God's Lesson in Grace

We’re all sinners in need of God’s grace. So what is grace and how do we receive it? Graeme Loftus explains this good news.

God’s grace toward humanity is hard for us to fathom. But it isn’t dissimilar to that of Mike, who, when he was ripped-off by his best friend, felt betrayed. He’d invested his life’s savings to date into his friend’s “sure-fire” project, from which, his friend had said, he was “guaranteed” a generous profit.

But it had gone bust and Mike lost everything. His “friend,” on the other hand, had secured his own assets so that they were untouchable, and declined to help Mike in any way.

For a while Mike battled with resentment but eventually came to the realisation that if he didn’t let go of the negative emotions, he would be poisoned by bitterness for the rest of his life. So in his heart he released his friend from any potential legal justice and, picking up the pieces, began to get on with his life again.

But by a quirk of fate, the tables turned. Mike ultimately became quite successful and his friend found himself on the brink of bankruptcy with his family in dire circumstances. You guessed it. Mike baled him out and saved not only his old friend’s livelihood, but also his marriage and his children’s future.

In genuine brokenness, Mike’s friend was radically changed as well. He saw himself and his offence in a new light. Mike was able to transcend any sense of being patronising and their relationship was restored into an even deeper dimension.

This act, and its results, in a limited way are a demonstration of God’s grace. Grace is a quality of God’s heart that has two dimensions. First, there’s an aspect that deals with the offence against Him. And, second, there’s also an empowering dimension that has the ability to change the offender’s inner heart toward God, himself and his own life from that point forward.

In order for us as humans to realise our need of God’s grace, it’s necessary to see that we have a deep-seated problem that destroys us and everything around us, and that in ourselves we are incapable of doing anything about it.

We’ve become infected with a deadly condition that contaminates our thinking, our emotions and our will. It destroys our relationships with people around us and the world in which we live. There is something within our nature that has alienated us from God, ourselves, each other, and the environment in which we live.

good vs bad
At the beginning of the 20th century, the dominant thinkers believed human beings were intrinsically good and that the world was verging on utopia through enormous strides in education, scientific knowledge and technology. Today, the greed of the rich, the violence of the strong, and the cruelty of the proud have destroyed that illusion, exposing it as a myth or merely wishful thinking.

The Bible is the only book that satisfactorily explains our human dilemma. The book of Genesis is a book of beginnings, and gives a matter-of-fact account of how everything came into existence. It doesn’t attempt to defend itself from the scorn of atheistic endeavours to explain our origins. It simply gives us a revelation from the One who created us of what actually happened.

Even there, we’re overwhelmed with the grace aspects of God. Human beings were not created until the sixth day. Everything needed for their existence, which they could not provide for themselves, was graciously provided for them in the preceding five days by the benevolent heart of a loving God (see Genesis 1:3-31).

Genesis chapter three describes the fracture of this perfect and idyllic gift to the human race. By their own choice, our first parents chose to distrust God’s intention for them, to disobey His revealed will for their ongoing happiness, and were left to their own inadequate resources to cope with life. Their thinking became distorted, their emotions darkened and their will impotent. The theological word to describe this condition is “sin.”

ultimate apathy
Sin is not simply the wrong things we do; it is a condition—a power, infecting the deepest part of our being. And we’re not “sinners” because we commit sinful acts. Rather the opposite is true. We commit sinful acts because we are sinners in the core of our being.

So radical was the effect of this tragedy that, the Bible says, apart from God’s grace sinful human beings don’t even want to be saved from their destructive condition—there is “no-one who seeks God” (Romans 3:11). Until God’s grace changes our minds we can’t even understand the message of salvation, let alone accept it.

During Jesus’ life on earth He demonstrated the nature of grace over and over again. He offered total, unconditional forgiveness and acceptance to every human being that would receive it. And as with Mike’s friend, it changed many lives.

He did not, for example, tell Zacchaeus the cheat and embezzler to get his business dealings in order before he could be forgiven or accepted. The reason Zacchaeus gave half his goods to the poor and repaid four times over his criminal offences (see Luke 19:1-10) is a stunning demonstration of his response to Jesus’ overwhelming grace. Every story in the Gospels is specifically and intentionally there to illustrate this one central truth, and each illustrates the empowering nature of grace in human lives.

ultimate love
The magnitude of God’s grace reaches its ultimate and most powerful manifestation in the death of Jesus on the cross of Calvary and His subsequent resurrection. It was there that God dealt with our offences against Him, as well as their consequences.

In a way, that will take all eternity to fully understand and explain—Jesus taking all the results of human sin and sinfulness to death with Him in His own death. That is grace, and there isn’t a thing we can do to earn it. All we can do is to not harden our hearts against the implied impotence in our humanity and gratefully receive it.
“Saving is all his idea, and all his work. All we do is trust him enough to let him do it. It’s God’s gift from start to finish! We don’t play the major role. If we did, we’d probably go around bragging that we’d done the whole thing!” (Ephesians 2:8, 9, The Message).

So comprehensive are the results of this grace of God that no single word can describe them. The Bible uses countless images to encompass various aspects of its meaning: We are “delivered” from the bondage of captivity; we are “ransomed” from the shame of slavery; we are “reconciled” from the loneliness of alienation; we are “adopted” from the homelessness of being illegitimate or orphans; and, we are “justified” from the legal conviction of being guilty. He showed “mercy” on our death sentence; our sin before God is “expiated” (covered).
His steady, unrelenting, unremitting, uncompromising antagonism to evil in our lives in all its forms and manifestations was “propitiated.” Our dead human spirit is “born again.” We experience a “union” with Jesus. We begin to “grow” again to be like Him once more.
His grace is truly amazing.

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