Born to Live in God’s Grace
We sing about grace. It’s amazing and how sweet the sound! We preach by grace. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith…the gift of God – not by works”. (Ephesians 2:8-9). We encourage with grace. It transforms, creates anew and testifies to the resurrection of Jesus. It empowers us to vanquish the invincible and overcome the impossible but also makes us mighty in weakness. Grace gives the poor man wealth without an infusion of cash and the blind man sight without the healing of eyeballs. All of these are things we say as believers and Christians.
But what IS God’s grace, exactly, and how DO we ‘live’ in it? The most common definition in all of Christendom is that God’s grace is His unmerited favor. In an everyday modern English translation, it means undeserved approval. Breaking it down even further reveals that both words have use in measuring worth. It is no surprise that in a society that prizes wealth and power above all, the word grace is used to express something one person extends to another despite their expectations being unmet in an exercise of weighing value, worth or merit.
Looking at the word grace as recorded in one of the world’s oldest living languages, Aramaic, the spoken dialect of Jesus, gives us a better grasp of what God says is the true meaning as the believer should understand it. Grace is an inherent part of the nature of God. It is a quality unique to our Creator, not necessarily an action extended to us after an assessment of our significance. By having the Spirit of God infuse us with His power we can share in a characteristic that we could never manufacture in our own strength.
We are gifted to BE grace-full and in this state of being, ACT grace-full-y towards our fellow man. This God-given ability is what generates the power to relate to the world beyond our human senses and personal expectations. It shapes our perception beyond our feelings. It strengthens our resolve beyond our free will. It restrains our raging flesh and calms our wounded souls. It translates God’s will to the language of human intention. It shines light into our darkness. This is grace that is God’s to give and ours to inhabit. As He calls to us, our response is faith. His response to us is His Grace. “Let us then approach the 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).
