2. Grace

Grace is a word that we normally associate today with ease and beauty of movement – a graceful dancer or ice-skater, perhaps. Less commonly, we still use the term ‘gracious’ to refer to someone who is respectful, gentle, and considerate.

In Christianity, however, the word has a quite different significance, and is, in fact, one of the key concepts that lead us to an understanding of who God is and how He relates to us.

This beautifully cut diamond is symbolic of priceless worth and indestructible endurance. Like the diamond, a man or woman who is full of God's grace lights up the room, brings joy to the heart, and is able to withstand all manner of challenges, hardships, and difficulties, not by their own strength, but by the divine strength and power of God's grace within their hearts.

Definition of Grace

Let’s begin, then, with a definition of the word, remembering that the Bible was written not in English but in Hebrew (Old Testament) and Greek (New Testament). So the English word ‘grace’ is being used to translate a Hebrew word and a Greek word.

In Strong’s Concordance, the Hebrew word is number H2580, pronounced khane, meaning literally 'graciousness, kindness, or favour'. The root word is H2603, pronounced khaw-NAN, meaning 'to bend or stoop in kindness to an inferior; to favour; to bestow'.

There is a similar word in the Hebrew (number H2617 in Strong, pronounced KHEH-sed) which is often translated by the term 'loving kindness' in the King James translation. The root of this word is H2616, pronounced khaw-SAD, which means to bow to an equal.

The two words are found together in Esther chapter 2 verse 17, which reads:

The background to this is that Ahasuerus (Hebrew pronunciation), or Xerxes (Greek pronunciation), the king of Persia, is searching for someone to replace Queen Vashti, whom he has deposed. Virgins from all over the country have been sought out and brought to the royal harem, where they have undergone 12 months of intensive beauty treatments. Eventually, each girl has her opportunity to impress the king and win his favour, if not his love. Esther was the one who managed to win both.

So king Ahasuerus shows Esther:

• grace (khane) - he is the most powerful man in the country, and one of the most powerful in the world, and she is a nobody, an orphaned Jewish girl who just happened to have a pretty face, but he invites her into his palace, into his presence, into his embrace;

• favour (KHEH-sed) - he lifts her up and sets her upon a throne beside him, making her his equal, as far as it was possible for that to occur in the culture of that day.

It’s when we come into the New Testament, however, that the concept of grace really comes to life. The Greek word is pronounced KHAR-ece (normally written charis), and is the root of our English words charisma and charismatic. This is number G5485 in Strong’s. It comes from the root (G5463) KHAH-ee-ro, which means to rejoice. It’s basic meaning is:

That which causes joy, pleasure, gratification; a benefit; gratitude for a kindness granted.

As used by the New Testament writers, its meaning is expanded to incorporate:

• A favour done without expectation of return.
• Unearned and unmerited favour.
• The absolutely free expression of the loving kindness of God to men, finding its only motive in the bounty and benevolence of the Giver.

The following acrostic helps us to understand the implications of the word as used in the Christian context:

In brief, this means that Jesus paid the price and we obtained the benefit. Esther did nothing to earn or deserve her place in the king’s palace. All of the effort to make her presentable to the king was made by the king’s servants, and all of the expenses were paid from the king’s treasury. All that Esther had to do was to turn up and then do what she was told. There is no way that she could ever have found her way into the king’s harem by her own effort or ingenuity.

Of course, the Esther and Ahaserus analogy is an imperfect one, because:

• Only one person could become queen, but everyone can become a child of God;
• Only beautiful young virgins were eligible, but everyone is eligible for salvation;
• King Ahaserus had a purely selfish motive for his campaign, but God is motivated by selfless love and compassion.

The Covenant of Grace

You may never have read the Bible, but you probably know that it is divided into two parts known respectively as the Old Testament and the New Testament. In modern English we would say Old Covenant and New Covenant. For the moment we won’t concern ourselves with what a covenant is, other than to define it as a binding agreement between two parties (which may be individual people or nations or any other group of people) that remains in force while both parties remain alive.

There are a number of occasions recorded in the Bible where God entered into a covenant with somebody, but the two that we want to think about at present are the ones that are known as the Covenant of Law and the Covenant of Grace, which are the names that we might give respectively to the Old and New Covenants we referred to just now.

We find the details of the Old Covenant - the Covenant of Law - in the Old Testament books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. The New Covenant - the Covenant of Grace - is the subject of the entire New Testament.

The Covenant of Law was entered into by God and the nation of Israel, with the prophet Moses being the intermediary, as it were, who represented the people before God and who spoke on behalf of God to the people. The blessings of this covenant could not be enjoyed by anyone who was not a bona fide Israelite, and no-one who was a bona fide Israelite could escape from the covenant’s curses. To be an Israelite and to be a party to the Covenant were one and the same thing. There was no opt-in for foreigners and there was no opt-out for citizens.

The Covenant of Grace was entered into by God and the entire human race, with Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, being the intermediary. Unlike Moses, Jesus did not represent God - he was God. At the command of God the Father, the Holy Spirit entered into the virgin Mary, and God the Son was conceived. The child that Mary bore was truly man, and yet He was also truly God. Nobody understands how that can be, but it is a central tenet of the Christian faith, which I will deal with separately in an article of its own, and so I will not dwell upon the subject here.

The blessings of the New Covenant may be enjoyed by anyone in the world, no matter what their background, their age, their sex, their ethnic origin, or their previous lifestyle. Whether you be a wise man or a fool, a prostitute or a princess, a drug pedlar or a priest, the offer of God’s grace has been extended to you. Whether you accept it or not is entirely for you to decide.

The purpose of this study is to help you understand what is on offer and why you should accept it.

The New Testament writers, especially Paul, go to great lengths to emphasise that Law has been superseded by Grace. The books of Galatians and Hebrews deal extensively with this subject, showing that the essential difference between the two is that Law stands in front of you and REQUIRES you to behave as you should, whereas Grace climbs inside you and EMPOWERS you to behave as you should. In fact, it goes even further than that by making you DESIRE to behave as you should!

Justice, Mercy, and Grace

There are three words that crop up again and again throughout the Bible. They are intimately related to each other, and each one expresses a central aspect of God’s character. In fact, if we fail to take them together and balance them against one another we will end up with a distorted understanding of who God is. The three words are justice, mercy, and grace. Let’s see if we can illustrate the differences in their meanings.

Imagine that you’re woken one night by noises coming from the kitchen. You get out of bed and go down (or across, if you live in a bungalow), open the kitchen door, switch on the light, and there you find before you a young man - about fifteen years old, scrawny, ragged, and with eyes full of fear, obviously hungry - rummaging through your cupboards and refrigerator looking for food.

Justice dictates that you immediately call the police, have the youth arrested and taken away to face trial and whatever the appropriate punishment might be according to the law of the land.

Mercy would say that there’s no malice in the boy, and if he wasn’t hungry he wouldn’t have stooped so low as to break into a house and steal, so just open the door, let him go, and think no more about it.

Grace would look at the boy and see the need beyond the deed, set him down at the table, prepare a meal for him, sit with him while he ate and try to get to know him - who he is, where he lives, his family, his background, and how he comes to have hit such hard times - and then send him away with a food parcel and whatever money was to hand, and an invitation to come back tomorrow at a more civilised hour and bring his family with him.

In other words,

• Justice gives you what you deserve, be it reward or punishment.
• Mercy withholds from you the punishment that you deserve.
• Grace extends to you the reward that you do not deserve.

In His dealings with man, God exercises all three at different times and in different ways. For instance, at the very beginning, in Genesis chapter 3, after Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, God’s righteous anger metes out just punishments to Adam, to Eve, and to the serpent, all of whom have disobeyed His orders.

Later on, in Genesis chapter 6, when the whole world has become corrupt, God’s justice demands that everyone be destroyed because of their wickedness - with the exception of one man, Noah, about whom it is said that he was “a righteous man, blameless in his generation”. God shows mercy to Noah and his family, providing for them a means of surviving the flood.

Still further on in Genesis (chapters 25 and 27-33) we read about Jacob, a scoundrel of a man who twice cheated his brother Esau to get for himself his brother’s birthright (Genesis 25:27-34) and the final blessing of his father (Genesis 27:1-40).

Yet God, in His grace, did not cast Jacob off as he deserved, but rather worked with him to transform him from the con man that he was in his earlier days to being the humble, God-fearing man of faith that he became later in his life.

Similarly, in each of our lives there is a time for God to apply justice, a time for Him to apply mercy, and a time for Him to apply grace.

Fortunately for us, it is grace that is applied more often than justice. That is why the Gospel is Good News.

Grace and Works

Here is one of the best passages of scripture for understanding the central importance of grace in God’s dealings with us:

Paul here contrasts two things - grace and works. What is the difference?

'Works' means that you and I have to do what we can, by our own effort and ingenuity, to live up to a standard that has been set. We have to abide by the rules. We have to do what is right, no matter how we might be feeling, or how inconvenient it might be for us at the time. We have to remember all the things that we are supposed to do, and supposed not to do, and continually check that we are on the right side of the line.

The major problem with a regime such as this one is that, because of our natural weakness, we continually fail. Even when we set the rules for ourselves - as witness, the proverbial New Year Resolutions - we are notoriously unable to keep it up for more than a few weeks - or days - or even hours!

There are, of course, some very strong-willed and disciplined individuals who do not have such difficulty, but they are in the minority.

For most of us, it’s a struggle. We try; we fail; we remonstrate with ourselves; we try again; we fail again; eventually we throw up the hands and give in. Maybe next year we’ll have another go - but most likely not.

By nature we do not live the kind of lives that God would like us to. Instead, we "fulfil the desires of the flesh and the mind", as Paul says in Ephesians chapter 2 (quoted above).

I remember having a conversation with one of my neighbours some years ago. He said these words to me: “I do everything for one of two motives - pleasure or profit”. Now, I’m sure that if he thought about it for a while he would also include that he did some things for the well-being and benefit of his family; but apart from that, he hit the nail squarely on the head.

If we were all as honest as he was, we would all agree with him that by and large our lives are motivated by the same ends - pleasure and profit. The pleasure may be physical, emotional, or mental; the profit may be measured in money, or power, or achievement.

Our lives tend to be guided by personal ambition - whether the ambition to be president of the United States of America, or to be earning a certain amount of money, or to be the mother of so many children, or to be living in a certain type of house in a certain district, or to get out of the dole queue by the end of the summer. All this is summed up in Paul’s expression: “fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind”.

Does this mean that it is against the will of God to want to be president, or to want to have children, or to want to get off the dole?

Of course not. The problem is when we simply want these things for ourselves, for our own gratification, without any reference to God. God made us to be ambitious, to reach for the stars, to be parents and grand-parents, to be productive, to be creative, to leave the world a different place, a better place, than it was when we arrived.

But his purpose was that we should do these things not for our own benefit or gratification, but for the benefit of the natural world and the people who live in it. His purpose always was that we should have a vision beyond ourselves and an attitude of servanthood, doing what we do to please him and to further his aims.

It is because we have signally failed to do so that he is angry and we have become “children of wrath”.

It sounds as if it might be God who is the selfish one, always wanting things done his own way, and condemning everybody who decides to do things differently!

It might sound like that, but not when you examine it a bit more closely.

God’s way is the way of love, respect for others, putting other people’s needs before your own, laying down your life for your friends, blessing those who curse you and doing good to those who hate you, telling the truth and keeping your word even when it’s to your personal disadvantage.

His is the way not of breaking hearts but of healing hearts that are broken. His is the way not of seeking revenge but of forgiving the offender. His is the way not of fault-finding but of giving another chance.

It is true that there will be a day when the guilty will be punished, but until that day God is waiting to be merciful and ready and willing to forgive, to extend grace.

Now, Paul says that we were dead in trespasses and sins but that God has made us alive in Jesus Christ.

In what way are we dead?

We are dead in that we are separated from the life of God. Our bodies are still alive, and our spirits are still functioning, but we have no connection with the life of God. We are cut off from him because of our sinfulness, our self-centredness.

This means that when the body ceases to function and is laid in the ground, the soul and the spirit have nowhere to go. This is the reality of death for the sinner - a spirit and a soul that remain conscious but have no body to connect them to the world and nothing to connect them to heaven.

It is not possible for us to imagine what it is like for such a disembodied soul languishing in total isolation awaiting the day of judgement with absolutely no reference point of any kind to give a sense of time or space (Matthew 8:12; 22:13; 25:30).

Death is not the end - even for those who believe that it is.

But God, in his grace, does more than simply forgive our sins and restore us to life. He raises us up with Christ and seats us with Him in the heavenlies. He invites us to take our place on the throne of the King of kings and the Lord of lords. He allocates each one of us a place at the most exclusive table in the entire universe.

It is at this point that the Gospel seems to become too good to be true.

We can cope with God forgiving us for our sins, because Jesus paid the price for them on the cross. We can even cope with God giving us eternal life, because Jesus rose from the dead and made a way for us to go with Him into heaven. However, our ability to believe is stretched to the limit when we begin to think about Him actually seating us with Jesus on His heavenly throne.

Jesus illustrates this in His parable of the Prodigal Son, which we find in Luke chapter 15 verses 11-32.

The father represents God; the elder son represents the religious Jews, who did everything they knew how to keep to the law and stay on the right side of God, but never actually knew Him, and never enjoyed His presence; the younger son represents the irreligious people who just wanted to live for themselves and the “desires of the flesh and the mind”.

When the younger son returns from his profligacy, having squandered his portion of his father’s wealth, the elder son expects the father to upbraid him, to disown him, to send him packing.

Instead, the father throws his arms around him, falls on his neck and smothers him with kisses, has a ring of the family authority put on his finger and a robe of the family colours put around his shoulders, and reinstates him to his position as a son within his household.

The boy has done nothing to deserve any of this. On the contrary, he has done everything to disqualify himself from it. But the father does it for one reason and one reason only - because he is his son.

Being born again is not simply about having our sins forgiven and receiving eternal life. Being born again is also, and more importantly, about becoming children of God - members of the divine Royal Family.

You may have been a pimp, a prostitute, or a prowler; you may have been a burglar, a bandit, or a brigand; you may have been a cheater or a wife beater. Whatever your past may have been, if you have been born again you are now a full member of the family of God and your Heavenly Father will treat you in just the same way as the father in the parable treated his prodigal son who came home.

The son quite rightly offered himself to the father as a servant, but the father received him as a son.

His elder brother only ever saw himself as a servant, and in so doing missed out on the privileges that were rightfully his as a son.

Even today, many Christians adopt an attitude similar to that of the elder son - seeking to win God’s favour by their good works and thinking themselves unworthy to come in to the feast, when all the time God is reaching out so that He might enfold them in His grace and seat them in a place of honour.

Of course, being a son does not mean lying in bed all day and being waited on hand and foot. It also does not mean, as the prodigal son discovered, taking advantage of your father’s good nature and blowing your inheritance on loose living.

In the passage from Ephesians 2 quoted above, Paul tells us that we are God’s workmanship, and that He has created us “for good works”, even going so far as to prepare the good works beforehand so that we can walk in them. We don’t have to go and look for good things to do; we just have to walk with God and there they are in front of us.

Throughout the New Testament we find this contrast between grace and works. We are reminded again and again that our good works cannot save us. We are also reminded again and again that there is a certain standard of behaviour that is expected of the Christian. We need, therefore, to be able to separate out in our minds these two truths:

• Our good works cannot save us; we are saved by grace alone.
• The evidence that grace is at work in our lives is that we begin to change our behaviour and to do the good works that are pleasing to God and stop doing the things that displease Him.

The Work of Grace

In his Dictionary of the New Testament, Strong defines grace as: the divine influence upon the heart and its reflection in the life. This beautifully and succinctly expresses the work of grace.

• Hebrews 4:16 - When we are in any kind of need, God invites us to “approach the throne of grace”, where there is an abundant supply of whatever it is that we need at that time. Of course, as in the case of Paul (below), God may not give us exactly what we have asked for, but may give us something that will be of greater value in the long run.

• 2 Corinthians 12:6-9 - God allows Paul to be tormented by a “messenger of Satan”, and he prays 3 times for it to be taken away; but God’s answer to Paul is: “My grace is sufficient for you”. In this case we see grace imparting the ability to bear patiently with a difficult situation and to accept it as God’s discipline.

• 1 Corinthians 15:10 - Paul has been compared unfavourably to other apostles, and in his defence he cites the abundance of the grace of God in his life, which has manifested itself in tireless and relentless hard work, for which he claims no credit, but attributes all the praise to God, who supplied the grace that enabled him to do it.

• Ephesians 4:1-16 - Paul contrasts the unity of the body of Christ, the church, with the diversity of the members of that body, the individual saints, to each one of whom “grace has been given as Christ apportioned it” (verse 7). It is that self-same grace which enables us to function as members of the body rather than as disconnected, or dislocated, individuals, each one doing his or her own thing. Being a Christian is about more than just me getting to heaven or staying out of hell; it’s about me living and functioning as an integral part of a greater entity - the church, the body of Christ - in both its local and global manifestations. The gifts of the spirit, or charismata (from the same Greek word, 'charis'), that we read about in 1 Corinthians 12:4-11, are expressions, or manifestations, of the grace of God being used to build up the body by strengthening, encouraging, comforting, challenging, guiding, correcting, healing, inspiring, or instructing its individual members.

Grace is one of the things that sets apart the way of Christ from every other religion, philosophy, and discipline.

God takes no account of who we are in our own eyes or in the eyes of the world. You may be like Paris Hilton, with everybody queuing up to be your best friend, or you may be like a nameless tramp, whom everyone wants to steer clear of.

As far as God is concerned, you are either one of two things: a sinner or a saint. Whichever one you are, you need grace.

As a sinner, you need grace to be saved; as a saint, you need grace to keep walking the walk. Whichever one you are, His grace is sufficient for you - and there’s much more of it available than you or I will ever need.

The grace is there for the taking. All you have to do is to humble yourself, admit your need, and ask. You will not be refused.

Grace is received through FAITH, but before we consider faith we need to look at our means of entering the Kingdom of God, and that gateway to God's Kingdom is called REPENTANCE.