Grace

Grace

“Amazing grace how sweet the sound.” Those words were written in 1772 by John Newton and have become the first words in one of the most famous and inspirational Christian songs in history. But do we know what they mean?
Grace. Grace is a confusing word. For most of my life I did not understand what it meant. When I heard that God was graceful I just thought that meant He is nice or fluid of motion, like a ballerina or a runway model. Most people think that grace is something that you say before a meal. But if we stick with these definitions, one of the most important things about the heart of God will be lost to us.

The use of the word today doesn’t help us to understand it very well. We use expressions like, “It is a wonder that I have managed to stay in her good graces this long.”
Or “She took on the extra work with good grace.” Or “He graced us with his presence.”
Grace is even use as bad grace. “He apologized, but did so with bad grace.”
It is no wonder that we do not know what this word means. I looked up grace in the dictionary and found 16 definitions of the word. But the one I want to stick with for us is this, “The freely given, unmerited favor and love of God.” Grace is the extended form of mercy. Mercy is when we don’t give someone what they do deserve. And grace is when we take that a step further and we do give someone what they don’t deserve.
An example of this would be if there were a mayor who was dealing with a criminal who was sentenced to death. The mayor looked at this criminal and decided to extend mercy to this man. He pardons the man and sets him free. And when he does this he is deciding not to give the criminal what he does deserve, which is the punishment of death. Instead he spares him.
But if the mayor were to take that same criminal and not only pardon him from his sentence, but invite him to stay with him at his home as well, he would be extending grace to that man. Because grace says, “I will give you what you don’t deserve.” And by no means did the prisoner deserve to be brought into the mayor’s home and be fed and taken care of. What he deserved was death.
And this is what God offers us through Christ. What we deserve because of our sin is death. But it doesn’t end there. We have a mayor. We have Jesus. Who comes to us on death row and not only pardons us but invites us into his Father’s home. “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God[a]; trust also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am. You know the way to the place where I am going." John 14: 1-4
Jesus invites us to stay with him in heaven. We do not deserve it. We will never deserve it. But it is promised to us despite this.
When we leave grace out of our lives, we are torn from God. Grace is our means by which we are brought into relation with God. We hear expressions like “fall from grace” and we think that that means that someone did something bad enough to get kicked out of grace. But that is not the way that grace works.
Grace doesn’t rely on the righteousness of the person. The righteousness of the person relies on grace.
If we look at Ephesians 2: 8-9 “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by your good works, so that no one can boast.”
Or Galatians 2: 20b-21 “The life I live in the body I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness could be gained through the law, Christ died for nothing.”
Or Romans :16-18, “I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. For in the gospel a righteousness from God is revealed, a righteousness that is by faith from first to last, just as it is written: ‘The righteous will live by faith’."

Do you think this is a point that the early church wanted us to get?

Grace. Faith. Love. It is when we have faith that the grace of God expressed in the cross is enough, that we enter into a love relationship with Him and everyone around us.

I did look to find the term “fall from grace” in the bible and found it only once, in Galatians 5: 4-6. “You who are trying to be justified by law have been alienated from Christ; you have fallen away from grace. But by faith we eagerly await through the Spirit the righteousness for which we hope. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love.”
Does the fall away from grace expressed here happen when we are not good enough? Or when we feel like we are good enough?
The fall away from grace expressed here is trying to be good enough to earn God’s favor without grace. And when we take this approach, we cast aside the need for Christ’s sacrifice, for the cross, and for the undeserved favor of God and we take matters into our own hands.

Extending God’s grace to others

A reminder of God’s grace to us is not only important because it reminds us to trust God and let go of our guilt but also because it reminds us where we are coming from. It reminds us that God came to us while we were still sinners. And that when we forget this, we become nearsighted and blind. We can start to think that we did it on our own and that we deserve it. We can look to others who don’t deserve it and look down on them. When we reach this point we have forget that we have been cleansed of our past sins or will loose love for God and for others. We will become unproductive in our knowledge of our knowledge of our lord Jesus. Remembering that our salvation is something that we don’t deserve is one of the most humbling and selfless things that we are capable of doing and it prompts us to be recklessly graceful with others.

Watch a three and a half minute movie clip from the 1998 version of Les Miserables. Cue to 0:06:00.

The Story: Jean Valjean is on parole out of prison he searches for a place to stay and finds nothing. He finally gives up and an old lady points him to a church at the end of the street where the pastor and his wife take him in and feed him. He blames God as an unjust God, and then exclaims in sarcasm, "Tomorrow I will be a new person!"
Later that night he gets out of his bed and goes into the Dining room and starts to steal the silver ware that he had his eyes on that night. The priest hears a noise and gets out of bed. Jean Valjean hides, and when the preacher comes around the corner he steps out and looks at him face to face, hits him, and runs off.
The next day the police return Jean Valjean to the bishop who lies for Valjean, protecting him from being sent back to prison. Valjean asks, “Why are you doing this?” The bishop replies, “Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil. With this silver, I brought your soul. I’ve ransomed you from fear and hatred. And now I give you back to God.” Stop here at 0:09:35.

Sing Chris Tomlin’s version of Amazing Grace.