The world really doesn’t have a definition for grace other than “smoothness and eloquence of movement.”
Here is a beautiful Christian definition and description of grace:
Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return… Grace is being loved when you are unlovable…. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities… It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally hold…. Grace is one-way love… One-way love lifts up. One way love cures. One-way love transforms. It is the change agent of life. (Paul F. M. Zahl, Grace in Practice: A Theology of Everyday Life.)
In an essentially graceless world, our hearts long for this most beautiful of all virtues as a dying man in the desert thirsts for water. Yet few recognise that this is the source of the desperation that gnaws at them from the cradle to the grave.
So, how is it that we find grace? Grace, by its very definition, seeks us out and comes to us. We cannot find it ourselves and go to it, to place ourselves in the embrace of grace. Grace comes to every man and every woman, and it brings with it the opportunity for us to accept it and respond.
The greatest revelation of all is the grace that comes through Jesus Christ.
So then, how is it that grace comes? It comes in a person, through the revelation of Jesus Christ.
The apostle Peter writes,
Fix your hope completely on the grace to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:13, NASB).
This isn’t talking about the second coming. This is talking about the grace that has already been revealed with the incarnation of our Lord, and which is revealed afresh to countless people when they discover the beauty and wonder of Jesus.
That’s how grace comes. It has already come, and it will come afresh to you if you are willing. Don’t worry. Be assured that grace will find you. And if it has already found you, it will find you again, continually, with ever-greater revelations of the goodness and the mercies of God. Because grace will never let you go.
The greatest revelation isn’t some prophecy, or the meaning of some great conspiracy. The greatest revelation of all is the grace that comes through Jesus Christ.
For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:1, NIV).
There is no greater knowledge you can have than the simplicity of grace, no greater logic than the irrationality of grace, no greater wisdom than the foolishness of grace. There is no greater experience you can have than entering into the grace that has been revealed through Jesus Christ.
Article supplied with thanks to Dr Eliezer Gonzalez.
About the Author: Dr Eli Gonzalez is the Senior Pastor of Good News Unlimited and the presenter of the Unlimited radio spots, and The Big Question.
Feature image: Photo by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash.