Grace: the freely given, unmerited favor and love of God (dictionary.com)

Over the past few weeks I have been thinking about grace. More specifically I have been thinking about God’s grace as offered to all of us through the sacrifice of his own son on the cross. And I just can’t seem to get my head around what this grace really is. I mean, can any one of us ever truly begin to understand God’s grace?

Grace. Unmerited favor. Something given that none deserve.

Mercy I kind of understand. Someone owes you money and can’t pay you back, but instead of sending them to prison you let them off with time to pay, or even forgive the debt entirely. Would you lend that person money again? Probably not.

However, scripture tells us that God’s grace is such that he not only forgives us our debts to him, but that he even elevates us to call us his sons and daughters. He doesn’t hold our debt against us, instead he prescribes incredible (and unbelievable) worth to us.

I recently watched an episode of the short lived, but brilliant show, Boomtown that had possibly one of the most powerful examples of grace I have ever seen. The episode was called Fearless and begins with a boy shooting a man because the man has been abusing him. This leads to an investigation which leads detective Bobby Smith (aka Fearless) down a dark road, forcing him to confront demons from his own past. It turns out that he too was abused as a child and in an act of pure vengeance seeks out the man who had wronged him fully intent on killing him.

However, instead of finding the man who abused him all those years ago, he finds a man who has found forgiveness in Jesus. In one very emotional scene, Fearless forces his abuser to kneel before him and is about to execute him, that is until the man reveals to him that he has spent the last 20 or so years helping and counseling other men like him. Fearless asks his one time abuser how Jesus could forgive a man like him, to which he replies with tears in his eyes, “I don’t know. But he has.”

And that is where I find myself. I don’t know, but he has.

Why do I write this? Because there are many people out there who have done terrible things, things that you and I might find difficult to forgive. Heck, many people can’t even begin to forgive themselves for the things they have done. And this is where the grace of God comes in.

Lamentations 3:22-23 tells us that, “The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithfulness; his mercies begin afresh each morning.” (New Living Translation)

You see, it is not human to forgive in this way. The grievance I had with someone yesterday is often with me today. But not so with God. And when I think upon this I realize I have a long way to go to become more like Jesus. Alexander Pope in an essay called “An Essay on Criticism,” wrote, “To err is human; to forgive is divine. In this we see that all people commit sins and make mistakes. God forgives them, and people are acting in a godlike (divine) way when they forgive.”

When all is said and done, I may not understand God’s grace, but I am eternally grateful and thankful for it non-the-less. I think of all the horrible things I have said and done to both God and people, and I know that I am not worthy of such love. But God’s grace is offered regardless of me and my sin. It’s up to me whether I accept God’s gift of grace or not. It’s that simple.

And as I sit here writing this I come again once more unto the throne of God’s grace, not fully understanding how or why such an offer exists, and declare once more, I accept! Thank you Lord!

“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Ephesians 2:8

Christian St John M.Div, BChM, ACS
February, 2009

Picture by worshipimages.com

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