WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT GRACE? IT’S A WORD that shows up a lot in the Bible. You’ve probably come across the phrase, “For by grace you have been saved through faith.” That comes from Ephesians 2:8, and many Christians see it as lying at the heart of their faith.
A favorite passage of mine comes from the Gospel of John: “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. . . . And from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:14, 16). Those two verses say something important about how much God loves us. He loves us so much that he came into the world in the person of Jesus Christ to save us. But notice also how that great act of God is described. The Son is full of grace and truth. He has given us something described as grace upon grace.
If you think about what these biblical passages from Ephesians and John are saying, then it becomes pretty obvious that grace is important. You might even say that our salvation depends on it! So what exactly is grace?
I teach regularly about grace in churches and seminary classrooms. Regardless of the setting, I always begin by asking people what words come to mind when they think about the meaning of grace. The responses I get most often look like this: forgiveness, pardon, mercy, and unmerited favor. Those are all important terms that say something about what grace is. In the Bible, the meaning of grace might be best captured by the First Letter of John: “This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us” (1 John 3:16 NIV).
If we want to know why Jesus Christ laying down his life for us is the one thing that shows us love in its purest form, then we’ll have to explore the Bible’s story of our relationship with God more deeply. But for a one-sentence statement about what God’s love is about, I’ll take that one from 1 John 3:16.
Wait—did you notice what I just did? I switched from talking about God’s grace to talking about God’s love. That happens quite a bit when we get into the biblical language about what grace is. Grace is really a word to describe how God is for us in every way. So it makes sense to talk about grace in terms of God’s love, because it is through God’s love that we find ourselves forgiven. We know grace when we receive pardon for our sin. Grace is pardon.
There’s another way to speak about grace as well. If forgiveness for sin is one part of what grace is, then the second way to understand grace is that it is God’s power for new life. In his second letter, Peter counsels us to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18). He’s talking about grace as a kind of power that allows us to grow spiritually so that we come to know Christ more fully.
The apostle Paul also talks about grace as a type of divine power. He says in Ephesians 4:7 that “to each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it” (NIV). And the reason for giving this grace is to raise up mature leaders in the church, “to prepare God’s people for works of service” (Eph. 4:12 NIV). Once again, we see grace being described as a kind of power for the life of discipleship.
“What is Grace? The Power of the Holy Ghost, enabling us to believe and love and serve God.”
—John Wesley1
You may have experienced grace in both of these ways. As a child, you knew when you did something wrong that things weren’t going to feel right again until your mom or dad forgave you. While the context might change as you grow older, the need to be reconciled when something goes awry doesn’t change. Whether it is a friend, your husband or wife, or a coworker, you know that you need to be forgiven when you’ve messed up in some way. Sometimes, of course, you are the one who needs to do the forgiving!
Christians who have received new birth in Christ can often speak profoundly about the sense of being forgiven by God. When grace is given and truly received in faith, then the sense of all the burden of past sin and broken relationships is lifted. Pardon for sin—the forgiveness that can only be found in Christ Jesus—is experienced through grace in its purest form.
What about experiencing not just the pardon but also the power of grace? The way we encounter the power of God’s grace is not likely to be as momentary and sudden as it is in that first wonderful experience of forgiveness. The power of grace is most likely to be experienced as the gentle but persistent force that nurtures our growth as disciples of Jesus. In fact, John Wesley often considered grace to be just that—the power of the Holy Spirit at work within us to help us grow spiritually.2 It is true that the Holy Spirit can work dramatically at certain points in our lives. On a day-to-day basis, though, the Spirit’s work is going to be subtler than that and nourishing to us in ways we might not always even realize. Like the effects of good sunlight, healthy soil, and ample water in a garden, the grace given through the Holy Spirit gives us what we need to grow just the right way so that we eventually bear wonderful fruit.
So far I’ve talked a lot about how we can understand grace as it’s shown to us in the Bible. But there are a couple of questions you might be asking at this point. Why do we need to be forgiven in the first place? And what kind of power does grace give me to grow that I don’t have just by living in the world?
These are good questions to ask. For some people, the answers are obvious. For others, they aren’t obvious at all. The need for both pardon and power from God are due to what the Bible calls “sin.” But since a word like sin isn’t really self-explanatory, it is worth looking at how the Bible describes it. Let me do that here.
There are really two ways we can think about sin: it is both an act and a disease. The notion of sinful acts is the easier of the two for us to wrap our minds around. We’re all taught from a young age that there are things we aren’t supposed to do. Don’t hit your sister. Stop grabbing toys away from the other children. Don’t take an extra cookie from the cookie jar. Those are all household rules, which are established by moms and dads to teach kids right from wrong. When we grow older, we learn that there are laws that our towns and cities and states have put into place to make sure society is livable. Obey the speed limit. Don’t steal other people’s things. Pay your taxes each year. So young or old, we’re confronted with a world where there are certain rules or laws we’re expected to keep in obedience to the authority over us (our parents, the government). Those authorities are responsible for keeping the peace and providing a good environment in which to live. Rules are necessary for that.
The Bible teaches us that God is the creator of all things, including us. God also loves everything that he has made, which we see in a passage from Psalm 145:9 that was one of John Wesley’s favorites: “The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works” (KJV). So beyond being just the creator, God is the governor of creation as well. As governor, God has also seen the need to establish a law for his creation and especially for those special creatures that he has made in his own image—human beings. One place we see God’s law summarized is in the Ten Commandments:
(Loving God) |
(Loving Neighbor) |
1. You shall have no other gods before God |
5. Honor your father and mother |
2. You shall not cast idols |
6. You shall not murder |
3. You shall not take the name of God in vain |
7. You shall not commit adultery |
4. You shall honor the Sabbath and keep it holy |
8. You shall not steal |
9. You shall not bear false witness |
|
10. You shall not covet |
God’s law does more than constrain wrongdoing (although it does do that). It also shows us how to embrace all that is good. As you can see in the previous diagram, the Ten Commandments give us guidance about how to love God and how to love our neighbor.
Sin comes into the picture when we break God’s law. We can do this through outward acts and we can also commit acts of the heart when we sin through our thoughts and desires. “Create in me a clean heart, O God,” Psalm 51:10 says, “and renew a right spirit within me.” It is a statement that recognizes the way that outwardly sinful acts usually begin as sins of the heart.
Sin is like a disease inside us as well. This may not be quite as obvious, but it explains everything about why we end up committing sinful acts at all—especially when we know such acts are wrong. Sin is like a plague that everyone in the human race is born with. The apostle Paul spoke about this in his personal testimony when he said that sin “deceived me” and “killed me” and that he had been “sold under sin.” For Paul, sin was like a presence that was constantly pressing him to do evil rather than good: “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (Rom. 7:15).
When we think about sin not just as things we do but as a presence within us, we begin to understand just what a problem it is. You can’t just decide that, starting right now, you’re not going to sin anymore. It just isn’t that simple! What’s worse, sin is something that affects the whole human race. Paul told us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). That means that there isn’t anyone who is free from the predicament of sin. We are alienated from God, living broken lives in a broken world. Whether it is in our actions or our hearts, we are constantly living lives of rebellion against the One who created us and will ultimately judge us.
That word—judge—can be a scary one. But it is another one of those terms we use to describe how God relates to us: Creator, Governor, and Judge. We do stand on the outside of God’s law because of our sin. As our judge, God should be expected to hold us accountable for our rebellion against the good and holy plan he has for our lives.
It’s here that we can come full circle to where we began, though. We started by talking about God’s grace. When we talk about grace as God’s love for us, the pardon and power of God in our lives, it all sounds great. But it’s only when we come to grips with the enormity of our sin that we truly realize why grace is necessary. Otherwise we might look at grace in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion. The truth, of course, is that we stand in desperate need of God’s grace in every possible way.
Once we understand our deep need for grace, how can we understand the way that grace actually works in our lives? After all, saying that grace is God’s love for us is one thing. Understanding how we receive that love is another. I can open up my arms to receive a hug from my wife or my brother. But how do I open up my arms to receive God’s grace?
Not long ago I heard Bishop Gary Mueller of the United Methodist Church present a teaching on the Wesleyan view of how grace works.3 He describes God’s grace interacting with us in these three ways:
• Grace is unconditional—God comes to each of us with the message that he loves us as we are, no matter our past, etc.
• Grace is transformational—God does not leave us as we are but rather transforms our hearts and lives.
• Grace is invitational—By grace, the Lord Jesus calls and empowers us to join him in the work of the gospel.
This is a wonderful way to capture the Wesleyan sense of how grace works in our lives. Unconditional, transformational, and invitational—these are terms that speak to the way the Bible shows how grace works, and they also help us to think about how the Wesleyan approach takes the biblical view seriously as it relates to daily discipleship.
I have a friend named Katherine who is a potter. We worked together for several summers in a program for high school youth. Katherine uses her skill in pottery to teach biblical lessons. Sitting at her potter’s wheel with her arms covered in clay, she shares stories of how God molds us like a master potter. She knows her source: the Bible speaks about God in this way. Jeremiah 18:6 says, “Just like clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand, O house of Israel” (NRSV). For my friend Katherine, the image of God as the potter and us as the clay speaks to the loving care that God has for the whole creation.
When we talk about God’s grace as unconditional, we mean that God loves absolutely everything he has made. The potter does not take up the clay, mold it, and work it if he hates the clay to begin with. And that is true of God in relation to the world. God is the master potter, and we are the work of his hands. God loves us.
When we talk about grace as unconditional, what we also mean by that is that there’s nothing we have to do in order to earn God’s love. And considering how limited we are and how infinite God is, that’s a very good thing! The unconditional nature of grace also means that there is no one that God excludes from his mercy. As it has often been said, this doesn’t mean that all people will be saved but it does mean that all people can be saved. This universal, unconditional offer of grace is attested to throughout the Bible. The entire thrust of the New Testament message about Jesus Christ is based on this—that he came as “the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world” (1 John 2:2 NRSV).
At its heart, grace is about growth. It is about taking us from where we are to where God wants us to be. This part of how grace affects us is summed up for me in two simple sentences:
1. Jesus Christ loves you just the way you are.
2. Jesus Christ loves you so much that he refuses to leave you the way you are.
Saying that Jesus loves us just as we are is important— it’s what allows us to speak about the unconditional nature of grace in the first place. But when we go on to say that Jesus’ love for us is so great that he wants to change us in some way, we are getting at the heart of the move from sin to salvation. We’re now speaking about the way that God’s grace is deeply transformational as well.
In the Bible, the two great themes of justification and new birth are related to the transformational power of grace. Justification sounds like a difficult word, but its meaning is simple. It means for something that is out of alignment to be put back right again. In this case, what is out of alignment is us. We are broken creatures. Our thoughts and deeds are often marked by sin. We have a wound within us that we don’t have the power to heal on our own. To be justified by God’s grace means that God puts us back in alignment with him. It means to be forgiven. This comes through the atoning work of Jesus Christ on the cross, when it is received by us personally. Jesus had no sin, but he suffered for our sin nevertheless. And he did this out of the depths of his love for us.
The new birth is the powerful experience of spiritual regeneration that comes in the wake of our justification. If justification is really about how we are viewed in God’s eyes, then the new birth is about how we come to be viewed in our own eyes. Peter refers to this great change when he speaks about the way that God the Father “has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3 NRSV). Our spiritual birth is the beginning of an ongoing growth in grace, which the Bible calls sanctification.
I know, I know. Sanctification sounds like another tricky term. But it’s really just another word for holiness. And in the New Testament, holiness is the word used to describe what happens to us when we are brought closer and closer to the heart of God by Jesus. We are made holy by that process.
Justification = Being made right
Sanctification = Being made holy
I grew up as a Methodist, but I never really heard words like sanctification or holiness during my childhood. So I was surprised to find out later that this idea was probably the most central spiritual concept for John Wesley (who, after all, was the leader of the Methodist revival). He believed that the best understanding of holiness is that it is all about love. And the book of the Bible that he thought captured holy love the best was the First Letter of John. “God’s love was revealed among us in this way,” John told us in 1 John 4:9, “God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him” (NRSV). Coming to faith in Jesus Christ holds profound spiritual meaning. It creates a change in us; it makes us holy. “God is love,” John explained, “and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them” (1 John 4:16b NRSV).
When we say that grace is transformational, we mean that Christ does not leave us as he finds us. Just as Jesus made the lame to walk, the blind to see, and the dead to be raised, so too does Jesus seek to heal us as well. Grace has the ability to forgive us for the wrongs we have committed. Grace also has the ability to heal us from the tendency to do wrong and be wrong. Think about it: if God only forgave us but didn’t heal us, then we’d end up right where we started in terms of our sin. Yet because the nature of grace is about both pardon and power, we can be both forgiven and healed!
The apostle Paul teaches us that the transforming power of grace works in our lives every day so long as we are continuing to walk in faith. “All of us,” Paul said, “with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor. 3:18 NRSV). Walking in the ways of God is like gazing into God’s own image. When we do that, we begin to be transformed into that same image. That means that life lived in the midst of God’s grace is a different kind of life than we could ever live otherwise.
Unconditional, transformational, and . . . invitational! What does it mean to say that grace is invitational? What is God inviting us to do by the working of his grace?
One of the great examples of invitational grace channeled through a person in my lifetime happened when I was in high school. It was the spring of 1993, and the famous college basketball coach Jim Valvano was dying of cancer. He was named as the recipient of the Arthur Ashe Courage and Humanitarian Award at the first annual ESPY Awards that year. Valvano was very sick by the time the awards ceremony came around, but somehow he was able to make it there. His friend Dick Vitale had to help him up to the podium so he could receive his award.4
Jimmy V took the mic when it came time for him to speak and didn’t give it back for eleven minutes. He spoke about his love for his family. He spoke about his enthusiasm for life. He brought just about everyone in the audience to tears. Toward the end of the speech Valvano said, “I just got one last thing, I urge all of you, all of you, to enjoy your life, the precious moments you have. To spend each day with some laughter and some thought, to get your emotions going. To be enthusiastic every day and . . . to keep your dreams alive in spite of problems, whatever you have.”5
A powerful message. But he didn’t stop there. He went on to urge the audience to join the fight against cancer and AIDS by getting involved and donating their time and energy and money. To make a difference somehow.
Then he ended by offering words of great assurance. He said that the cancer in his own body could only damage him so much. “It cannot touch my mind, it cannot touch my heart and it cannot touch my soul,” Valvano said. “And those three things are going to carry on forever.”
I’ve watched the video of Jimmy V’s speech many times. I’ve read the text of it word-for-word. The man was talking about God and about salvation. I don’t know how else to understand his closing words other than as words of great faith, spoken by someone sure of his salvation in Jesus Christ. When you couple those words with his encouragement to embrace life fully, to love boldly, and to do good works in the world, I think you have the perfect image of what the invitational work of grace is all about.
I have always found it interesting that Jesus even bothered calling fishermen and tax collectors to follow him. He was the Son of God. He surely didn’t need help from people who were inevitably going to get in the way more than anything else! Yet call them he did. He spent a whole lot of time teaching them and preparing them to carry out ministries of their own. When you read the stories of the four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—you can’t escape the sense that a big part of what it means to be Jesus’ disciple is to take the good news Jesus has given you and carry it out into the world so that others might come to know Jesus too.
He offers us his love so that we might be transformed. Then he invites us to carry that love to others so that they will be transformed as well.
Once we know this wonderful grace of God firsthand, we begin to want to encounter it in an ongoing way. God wants that as well. He has given us certain channels through which we can receive grace. They are the means of grace.
John Wesley called the means of grace “signs, words, or actions ordained of God” and “channels of conveying his grace to the souls of men.”6 What he really meant is that they are discipleship practices that we draw from the biblical witness. Wesley saw the life of the early church as the perfect model for how the means of grace should be located at the very heart of Christian discipleship. A key Scripture passage comes from the Acts of the Apostles, which tells us what the first Christians did following their baptism: “They devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers” (Acts 2:42). From this fertile ground of practical faith, many spiritual fruits were borne. Acts tells us that “awe came upon every soul,” that they met together daily and cared for one another’s material needs, and that their hearts were made glad by the rich spiritual fellowship they shared (vv. 43–46). In fact, it was through their faithful use of these means of grace that God’s gift of salvation was received. The passage concludes, “And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved” (v. 47).7
So it’s no wonder that Wesley put great stock in the importance of practices like prayer, the Lord’s Supper, searching the Scriptures, and robust fellowship. When he claimed that such things were ordained by God to serve as channels of grace into the lives of believers, he could point to a pretty solid biblical precedent! Since the time of the Pentecost, these are the very ways that God has been mediating his saving grace to the church.
The way that the Acts of the Apostles speaks of the means of grace as the daily practices of the Christian community also tells us something important about how they are meant to be used in the present. As practices, they are not one-time acts that supply us with all that we need in a single moment. They are also not solitary activities that we do in isolation from others. The means of grace are, most fundamentally, practices of discipleship that we embrace in an ongoing way within the community of faith. Their power is not in the practices themselves, but rather in the grace that those practices mediate through the Holy Spirit. Yet the practices are important; when they are engaged in a disciplined way, they become holy habits that work to transform us in heart and life.
Since we are human beings who undertake meaningful activities in all areas of our lives, it only makes sense that the way God would choose to convey his grace would be through day-to-day practices. Some of these practices are instituted in the sense that they are clearly present in both the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. (Thus, Christ has instituted them, or put them in place, directly.) Other practices are prudential in character, meaning that we use the biblical witness in conjunction with our practical wisdom to figure out what they look like in our own context. Still other practices are more general in that they are made up of more inward, contemplative disciplines that help us to stay focused on God in our daily living. I like to think of these three main categories of the means of grace in this way:
• instituted means of grace: what we learn from Christ;
• prudential means of grace: what we learn from our context; and
• general means of grace: what we learn by contemplation.
The means of grace offer us a whole pattern for the life of discipleship. When we practice them regularly and with discipline, they also lead us to understand grace more and more. And that shows us ever more deeply how much God loves us.
This is all wonderful good news, and it leads us into the heart of what this book is about. It’s in our nature to follow something—and grace gives us the ability to turn to Jesus Christ and follow him. Now it is time to look at the kind of life that is needed in order to truly grow toward spiritual maturity. There is a pattern to discipleship, and that pattern goes by a particular term: the means of grace.