By Steve Behlke

What is Grace? That's a huge topic! Grace is multifaceted. But here are a few thoughts on grace.

1. In a sense, grace is anything we receive from God.

Every good thing we have is by grace: our faith, salvation, repentance, good will, good works; our right thinking, holy desires, love for God, and any heavenly rewards are gifts of God's grace. Our turning to Christ, our turning from sin. All is of grace, God's free and benevolent work in our lives.

2. Grace defines God’s character; it defines His glory (as "full of grace and truth").

While God has revealed His grace in so many ways, He has done so most fully in Christ. Jesus Christ reveals God’s character as essentially loving, free, gracious, and giving.

Love shown to one's enemy is grace. Any good thing given to one’s enemy is grace. Dying to save those who would kill you is grace. In Christ, we see God's grace incarnate.

In the Person of Jesus Christ, God came to a sin-sick planet. In Christ, God healed the lame, whom religious people, and pretty much everyone else, either shamed or ignored. In Christ, God fed the poor, healed the sick, befriended the nobodies, and He honored women, loved on sinners, and prayed for His enemies and even, upon His death, prayed for His executioners. In Christ, particularly in Christ suffering, we see the glory of God’s grace.

3. Grace clearly defines the way God wants to relate to the world today.

Jesus Christ did not come to judge the world but to save the many. We need to understand this in order to speak the truth with God’s voice in the public setting.

It does not seem to square with New Testament teaching that God is angrily hurling planes into buildings and hurricanes into New Orleans as an act of judgment on homosexuals or any other “sin-defined” people group.

Yes, He is sovereign. He is in charge of the weather. He disciplines those He loves. And He will judge sin and Satan and all evil on the appointed day. However, He is currently saving those whom the Father has given Him ("now is the time of salvation" – not judgment). God’s grace in Christ is the message sinful people need to hear from Christians today. "As the Father has sent me,” Jesus tells Christians, “so send I you.” 

4. Grace defines God’s free offer of salvation to lost, hurting, needy people.

We are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Jesus Christ alone. We were not saved for doing anything good. Nor were we chosen because God foresaw that we would make splendid Christians one day. We are called into a forgiven, eternal, and loved now-and-forever relationship with God - to the praise of the glory of God’s grace. This is the gospel that we must put our confidence in,  

"Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." That’s the gospel. 

"Trust Jesus for your relationship with God," not “change your life,” or “live perfectly from now on,” or “say the Sinners Prayer and really mean it” (there is no such prayer in scripture).

The good news is that God came from heaven to reveal Himself in His grace through Jesus Christ. He came to do everything for us: to give, to offer, to live, to suffer, to die, and to proclaim the good news that God forgives, loves, cares for, carries, and ultimately secures in His grace those who trust Him for the same.

“It is the Father’s will that whoever looks to the Son and believes in Him shall have eternal life." For "It is not to the person who works but to the one who believes in God who justifies the ungodly, his faith is credited as righteousness."

5. Grace defines the way we live out our relationship with God.

We are currently learning to trust Jesus Christ for God's grace - all of it: past grace (the cross) daily grace (power, freedom, love), and future grace (knowing God face-to-face, Bema awards, total liberation, eternal kingdom).

For "the righteous shall live by faith." The righteous, those who are granted Christ's righteousness with God, shall live by faith in God’s continued grace to us in Christ.

Faith itself is even part of the gospel; it's a gift of God’s grace. So is repentance and holiness, sanctification, and Christlikeness; and the assurance that there is no condemnation; and the promise of a glorious future that lies beyond our comprehension but is foretold in God’s Word and declared for us to trust and hope in.

In the Gospel we hear God’s voice of grace; we are released from the law; sin’s hold on us is broken; sin and guilt and death and hell are crushed beneath us. Thus, it is vital that we know and prize God’s grace for all that it is.  

6. Grace is the power of God to live differently today.

Grace is God’s undeserved love, forgiveness, election, and power. Grace alone delivers us from evil.

Grace alone is the effectual power for living differently (holy) today. Grace is the power of God, the fruit of the Spirit, the working of Christ. Grace alone changes our nature. Grace alone frees our will. It teaches us to live righteously and empowers the same, for it is God who is working and willing within us, bearing fruit unto righteousness.

Likewise, we're told, “God’s kindness leads to repentance" – i.e., grace leads to life change! And "the gospel of God’s grace is bearing fruit by changing lives everywhere just as it changed yours."

7. Grace describes God's preferred "personality" of the church, the culture that God wants to nurture in the church and to offer each other and the world. 

In mutual relationships with grace-healed (healing) people, relationships, not marked by laws, rules, and controlling people; but in relationships marked by such graces as humility, affirmation, trust, compassion, love and liberty, people mature into Christlikeness.

Grace, properly understood and received, does not lead to sin. Never. It leads to Christ. It leads to Christlikeness. In a Christ honoring, true grace community, sins are lovingly, powerfully, dealt with. 

Normal people - broken people, hurting people, sin-enslaved people - who are shown God-produced grace (rather than being laughed at, looked down upon, shunned, or threatened for their humble honesty about the human condition known as SIN), slowly feel safe, accepted, and even appreciated; and in that safety-net of God's grace, submitting to the glorious liberty of grace, they begin to bring their wounds and addictions and sins out of the dark, out of hiding and pretending, and into the light of God's grace to find victory, compassion, help, strength, and faith in God’s promises.

Yet, gulp, when sins remain hidden, forced into hiding for fear and shame and acceptance, we humans remain prone to sin's evil mastery, isolated, alone, in our attempts to deal with sin (yeah, that's real healthy). 

However, in a church, a small group, a family, that is a Christ-healed, grace-community, which lives out the dynamics and wonders of heaven's grace, "sin-management" is no longer the focus. Jesus Christ is!

Knowing Christ. Knowing God's favor in Christ. Trusting Jesus. Submitting to God’s love. Prizing His grace. Loving Jesus. Loving others. Living for God's glory. That’s the issue. 

The grace of God in Christ, prized among a community of Christians, is the power of God for dealing with sin and immaturity, shame and condemnation, death and life. Grace appreciated always draws us to Jesus Christ. And it is there, in relationship with Christ, where we receive the power of God to live differently today.