The Good News About God's Grace

Finish these familiar sayings. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. We make money the old-fashioned way, we earn it. There is no such thing as a free lunch. No gain without pain. God helps those who help themselves. We absorb these lines so young that they feel less like opinions and more like the way the world simply is.

Everything in our culture drills the same lesson: you get what you earn, you make your bed and lie in it, and if it is to be, it is up to you. Call it the work ethic. There is only one problem with it. God does not operate on it. And because we are so soaked in that driven, earn-it mindset, we find it genuinely hard to relate to a God who works another way entirely.

A God Who Loves to Be Gracious

The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love.

Psalm 145:8

Circle that word, gracious. Scripture says God is a gracious God, which means He loves to be gracious to you. He delights to bless people who do not deserve it. That is not a loophole in His character; it is His nature. And honestly, are you not glad? I am glad that God blesses people who have not earned it, because that is the only category any of us fit in.

You cannot really understand the Christian life at all until you understand grace. It is the heart of our faith and the heart of our relationship with God. And here is a beautiful side effect: the more you grasp grace, the closer to God you feel. The more you understand it, the more you are drawn to Him, the more you love Him, the more grateful you become. It is by this system of grace, not by our striving, that God draws us to Himself.

Saved by Grace, Living by Works

Most of us think we already understand this. "Grace is unmerited favor." "We are saved by grace, not by works." We have known those lines for years. But here is what I have noticed: many Christians who know they are saved by grace do not actually live like it. They spend most of their lives thinking and behaving as if they are saved by works.

Perhaps you know in your head that you do not get into heaven by being good, and yet your whole life is quietly built on trying to please God by being perfect. We treat the level of our sanctification, how well we are doing, as the barometer of our justification, whether God accepts us. We read the Old Testament accounts of God's anger and conclude that He must be an unpleasable parent in the sky with a clipboard and a pen, watching our every move, muttering "that was good, that was bad," ready to say "forget it, you're worthless" the moment we slip.

That is exhausting, and it is not the gospel. When you truly understand grace, it brings a flood of joy. It is the most liberating thing in the world. You can be a Christian for twenty or thirty years and never really learn to live this way, so it is worth slowing down to be sure we are standing on solid ground.

And there is not just one kind of grace. Scripture speaks of the manifold, many-sided grace of God: grace that saves, grace that restores and gives a fresh start, grace that sustains you when you want to give up, grace that heals, and grace that frees you from the exhausting bondage of perfectionism. Today, let us start at the foundation, saving grace, using a simple acrostic that Pastor Rick Warren has taught: G-R-A-C-E.

G - God's Gift to All

Grace is not something you earn, and, strictly speaking, not even something you have to beg for. It is a gift, and the only thing you do with a gift is receive it. This runs completely against the grain of the work ethic, which insists you can only have what you deserve. Grace is when the worst student in the class is handed the year's top prize. It is when the least qualified applicant gets the job, and the most undeserving person is honored anyway. What do you do in each case? You simply receive it.

Salvation itself is exactly like this. And the word for salvation is a rich, all-encompassing one, meaning to be made whole, well, at peace, and at rest. Which means everything we truly receive from God, we receive by grace, as a free gift to people who did not earn it. This is precisely what sets Christianity apart from every other religion and philosophy. They all tell you what you must do to reach whatever they call the goal. Only the gospel says it has already been done for you; now receive it.

R - Received by Faith

For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith, and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9

A gift still has to be believed before it can be enjoyed. If I told the worst student in the class that she had won the prize, her first hurdle would be believing me. That is why grace works only through faith. This is where most of us get tripped up, wondering how God could declare someone as flawed as us righteous. But unless you believe it, you cannot receive it, and if you do not receive it, it does you no good. God arranged it this way on purpose, so no one could ever boast, "I made it because I worked so hard." Everyone stands on the same level ground.

There is a story that captures this perfectly. King David had made a covenant of friendship with Jonathan, promising to care for his family. Years earlier, when Jonathan was killed in battle, his little son Mephibosheth was dropped by a fleeing nurse and left crippled in both feet, hidden away in an obscure place. But David remembered his promise and sent for the boy, now grown.

So Mephibosheth ate at David's table like one of the king's sons, and he was lame in both feet.

2 Samuel 9:11-13

Unconditional, undeserved favor: a crippled man from a forgotten village, seated permanently at the king's table alongside the king's own sons. And here is the tender detail, once he was seated at that table, you would never even know he was lame. Someone reading this is being lifted, by grace, to the King's table today, no matter how broken your feet. Believe it.

A - Available to All

The grace that brings salvation has appeared to all people. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. Remember Abraham: God accepted him because he believed, before any religious ritual and despite a far-from-perfect record. That same grace is offered to everyone who believes. This is not the private privilege of pastors or a special anointed class. It is for all. Which means you do not need a human go-between to be blessed by God.

Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Hebrews 4:16

C - Comes Through Christ

Grace is free, but it was never cheap. It cost everything, because someone had to pay for it. That someone was Jesus, the Messiah God had promised from the very beginning, the one who would crush the serpent's head, but only at the price of His own wounding.

He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.

Isaiah 53:5

Picture a card that represents your life, marked with everything you have done wrong, the regrets, the shame, the wounds given and received. On its own, that card could never belong in a perfect place. But when you come to Christ and say, "I open my life to You and receive Your free gift," God places that card inside Christ, the way you might slip it between the pages of a book. Now, when God looks at your life, He does not see the failures. He sees Christ. That is grace, and imagine how it would transform us to start seeing one another that way too, hidden in Him. One old acrostic sums it up: God's Riches At Christ's Expense.

E - Extends Through Eternity

The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus. And eternal life is not merely a longer life; it is the God-kind of life, holiness, beauty, abundance, and yes, heaven itself. Grace is the gift that keeps on giving; even in glory, we will live by it. In fact, the whole Bible is one long story of grace, from Adam and Noah to Abraham, David, Ruth, and Rahab, all of them trophies of unearned favor.

Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you.

Isaiah 30:18

Come and Drink

This church has always described itself as a well, not a fence, a place where you belong before you believe, where grace comes before performance. That is not a slogan; it is simply what grace looks like when a community takes it seriously. You do not have to earn your way in. You do not have to clean yourself up first. You do not have to impress a gatekeeper.

So the invitation is simply this: stop trying to earn what God is longing to give, and come and drink. When you catch yourself bargaining with Him, gently tell your own heart, "No, it is by grace." You are already loved. You are already welcome. And the God who longs to be gracious to you is holding out a gift with your name on it. Will you receive it today?