Grace

February 8th, 2022

Grace, Truth, Forgiveness

Some think that Grace & Forgiveness are like a "wordly" contract: you do what you promise, and you get what the contract is obligated to give you. If you do not do as you promise, you have broken the contract and get nothing and may even be punished. God did make a contract, but His contract is different. It is dependent only on Him and His Word.

And "The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth. For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ."
John 1:14,17

What exactly is grace? And is it limited to Jesus' life and ministry? You may be surprised to know that Jesus never used the word itself. He just taught it and, equally important, He lived it. Furthermore, the Bible never gives us a one-statement definition, though grace appears throughout its pages . . . not only the word itself but numerous demonstrations of it. Understanding what grace means requires our going back to an old Hebrew term that meant "to bend, to stoop."

To show grace is to extend favor or kindness to one who doesn't deserve it and can never earn it. Receiving God's acceptance by grace always stands in sharp contrast to earning it on the basis of works. Every time the thought of grace appears, there is the idea of its being undeserved. In no way is the recipient getting what he or she deserves. Favor is being extended simply out of the goodness of the heart of the giver.

Trust is intertwined with Grace & Forgiveness in God's ways. In Mt. 18:21 Peter asked "Lord, How many times shall I forgive My brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?" The meaning of sin is a transgression (intentional, unintentional or by omission) against another, to do something contrary to what is expected by the other.

So when Jesus answered in Vs. 22, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times," it must have shocked Peter. How can anyone forgive someone that intentionally or unintentionally betrays what you are expecting from them over and over and over and over again without also losing trust that they will honor what they say? Our hesitancy to willingly forgive or to trust goes against everything we hear in the world . . ."Fool me once shame on you, Fool me twice shame on me" or "I may forgive, but I won't forget." That is the thinking of the world and why some say "Trust once broken can never be restored." That is not what God says or did through Jesus.

Psalm 103:12 says "as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us." Trust is not dependent on our ability to prove we have turned from our ways. It is dependent on the life and blood Jesus paid to remove our transgressions completely from us as though they never existed. That is exactly the kind of forgiveness God gives through Jesus Christ.

Trust and forgiveness are not dependent upon our performance to keep our word, they are purely based upon the Grace of God through Jesus Christ's death and resurrection for us.
What does this picture mean to you? Are the arrows going the right way? Should they be going the other way? Or both ways?

Posted in Grace, forgiveness