Grace

What is Grace? 
  How to describe it?
  What is meant by God's grace?
  Have you experienced God's grace today? How?
  How can we receive it?
 

In the New Testament, the word ‘grace’ comes from a Greek word that means ‘a beneficent disposition toward someone, favor, grace, gracious care/help, goodwill’ (in Greek, ‘charis’, definition taken from the Greek reference dictionary BDAG).

It is often described as an ‘unmerited favor’, which in simpler language means: a gift.

Once we understand the meaning of atonement, this reconciliation between man and God through Jesus' life and death, it is important to understand the first foundation for experiencing ourselves this reconciliation with God. 

This first foundation is God’s grace. In our relationship with God, we have to grasp the fact that all starts with God, not with us. God has created us, and he has provided in many ways even if we did not realize it - what we call 'God's providence.' He makes his sun rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. He initiates ways in which we can respond to him. 

We don’t reach God, it is God who reaches us first and then enables us to respond to him. It’s what some call ‘responsible grace’. This is God’s grace toward us, his love always in action. Can we reject his grace? Yes. But the most important question is: can we receive his grace? And the answer is a resounding YES!

We are in a world where many people say that nothing is free, that you have to pay for everything. Well, the good news is that it is not the case, many things are free. For instance, the air is free, the rain is free, the sun is free. Can we spoil these free gifts, these graces of God, or stop receiving them? Yes. Yet, the very moment when we would stop completely to receive God’s grace we will die.

This concept of 'grace' is so foreign to us that we sometimes have to add the adjective 'prevenient': 'prevenient grace' emphasizes that we receive God's grace before we do anything. God's grace, at its foundation, is prevenient - which means that it comes before we do anything.

In this world, many gods or idols claim our attention, yet they don’t invite us to simply receive, they want to ‘make deals' with us, to make exchanges, to get something from us, so that we give something in order to receive something else.

Once we understand that God’s grace is the foundation of this world, of our existences, we can start to understand the ways we can interact with God. It all starts with God, with His multifaceted grace that shines in each of our days, and we simply have to learn how to respond to God’s wonderful grace. 

The first step of this response to God’s grace will be illustrated in the next article on repentance.