One of the most important concepts of the Christian understanding of God is grace. God is said to be gracious, full of grace. Also, fortunately for us, God is also said to be full of mercy. Perhaps the best brief definition of both mercy and grace is this: “Mercy is when you don’t get what you deserve; grace is when you get what you don’t deserve.” Salvation ends up being a gift of sheer grace, to be received by faith in Christ.
Grace means that God does not have to do what God does, that God does not operate out of necessity but total freedom. Imagine a person choosing to be kind and considerate who does not have to be, so that the attention is on that person’s actions, rather than on the recipient. Grace may be defined as “an unmerited gift, typically from a superior to a subordinate.” An example would be a boss giving a significant raise to an employee, not because of the worker’s merit, but because the boss felt like being generous. Here the attention would be on the unexpected, unwarranted generosity of the boss, rather than on the employee.
This however is so difficult for us to understand. As employees, we would want to have earned or merited the raise, so that the congratulations would be on us as our just reward. That is, we have difficulties with “freebies”: what we get, we want to have earned. That includes love; we want to somehow deserve or warrant whatever love should come our way. We are not sure what to do with love that simply shows up, like an unexpected but loving Lord, at our doorstep.
The term “grace” comes for the Latin “gratus,” meaning pleasing. The best response to God’s grace is that of “gratitude,” which comes from the same Latin root. If God chooses to be gracious, our response is to be that of gratitude. If God is pleased to save us in Christ, which we could never earn by our works, then the response most pleasing to God is our pleasure at God’s grace. This is a pure arc of giving back to God something of what God gave to us.
Just so, in my own life, a gracious God showed up right when I absolutely had to find a gracious God. Here is what I later wrote to God, in a prose poem or prayer called, “Grace”:
“You did not have to do what You did for me: reach out and pluck me dying from the dark burning of boundless despair, from the mocking meaninglessness that exists apart from the light of Your love.
“You did not have to revive and restore me, living now for You, in the tender atmosphere of the Spirit between us, the gentle Holy Spirit of Your love, which is better than life.
“Why did You save me at the very hour of my going under, feeling then instead of the last wrenching of death’s insensate claws, the first healing, knowing touch of Your rescuing fingers?
“That You, the living God, should be for me, who had not been for You; that You would reach out to hold and heal me, who can offer You only gratitude, and that inconsistently, inadequately, is the never diminishing wonder of my life.
“That You did for me what You did not have to do, at the time when it had to be done, if it was ever going to be done, is the source of the ever-welling spring of life You birthed in my heart, the ground of my cleaving to You in hungering trust.
“Precious Savior, returning grace for grace, I give You my life; I give You what I, too, do not have to give but choose to.”
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