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Can grace be defined?

Imagine tomorrow you receive news that you are going stone cold deaf. The sounds of life, the wonder of the voices that you hear and the music that invites passion within you will soon be gone. You strive to find an answer, you go beyond the original diagnosis and to doctor after doctor. You see the very best doctors in the world looking for an answer. And yet, time is running out. Soon the wonderful melodic sounds you hear, not just the tiny nuances but the whole ability to hear those you love, will be gone.

You now have seen, so you think, all the doctors who could possibly provide answers and all have said one thing: There is absolutely no hope! So you give up and accept that this is indeed what God has designed for you, a life of utter silence. The pain, the agony of knowing that the day is no longer years away but months away. The sounds of silence become a part of life but not in a treasured way, as in all of us welcome a bit of silence. They become a part of your life in a very painful way, making life at times seem unbearable. Then one day you are told of another doctor who is doing wonderful work. At the insistence of loved ones, you go. After months of testing, a device is surgically installed which enables you to hear and now where once silence reigned supreme, you hear the symphonic sounds of life again! Where once all hope had been lost, new hope has now been given, and as a result, life has been returned to a point where it is no longer deeply painful.

There are many different stories where hope can be lost, from a crippling trauma or life-threatening illnesses, the threat of the loss of a child, even the loss of your home. Often when such events bring the loss of hope, it takes outside intervention to step in and restore, some miraculous event or someone who has an answer that brings hope. Rarely are we able on our own to do something to restore that lost hope. While many may not have personally experienced such events, all of us who live on this round blue marble have been condemned to a different kind of hopelessness.

All of us are just moments away from the train named Eternity running us over as we lie tied to the railroad tracks of condemnation by ropes of our making. (We are condemned to spend eternity away from God because we fall short of God’s character of perfection.) These ropes are made by the choices that we make that are contrary to the choices God wants us to make. We willingly make these choices revealing that we are not capable of living how we were designed to live. These choices are what is known as sin or man’s continued failure to meet the standards of God, which is perfection.

Our sins that have left us with no hope but to spend an eternity away from the One who is deeply passionate about us. Sins that have condemned us and left us destined to an eternity with no hope of life.

Helplessly and hopelessly we lie on those tracks held hostage by our sins until someone tells us, that while the Creator of the universe demands a ransom, one that we are unable to pay, no matter how good a life we live. The ransom God demands is to satisfy his need for justice because we constantly fall short of God’s perfection. Yet, because of the Creator’s great mercy and passionate love for us, He has paid the ransom! We are told in the Bible (which is His Word) that He paid it because of His desire to showcase His greatness, His unconquerable goodness and generosity and His love towards us. The cost of this ransom was the highest ever paid — the life of His Son. The sacrifice that paid the ransom was perfect and needed no additional sacrifices, so there is no cost to us who have been saved and given new hope.

There grace is defined. God’s love is the reason He has given us hope, where only eternal separation from God once existed. It is a hope of freedom that comes not from merit but from sacrifice, and not our sacrifice, but Christ’s. The hope and freedom is offered to condemned slaves, not because they earned it, but precisely because they could not earn it. We are the condemned slaves who not only have been condemned by the guilt of our failure to meet God’s standard, but are tied to the chains of shame from the wrong choices we make. We are also chained and enslaved to serve nothing but ourselves and Satan.

Here in the stanza of an old hymn, we find the simplicity and power of God’s love for us.

O how He loves you and me,

O how He loves you and me,

He gave His life, what more could He give?

O how He loves you, O how He loves me,

O how He loves you and me.

Jesus to Calv’ry did go,

His love for mankind to show;

What He did there bro’t hope from despair:

O how He loves you, O how He loves me,

O how He loves you and me.

(Written by Kurt Kaiser, 1976.)

The shorthand for grace is ‘mercy, not merit.’ Grace is getting what you don’t deserve and not getting what you do deserve. Karma is all about getting what you deserve. Christianity teaches that getting what you deserve is death with no hope of resurrection. Grace is the opposite of karma. While everyone desperately needs it, grace is not about us. Grace is fundamentally a word about God: his un-coerced initiative and pervasive, extravagant demonstrations of care and favor. It is unearned and unconditional, being freely given to all who believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.*

* Justin Holcomb, On The Grace of God. Crossway. First Edition. 2013.