Abide || August 22
The Grace of God - “charis”
The world will spend all week telling you who you need to become. Every Saturday morning, we’ll remember who you already are in Christ. Friends, welcome back to Abide.
The Grace of God - “charis”
Grace is one of those words we use so often in Christianity that it can become easy to forget how extraordinary it actually is. We sing about grace. We pray for grace. We say grace before dinner. We name approximately half of all Christian baby girls Grace. But when Scripture talks about grace, it is describing something at the very center of who God is and how He relates to us.
The Greek word charis (KAH-ris), translated as “grace,” appears more than 150 times in the New Testament. It describes favor freely given, something offered without expectation that the recipient could ever repay it. It is related to the Greek word chairo, meaning “to rejoice.” Grace is favor that produces joy because it gives us what we could never earn for ourselves.
Paul makes that unmistakably clear in Ephesians:
“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9, NIV).
Grace is the kindness of God that we did not earn and cannot repay.
But grace is not only God’s forgiveness of our sin. It is also His power at work within us. Grace is both pardon and power. It welcomes us exactly where we are while refusing to leave us there.
Titus 2:11–12 says, “For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people. It teaches us to say ‘No’ to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives” (NIV).
Grace teaches us.
That matters because sometimes we treat grace as though it gets us through the door of Christianity and then our performance takes over from there. Jesus saves us, but now it is our job to be good enough, disciplined enough, faithful enough, bold enough, spiritually mature enough. We know we cannot earn salvation, but we can still spend an awful lot of time trying to earn God’s approval.
And when we inevitably fall short, it is easy to imagine that God must be terribly disappointed in us.
But God is not discovering you as you go. He did not save an imaginary, future version of you who always wakes up early to read her Bible, never loses her patience, never doubts, never gets distracted during prayer, and enthusiastically shares the Gospel with the person sitting beside her on every airplane.
He knows you.
“You have searched me, LORD, and you know me,” David writes in Psalm 139:1 (NIV).
Before God called you His own, He knew every part of you. Every weakness. Every struggle. Every sin you would need to bring before Him. Every place where sanctification would take longer than you wanted it to.
There was never an illusion for you to shatter.
This does not mean our sin does not matter to God. Scripture is clear that sin grieves Him, and grace is never permission to remain comfortably in rebellion. The same grace that forgives us also calls us out of sin and gives us the power to walk differently. “Where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Romans 5:20, NIV), but that abundant grace is meant to transform us, not make us indifferent toward holiness.
There is, however, a difference between the conviction of a loving God and living beneath the constant assumption that God is disappointed in you.
Conviction draws us back to Him. Shame convinces us to hide from Him.
Grace tells us we can come near.
When Paul pleaded with God to remove the weakness he was struggling with, the Lord answered, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9, NIV).
Not My grace will be sufficient when you get this under control. Not My grace was sufficient the first few times, but we really should be past this by now.
“My grace is sufficient for you.”
The Christian life is not a gradual process of becoming so spiritually competent that we no longer need very much from God. We are saved by grace, sustained by grace, changed by grace, and carried by grace. His strength meets us precisely where ours runs out.
And His grace does not reset reluctantly.
“Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning” (Lamentations 3:22–23, NIV).
Every morning.
There is fresh mercy when yesterday was not your finest showing. There is grace when you missed the quiet time you intended to have, when your prayers have felt distracted, when you were not as patient as you should have been, when fear won for a minute, when you have to repent again, and when you realize there is still a whole lot of Jesus left for you to become like.
God is not standing at a distance waiting for you to become impressive enough to approach Him again. He is compassionate and gracious, “slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness” (Exodus 34:6, NIV). That is how God describes Himself.
If the version of God living in your mind is perpetually irritated, demanding, difficult to please, disappointed in you, and waiting for you to mess up, it is worth asking whether that picture actually came from Scripture.
Grace does not make us careless about holiness. It makes holiness possible. We obey because we are loved, not so that we can become lovable. We repent because there is grace waiting for us, not because we need to convince God to want us again.
And the more freely we receive that grace, the more freely we can extend it. Grace received becomes grace given—to the person who disappointed us, the person who needs another chance, the person who is still growing, and even the person who did not earn it.
Because, of course, neither did we.
This Week’s Reflection
This week, pay attention to what you believe about God when you fall short. When you miss the mark, do you believe His grace draws you toward Him, or do you feel like you need to improve your behavior before you can come close again?
Spend some time reading Ephesians 2:8–9, Titus 2:11–12, and 2 Corinthians 12:9. Ask God to reveal any places where you have been trying to earn what He has already freely given, and any places where you have used shame as a substitute for the transforming work of grace.
Then receive it.
His grace is sufficient for you today. Not for the better version of you. Not for the version who finally gets everything right.
For you.
Keep walking with Jesus, friends.
bytaylormcgee
