What is Grace?

Grace has been defined as God’s unmerited favor, established because we do not have the ability to earn that favor through our behavior, or the cessation of behavior that is detrimental to our relationship with our Maker. There is nothing necessarily wrong with that definition, yet it does not connote the fullness of mercy, the extent of love, or the depth of devotion that our Lord showers upon us far beyond our meager understanding, and even farther beyond anything we deserve. To begin to understand grace we must first understand the depth of our sin and how it separates us from our Father. Since we cannot understand the perfection of God, we cannot understand how greatly we offend His holiness without being lead to that knowledge through the Holy Spirit (and we cannot understand that without the Spirit’s willingness to make it known to us– which we cannot understand either!). Then we must come to some understanding of humility and how it must, and without fail, be the wineglass through which we drink in His love and mercy, and through those, have His justice and love run through our veins. If that chalice is not included in our table setting, then we are at the wrong table, in the wrong House, and are in far greater danger than we may realize.

Humility is, in this instance, the understanding of our own wickedness, and the knowledge that we are completely incapable of removing even the lightest of stains from our souls. It is an appreciation of the extent to which we offend God, and a measure of the desire we have to heal that division between Him and us, as well as the recognition that a desire to heal that fracture is vastly insufficient to mend. It is an understanding that we have nothing to offer God that He needs. We are of no intrinsic value to Him. That is the most humbling recognition man can fathom, and it is that humility that draws Him closer to us. Yet, it is more, much more, than that. It is also an appreciation of the extent to which God is willing to go to create a bridge over which we can cross an uncrossable divide – though He has no need to do so.

Grace, then, is not just God’s ability to remove our stain – but also His desire. In this way, grace is not passive; it is continually working in us, renewing us as we call on Him to forgive us our sins. Let this not be misunderstood – Grace is not a tool, however noble and precious the idea. Grace is not something we utilize to cleanse ourselves so that we are presentable to our Creator. Grace is not something we utilize. No, grace has nothing to do with us at all. We cannot call upon it at will; we cannot send it away. It is not affected by our desire, or lack thereof, and it is neither arbitrary nor capricious. We are powerless over it, yet its power to redeem and heal is inestimable.

Grace has one requirement – an acknowledgement on our part that we stand before God powerless, naked, ugly, stained, and filthy, and that nothing we have done has had one iota of effect on relieving us from that state. It is only in standing this way before God that we can finally realize how in need we are of His healing and perfecting touch, His grace.

When we call upon our Father in what can only be understood as desperation (brought on by the whispered love of the Holy Spirit and the finished love of Jesus Christ on the cross), and invite Him into our inmost parts; when we acquiesce to the reality that we are alone and adrift on a river of abomination; and when we cry out to Him because He is (and has only ever been) our only hope, it is then that God sheds His grace upon us. This grace is not a gentle rain, softly pattering and slowly easing away our sin and its accompanying spiritual death. No, this can only be interpreted as a waterfall of unimaginable power and purpose. Grace is a torrential down pouring of cleansing fury – instantaneously crushing and dissolving all the once-insurmountable mountains of sin that stand in the path between us and our Father. There is no sin, no failure, no betrayal that will not instantly be nonextant in the presence of such inconceivable holiness and purity. Grace is not temperate. Once called upon, it will brook no interference with its single mission – to reunite the Creator with His created; and once called upon by the Father’s newly adopted child, that grace is a never ending source of renewal and rebirth, re-creation and resolve -- both to seek after the Father and to allow the Son to reshape us in His image.