What is Grace?
The Need for Grace
Grace is one of the most important realities of life in God. Grace, too, is the most important thing to shape our relationships with one another. Paul’s words in Ephesians 2:8 can stand in as one example: ‘For it is by Grace you have been saved, and this is not from yourselves; it is a gift from God.’
I am writing this on the verge of the Easter celebration tomorrow. We will gather as a church, in our various congregations around the world, to celebrate the gracious giving of the Son by the Father. But for all the talk of grace in our day, there is at times some confusion as to what grace really is. For some, grace works out to be kindness. For others it’s something closer to pity. It turns out defining a doctrine with so much at stake can be tricky.
Any quick answer—especially one in roughly 90 seconds—runs the risk of being overly-simplistic. But we must start somewhere, and for me this is the answer I would give if a friend asked me to quickly summarize grace.
