The Grace of God

Today's Reading

Read Ephesians 2:1-10: "And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked... But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved — and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus... For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast."

Then read Titus 3:4-7: "But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy."

Reflection

Grace is the most distinctive word in the Christian vocabulary. Other religions have gods. Other religions have moral codes and rituals and sacred texts. But grace — unearned, undeserved, freely given favour toward those who deserve the opposite — is Christianity's unique contribution to the religious vocabulary of the human race.

Packer defines it with careful precision: "Grace is God's free and unmerited favour to those who have forfeited it, and are by nature under a sentence of condemnation." Every word matters. Grace is free — it cannot be purchased. It is unmerited — it cannot be earned. It is shown to those who have forfeited it — not to neutral parties but to active rebels. And it is shown to those under a sentence of condemnation — not people who are slightly imperfect but people who are genuinely guilty.

Paul's language in Ephesians 2 is deliberately extreme. Before grace intervened, we were not merely sick. We were dead. Dead people do not help themselves. They cannot contribute to their own resuscitation. They can only be acted upon. "But God" — the two most important words in the passage — "being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ."

Grace, as Packer puts it elsewhere, is "God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity." It is love in defiance of demerit. It does not look at what we have done and say, "That's not so bad." It looks at what we have done, sees it for the catastrophe it is, and loves us anyway — at the cost of the cross.

The result of grace, Paul says, is that "no one may boast." Grace levels every distinction between the morally impressive and the morally disreputable. Both are saved the same way — by gift, not by achievement. This is both the glory of grace and the reason it offends. Human beings want to earn their standing. Grace says you cannot, and you need not.

Going Deeper

Titus 3 makes the same point from a different angle: God "saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy." The basis of salvation is not our righteousness but God's mercy. The motive is not our worthiness but His goodness. This means that the weakest, most failure-prone Christian stands on exactly the same ground as the most accomplished saint: the grace of God in Jesus Christ.

Today, receive that grace. Not as a doctrine to affirm, but as a gift to rest in.