Amazing Grace

by Maurice Pujol
Published October 18, 2006

A classic definition of grace is “God’s unmerited favor.”

When believers talk about grace, they often use the term in tandem with “mercy.” We talk of God’s grace and mercy so much, the meanings of these words – or rather the truth behind the meanings – get a bit confused. Grace and mercy, however, are two different things.

God’s mercy is an intrinsic quality of God; it is an aspect of His perfect nature. It’s an expression of His divine love for us, His never-ending willingness to forgive His children, no matter how many times they fail. We can’t understand this mercy. If any of us were in God’s position, we would have given up on human beings a long time ago.

In an imperfect sense, God just can’t help Himself. If He were any less merciful, then He wouldn’t be God.

On the other hand, God is all-just. He cannot condone sin, excuse sin or overlook sin. If He winked at sin for even a second, He would cease to be God.

How can these two seemingly contradictory aspects of God’s nature be reconciled? The wages of sin, Paul tells us, is death. It was through sin that death entered the picture. All of creation, including man, became subject to decay and destruction because of man’s rebellion against God.

Yet, in spite of all that Jesus went through, in spite of so many expressions of repentance and declarations of faith, believers through the centuries have continued to fail God. The various temptations to sin never go away, even among the holiest of us. In fact, one of the qualities of those who have dedicated themselves to Christ most completely is a continuing awareness of one’s own tendencies to sin. The best believers are those who realize they are totally dependent on God to get through this life successfully.

This is where God’s amazing grace enters the picture. Grace is a small dose of God’s awesome power, passed on to believers through the anointing of the Holy Spirit. It is a free gift we don’t deserve and can never earn; that’s why it’s called “unmerited.” It is an expression of God’s love, the byproduct of His mercy, given to us because God knows it’s the only way we’ll make it back to Him at the end of our days.

Grace is the transforming power that turns sinners into saints, spiritual weaklings into powerful prayer warriors. These very words I am writing are a result of God’s grace. My perception of these truths is not a result of my great talents or personal holiness. I received an anointing at a crucial time of my life, an infilling of the Holy Spirit that removed the blinders from my eyes and gave me a wonderful vision of humanity and our relationship with our Creator.

I realize that all good that comes from me, everything I say or write that touches people’s hearts, comes not from me, but from the anointing within me. That’s what God’s grace is – a real force within real people living in the real world.

Grace is a great power that gives us the ability to resist those ever present temptations to sin. Believers are transformed instantly by the Holy Spirit, but the process of conforming our minds and bodies takes a while longer, quite often an entire lifetime. But what are a few decades in comparison with eternity?

Grace is also concrete evidence that God is with us, that His promise to never leave nor to forsake us is ironclad. When believers fail, they feel the power of God’s grace picking them back up, getting them back on the path God has laid out for them. This abiding presence of the Holy Spirit is God’s grace in action, a dynamic that raises believers to ever higher levels of holiness as they go through this life.

Grace is also quite possibly the power to see all these truths in the first place. When a person is saved, it is God who initiated the experience. Those whose hearts are touched by Jesus have been given a great gift, the ability to respond and to receive the gift of eternal life. The response, of course, is still left to each individual; and it’s the most important decision anyone can ever make.

Anyone wrestling with these ideas or who wants a better understanding of God’s grace should very carefully read the Book of Romans, especially its pivotal chapter eight. This Pauline letter is the story of God’s grace revealed to a man who had been transformed in a dramatic way. After grace changed him, Paul was given the special ability to explain it to all believers, both in his time and in the centuries to follow.

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