Grace

One of the things that we talk about often is 'grace'.  Grace is very important to us because of the grace that our God has given us, and the grace we are called to give to each other.  I read a blog yesterday around the idea of giving grace to employees and fellow workers in the workplace and it got me wondering about what grace really is, and how that blog would translate to gospel community.  So I looked it up and found several different definitions.  For my purposes I picked these three:

• generosity of spirit: a capacity to tolerate, accommodate, or forgive people
• gift of God to humankind: in Christianity, the infinite love, mercy, favor, and goodwill shown to humankind by God
• freedom from sin: in Christianity, the condition of being free of sin, e.g. through repentance to God

As I quickly found out the word 'grace' has many different meanings and uses.  I also realized that I don't have the capacity to properly define it, articulate it, or provide a proper example of it.  It just feels so beyond what my mind can grasp.

Here are a couple statements from that blog that caught my eye, slightly modified:

"Grace. It seems we’ve taken the marrow out of the word. We’ve Americanized it to mean that we can do anything we darn well please, invoke the grace card, and smile our way through our transgressions.

Why is it that we applaud Jesus offering grace to folks, but we miss how He threw a holy-hissy-fit in the temple, turning over tables? That’s not gracious—certainly not conciliatory. What kind of tyrannical boss would do that?But what if grace is invoked to such an extent that innocents are harmed? What if we extend so much grace to others that they’re enabled to keep offending? Is that grace?"

I don't know that I would have used the same words as the author of this blog, but I think the author made a great point.  At what point does grace (a capacity to tolerate, accommodate) become problematic?  At what point does this grace start to enable people to remain in the sin that they are most definitely called away from?  A couple verses to consider today:

Romans 6:1-2 - What shall we say, then?  Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase?  By no means!  We died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?

Jude 1:4 - ...They are godless men, who change the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord"

Lord, I pray that You would help us to fully understand the grace You have offered and to accept it fully. I pray that You will lead us and show us how to always properly apply grace to ourselves and others. I also pray that You would reveal to us, areas where we have allowed grace to become a license to continue our sinful behavior or as an excuse to not challenge or call others out of theirs.  Be with us to day, guide and direct us as You see fit.  In the name of Jesus, Amen.