Does Anyone Really Know What Grace Is?
When I was in college, I renewed my relationship with Jesus. The months immediately following are vivid in my memory.
Someone handed me a book about discipleship and how to live the “Christian” life. The paperback was developed for people just like me by a well-known campus ministry. Spiritually hungry and yearning to know Jesus more deeply, I devoured every page. The author defined grace as “unmerited favor” and explained that it was integral to my salvation. Accordingly, the pages explained that what God did for me through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus was something I could never do for myself.
Very straightforward, I thought.
It wasn’t long before the wheels of this definition began to wobble on me. It started when I discovered scriptures like 2 Peter 3:18, which directed me to “grow in grace”— and many other verses wishing me “grace and peace.” Clearly, there was more to grace than just my salvation. Living a “Christian” life from here on out required grace, too.
Surely, I missed something in the book, right?
Anyway, I began asking around. “Can you help me understand what ‘grace’ is?”
Eager to help, my Christian friends quickly responded with precisely the exact definition that I had heard before: “Unmerited favor,” they’d say.
“Could we all be reading the same book?” I wondered as I asked my follow-up question. “Then, what is unmerited favor?”
“What do you mean, Ed? That’s ‘grace.’”
To my shock, I realized that none of us seemed to know what grace was, despite our best attempts to help each other. Instantly, I flashed back to a familiar sense of disappointment and hopelessness. Well-meaning teachers armed with red ballpoint pens would slash at such meaningless, circular reasoning in the papers I turned in.
I learned the hard way that circular definitions are meaningless when my teachers returned my carefully written papers full of red ink!
Seeking more authoritative sources, I turned to Christian radio and sermons about grace. Some of the teachers and preachers there referred to grace as God’s power or strength working in my life to do what I could not otherwise accomplish. Others claimed grace is “God’s favor” or referred to the spiritual “gifts” God gives each of us. I heard about grace-rich environments where we could all experience God’s presence, His favor, and exercise our gifts freely.
Sign me up! Grace-filled settings sounded exciting. But, upon further reflection, I realized that unless I accidentally stumbled upon such a mysterious place, I remained clueless about how to find or create a grace-rich environment.
Back to the drawing board. My search continued.
Fairly often, I noticed references about the need for believers to “have grace” for others in difficult situations. Sounds legit, don’t you think? But then it occurred to me: I had no idea what that meant. Was I supposed to be kind or merciful or forgiving or loving? —accepting any behavior thrown my way, like a kind of cosmic doormat?!
What does “having grace” for someone else mean? I am supposed to be a cosmic doormat?
Still, more sources explained grace as God’s empowering strength that would help me avoid sin and make good decisions. Others suggested that grace protected us from the consequences of our own bad behavior and poor choices, like a huge supernatural jump cushion. (You know what those are, don’t you? Those are the giant inflatables used by firefighters to catch people who have to jump from a burning building.) Sin with no consequences? Really?
This is when the wheels of grace came off, completely.
When it comes to grace, teachers, preachers, and followers must realize that unless everyone shares the same understanding of what the word means, we are dead on the road of discipleship. Because grace—along with many other foundational Biblical terms—means so many things to many different people, it is important that we are clear.
Theological truths filling dusty bookshelves with 500+years of post-Reformation scholarship may help me think correctly about grace but do little to teach me the practical, relational application to my life.
Sadly, I’m convinced that the theological truths filling dusty bookshelves with 500+ years of post-Reformation scholarship may help me think correctly about grace; however, they do little to teach me about its practical application in my life. Sound theology about grace may help us avoid heresy, but it is useless if it doesn’t help us accomplish a few things, like
Connect with God
Love and care for others
Shape our individual character
Transform our lives as disciples of Jesus
A real-world understanding of such grace is traceable back to ancient Greece. The ramifications will either guide (or misguide) our lives. Check back for more posts about the topic, as well as exciting material from my new book, Becoming a Face of Grace: Navigating Relationships with God and Others.