The gift

brown gift box with pink ribbon

Not too long ago, someone suggested to me there must be a prerequisite condition in someone to receive God’s grace. The statement was not so much a suggestion but a challenge. Of course, this crossed the grain of everything I had been taught about grace, that it was God’s gift unmerited. The statement suggested I could do something to earn such favor though I also realized this person had not taken his thinking far enough.

This idea makes me believe, if I take the statement at face value, grace is conditional upon either who I am or what I do. There was beneath the proclamation an effort to prove what scripture says by quoting scripture. I am incapable of quoting scripture as some are, but I strive in this new life born of the Spirit to understand what it means. Better to do than to prove compels me.

Now I think the offering of such an idea conjures some problems. First, if grace is conditional, the notion changes the ground of what Scripture says in other places and what Christ taught. No longer could I look upon God as working His will in our lives, rather I should consider that man could invoke God’s favor for his own means. Man could systemize this if he chose(he has). Further, the idea elevates the receiver and lessens God.

The reason for grace always rests with the giver and never the receiver. If one is to define grace, he should say at the outset grace is not good luck or good fortune. Grace is a gift. And a gift, in God’s world, always says the reasons for giving lies with the giver. Man’s world muddles the picture with a tit for tat mentality. I cannot cause grace.

Let’s consider baptism. In any understanding of baptism, the bottom line is we should recognize it is what God does for us. I believe grace to be the same. I have received grace. I remember the day. Since I was baptized as an infant, I do not remember my baptism. But both were gifted to me unmerited by what God did.

Remembering the day grace appeared, I felt an overwhelming sense of relief and sheer joy. I am confident, in His mercy, God revealed something of His character to me on that day. Nothing of nature was involved, not of me or of earth, only was it of God, supernatural. Nothing in me warranted the gift save God’s love, for nothing in me existed as a prerequisite. God showed His love that day as He does for the atheist, for my enemy, and the wretched sinner, the reason I am to extend grace to my enemy who I believe is most undeserving. Ask John Newton.

If God finds anything in us to grant His grace, He finds that part of us so created in His image. But God does not need a reason for such a gift. Grace, then, becomes the means by which God calls us back to Him, to a peace beyond understanding, a peace over being right. Christ taught as much.

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