy, which is the flipside of grace, can be defined as kindness shown to someone in desperate need, helpless to meet that need in themselves.
My former Pastor, Dan Cummings, provided this wonderful explanation of mercy and grace: “Grace is God’s goodness shown to people who don’t deserve it, while mercy is Gods goodness shown to people in misery, who deserve that misery. Therefore, every act of grace shown to us, because we are sinners, is an act of mercy- because sin brings misery – and every act of mercy is also an act of free grace because it is undeserved.”
Thus, God planned from the foundation of the world to display His amazing grace and abundant mercy, despite man’s sin and rebellion in what is referred to as common grace, which he will display toward all mankind while they are in this world, and by saving a people from every nation, language and ethnicity from eternal judgement, restoring them back to the glorious beings we were made to be in His image and likeness, and reconciling them back to the gracious love relationship with Him for which man was created (1 John 4:9-11) (Jeremiah 31:3). This is referred to by theologians as redeeming or eternal grace (Revelation 5:8-10) (Ephesians 1:7-8). And this is grace that will endure forever, by grace (Ephesians 2:4-7) (Romans 8:31-39).
I will look at that plan and God’s work of grace in bringing about the fulfillment of that plan in my next post.
Grace and Peace ×
💛