Can you even get your head around how the God of the universe acts toward His creation? How do you explain, understand – grace.
“God’s grace is usually defined as undeserved favor. Grace cannot be earned; it is something that is freely given. We count on God’s grace and the bridge He built in our relationship with Him. Bible verses about grace abound. From the foundation of the Old Testament, we know that grace is a part of God’s character.” [Google]
John Piper in https://www.desiringgod.org/interviews/what-is-grace says:
“There are 131 uses of grace in the ESV — 124 in the New Testament, 86 of which are from the apostle Paul, which means two-thirds of all the uses of the word grace in the Bible are in one author: Paul. No wonder he’s called “the apostle of grace.”
Piper says: undeserved favor.
Romans 3:24: “[We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Grace is what inclines God to give gifts that are free and undeserved by sinners.
Romans 5:15: “If many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.” So, grace is that quality in God that produces free gifts for guilty sinners in salvation.
Romans 11:5–6: “At the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.” So, you can’t work to earn grace. It is free and undeserved.
Now, that’s what most of us have in our minds when we say God is a God of grace. And that’s true. It’s wonderful. Our eternal lives depend on it. None of us would be saved if grace were not undeserved favor, and were not a quality in the mind of God, in the heart of God, in the nature of God.
Grace as Power for Living
But then Heather rightly notices another group of passages, also in Paul, where he comes at grace a little differently.
2 Corinthians 9:8: “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.” Now, that seems to picture grace as a power or an influence for obedience.
2 Corinthians 12:9: Jesus says to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
1 Corinthians 15:10: “By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder [that was the effect of grace] than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
In all three of those texts — and they’re not the only ones — grace is not only a disposition or a quality or an inclination in the nature of God, but is an influence or a force or a power or an acting of God that works in us to change our capacities for work and suffering and obedience.
At this point, we’ve only scratch the surface of Grace – what it is and its source. But it should stop us from assuming we automatically deserve to have God’s Grace working in our lives. Grace is a privilege and we can’t buy or earn it. It, like so many spiritual matters, are gifts from a loving Creator God who chooses to be our Father.
