The Grace of God

Today's Scripture

Ephesians 2:4-5 — "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."

Ephesians 2:8-9 — "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."

Titus 3:5 — "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy."

The Big Idea

Grace means getting the exact opposite of what you deserve, free, because someone else paid for it. It is the one word no other religion ever came up with: not God rewarding the good, but God rescuing the guilty at his own expense. We sing about it every Sunday. Today's question is whether we actually believe it.

Reflection

A word we sing but quietly resist

"Grace" shows up in our songs, our table prayers, even our names for girls. Yet Packer observed that for many churchgoers it stirs no wonder at all. Why? Because grace only amazes people who have given up on deserving. Packer's definition shows why it cannot be a tame word:

"The grace of God is love freely shown toward guilty sinners, contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit. It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and had no reason to expect anything but severity." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Merit is what you have earned; demerit is what you have earned against yourself, like points on a driving record. Grace is not God grading on a curve. It is not God squinting until your record looks acceptable. It is God looking straight at the record, calling it what it is, and showing kindness in defiance of it — kindness that runs directly against what the evidence demands. That is why grace cannot be tame. Either it is scandalous or it is not grace.

Packer says the reason grace bounces off modern people is that we no longer believe the bad news it answers. We assume we are basically fine, that God owes everyone a pass, and that we could fix ourselves if we really tried. Scripture flattens all three assumptions. Romans 3:23-24 — "for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." All have sinned; the rescue is "as a gift." And Ephesians 2:1 goes further about our condition: "you were dead in the trespasses and sins." Not sick. Not underachieving. Dead. Dead people do not contribute to their resuscitation. They can only be raised.

Two men went up to pray

Jesus told a story for people confident they could earn their standing. Two men go to the temple. One is religiously impressive — he fasts, he tithes, his résumé is real. The other is a tax collector, a collaborator and a cheat, and he knows it. Luke 18:13-14 — "But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, 'God, be merciful to me, a sinner!' I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other."

One man brought a record; the other brought a need. Only the need went home justified — declared right with God. Notice that the Pharisee's facts were all true. He really did fast and tithe; he really was more moral than the tax collector. His problem was not his résumé but where he submitted it. He walked into the temple and never actually asked God for anything. He had no needs, so he received nothing.

The story still offends, because it levels the field we spend our lives climbing. The honor student and the dropout, the volunteer and the convict, enter by the same door or not at all. Paul states it as a rule of logic: Romans 11:6 — "But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace." Grace and earning cannot be blended, any more than a gift can be partly purchased. Mix in even a drop of wages and the whole thing stops being grace.

But doesn't free grace make people lazy about goodness? Augustine answered that misunderstanding sixteen centuries ago:

"Grace is given not because we have done good works, but in order that we may be able to do them." — Augustine, On the Spirit and the Letter

Grace is not the reward at the end of a good life. It is the power supply at the beginning of one. That is exactly the order in Ephesians 2:8-10: saved by grace, not works — then "created in Christ Jesus for good works." Good works are grace's fruit, never its price.

But God

The two most important words in Ephesians 2 — maybe in your biography — are "But God." The paragraph starts in a grave: dead in sins, following the crowd, children of wrath like everyone else. Read those opening verses slowly and you will notice there is no exit built into them. No ladder, no instructions, no "unless you try harder." Just a grave. Then the sentence turns: Ephesians 2:4-5 — "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."

Every conversion story, however quiet or dramatic, pivots on those two words. You were headed one way; but God. The verbs that follow all belong to him — he loved, he made alive, he raised, he seated. Our verb shows up only as the receiving end.

Notice when this happened: "even when we were dead." Romans 5:6 — "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly." Grace did not wait for signs of life. Packer compresses the whole rescue into one sentence:

"Grace means God moving heaven and earth to save sinners who could not lift a finger to save themselves." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Moving heaven and earth is not a figure of speech here. Heaven was moved: the Son left it. Earth was moved: a cross was raised on it. 2 Corinthians 8:9 gives grace its price tag: "For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich." Grace is free for you because it was unimaginably expensive for him. That is why Packer insisted the entire gospel can be folded into three words:

"God saves sinners." — J.I. Packer, Introductory Essay to John Owen's The Death of Death in the Death of Christ

Three words, each doing work. God saves — not God-plus-your-effort. God saves — really, fully, not merely makes salvation possible and hopes. God saves sinners — actual ones, the kind you are, not theoretical ones. Lean on any of the three words and it holds.

What grace makes of a person

So what does a life look like after grace gets hold of it? Titus 3:4-7 walks through it: "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... so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life." Mercy is God not giving the punishment we deserved; grace goes further and gives the riches we never deserved — washed, renewed, justified, made heirs. Packer ties the words together tightly:

"Grace and salvation belong together as cause and effect." — J.I. Packer, Knowing God

Where there is grace, salvation follows — the way light follows sunrise. And grace leaves a recognizable signature on people: deep humility (I deserved none of this) fused with deep confidence (and none of it depends on me). The world cannot produce that combination; it makes people either proud or insecure. Grace makes them both lowly and unshakable at once. Paul wore that signature: 1 Corinthians 15:10 — "But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain." The church's worst persecutor became its greatest missionary and gave grace all the credit.

And grace is not only the doorway in; it is the supply line afterward. John 1:16 — "For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." Grace upon grace — wave after wave, like the tide. You do not graduate from grace into self-sufficiency. You go deeper into it.

Seventeen centuries after Augustine, a slave trader named John Newton was wrecked, rescued, and remade by that same supply line — he wrote "Amazing Grace" about it, and then summed up his whole life in the epitaph he composed for his own tombstone:

"John Newton, Clerk, once an infidel and libertine, a servant of slaves in Africa, was, by the rich mercy of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, preserved, restored, pardoned, and appointed to preach the faith he had long laboured to destroy." — John Newton, self-written epitaph

Notice the verbs Newton chose: preserved, restored, pardoned, appointed. All passive. All done to him. The man who once trafficked human beings spent his last years telling anyone who would listen that grace had trafficked him — out of slavery to sin and into the service of God. That is grace's pattern in every age: it finds people at their worst, and it does not leave them there.

This week we have met the God who is knowable, unsearchable, unchanging, majestic, fatherly, and loving. Today the week lands at the only doorway into all of it. You do not climb up to this God. He came down — and the hands he extends are still scarred from the price of the gift.

Going Deeper

Do a small "earning audit" today. Find one place you have been performing for acceptance — with God, or with people — and deliberately replace the performance with thanks. Instead of "I read my Bible, so God will be pleased with me," try "God is already pleased with me in Christ, so I get to read." Same action, opposite engine. Then pray the tax collector's eight words from Luke 18:13 before bed: "God, be merciful to me, a sinner." Everyone who prays it goes home justified. That is the whole point of grace.