Ephesians 2:1-10
As church words go, “grace” is one of the top ten. Don’t you think? It would be an interesting exercise for each of us to write down the ten words we consider the most important to include in our Christian vocabulary. I would really like to do that sometime in a Sunday school class. It would be interesting to learn what words we each included and why. Don’t work on that list just yet. My list would certainly include the word “grace.”
We announce the grace of God every week in worship. It’s part of my weekly greeting to you. It is at the heart of how the Bible communicates the work of God in Jesus Christ, and we sing about it, too. So what exactly is grace?
The word in Greek means a gift. Grace is God’s gift of goodness and goodwill self-communicated to the world. Grace is how God announces to us love and mercy for the creation win over wrath and estrangement. Grace is what we say about a God who is perfect and whole, who doesn’t need creation in order to be complete or absolute or happy or content. And yet this complete and perfect God freely wills to create. No unmet need or duty was satisfied by God in this work, and neither did God act capriciously or at random in making the heavens and the earth. We believe God freely willed the creation, and God freely wills to share God’s own self with us in pure love and freedom and without compulsion. This is grace.
Grace is amazing. That’s not an original claim. John Newton brought those two words together in his famous hymn from the eighteenth century as he reflected on the way his life had changed by the work of Christ to save a wretch like me as one who was lost and is found. The church has been singing his words ever since. So what makes grace amazing? Simply put, every bit of it comes from God. (more…)
