Paul, who devoted his life to earning righteousness through the Mosaic law, found something that was foreign to him: grace. To clarify grace, he later wrote, if it is “by grace, it is no longer of works, otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Romans 11:6 NKJV). Grace is not dependent on us having something to offer as a prerequisite. If we say, “I can’t receive grace because I did not do well,” we have turned grace into a reward. It is no longer biblical grace. Grace (for instance, in the form of God’s help to us) isn’t given based on how well we’ve behaved, good deeds we’ve done, some charitable work we are proud of, or some difficult goal we’ve achieved. If we have received Christ, we are positioned for blessing because grace depends on his finished work, not ours.
If we cannot expect much from God because we have not measured up in any of these departments—really, in anything about ourselves at all—then we mischaracterize God’s grace. Grace is about God’s superabundant willingness to give because of his magnificent love.
We feel we have to have something to give, some amount to pay, before the Lord will bless us, because many of our relationships, community, and business ties work that way. The kingdom of God works on a different principle. We are all sinners in need, and the Lord wants to train us into his masterpieces of love. We can’t tell how loving he is if we put our efforts first and count his blessing as a result. How can we see the greatness of the God of love when the blessings are only a payoff for our hard work?
Grace sort of looks like when a child doesn’t have any money for the toy in the window, then her grandparent tells her, “Let’s go inside. I’ll get that for you.” Grace looks like when a driver pulls up to a tired hitchhiker, with thumb out, wearily plodding along, and offers him a ride the rest of the way. There are no transactions taking place. Just free gifts. These are pictures of grace.
Grace is best seen when we are depleted of any merits. We humble ourselves and the Lord exalts us. We do wrong and the Lord forgives. We feel unworthy and the Lord tells us we are his, accepted in the Beloved. These are pictures of grace.
Like a VIP pass, Christ’s merits of perfect obedience to the Father secured for us his blessings for all time. His righteousness has been put to our account (the technical word is “imputed”—Romans 4:22-24). It’s in the bank, and we can draw from it when the enemy says we’re unworthy, unloved, and rejected by God. So it is with his promises.
Because Paul had clothed himself with self-righteousness, it disqualified him from receiving grace or recognizing grace. The Galatian church thought they needed to add the Mosaic laws to their faith be more righteous, and they fell from grace (Galatians 5:4). The gifts the Holy Spirit freely gave them stopped coming. Repentance and faith restores grace.
Many of us church-goers may never comprehend grace because we think God will bless us on the basis of doing well, or are laboring in the church, or are nicer than “those bad people,” and so on. We mischaracterize grace when we believe our blessings come from our good behaviors. As I’ve said, we’ve turned grace into a reward. Pride always does this.
“If it is of works it is no longer grace, otherwise work is no longer work” (Romans 11:6 NKJV). If we expect God to bless us because of our work, we mischaracterize work. In other words, our work puts God in our debt. “Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace but [counted] as debt” (Romans 4:4). We put God in our debt. We effectively count our blessings as wages that we rightfully earned. So when difficult times come instead of the good times we expect, we feel God did not keep up his end of the bargain. He let us down and we say, “After all that work I did for you, how could you do this to me?”
In the kingdom of the Son of his love, God cannot bless our work the way we think. He wants us to see how much he loves us, and that comes when we cannot repay him and his blessings. “God demonstrates his own love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). By faith, apart from any works of righteousness we have done (Titus 3:5), we accepted this revelation and believed, and the Savior blessed us with salvation.
This pattern is to continue. In our need, we come to him in faith and he blesses. We come empty and he fills us. We come to the throne of grace, not the throne of a debtor! Self-righteous pride prevents us from seeing this God of love. Therefore the Pharisees sought to crucify the Christ.
On the other end of the spectrum from pride, our unworthiness keeps us from approaching him. It would have been enough if the little drummer boy of the Christmas song presented just himself to Jesus. But he felt he needed something more to offer, some gift to bring. “I played my drum for him.” He finally found a reason to come forward. Pah-rumpa-pom-pom. But grace wants us to come just as we are, without one plea of merit. So when the tax collectors and prostitutes heard Christ’s message of grace, they pressed in (Matthew 21:31).
I remember the day the Spirit revealed a grace that I had missed for decades. I was blessed by all the time and effort I put into my Bible study times, receiving encouraging messages again and again (a few are on this site). I had thought my hard work was really paying off. But the Spirit revealed a free gift of grace I had been blind to. I thought I was getting out of it what I put into it. But God was merely opening the eyes of a needy sinner who wanted the truth of God. I had merely been positioning myself before the very channel God uses to reveal himself. The Word of God. His grace did all the rest, opening my eyes to see him. Now I come to the Word in faith, with nothing to offer, and receive. Then I have something to give.
I’m not better than you. I need help like everyone else. When it comes to enjoying music, I am handicapped by my hearing problem. But when it comes to growth in the kingdom of God, we are all handicapped. We’ve all sinned and fall short (Romans 3:23). Then by the Spirit we recognize what blessings he has through faith in Jesus. We then magnify the greatness of his love to sinners and glorify him. Then do we have great news to tell to our generation.
