That Word…

Now I’m going to use my ration of Princess Bride quotes for the year.  In the movie, one of the characters keeps saying, “Inconceivable!”  to which Inigo Montoya says, “You keep using that word.  I do not think it means what you think it means.”  

We Christians have a number of those words, like, love, truth, faith.

And grace.

No doubt, years before you became more theologically astute, you heard grace spoken about in a variety of ways.  The ballet dancer had grace.  The bank loan had a built-in grace period.  That’s what grace was–elegant bearing, style, or the simple favor of forgoing a debt.  

Then at church you heard it mentioned so often that it became one of those words overused, but still largely undefined.  Today grace lingo proliferates not only in pulpits and pews, but in Christian social media.  And yet, subtle forms of religious legalism still pervade, as if our goodness and practices carry some kind of superior moral weight.   

We visit, if not borrow certain ceremonial items from the Covenant of Law (of course, flavoring them with Christian sentiments), and where that isn’t enough, canonize innumerable traditions of our own.  It seems to be a contingency plan in case grace isn’t enough to complete our sanctification.       

But as it is, grace defines God’s entire bearing toward us from beginning to end.  

God sending Christ was grace (Titus 2:11)
Christ coming, dying, and rising, was grace (John 1:14, Heb. 2:9)
The content of the message about His work is grace (Acts 14:3)
The movements and efforts of the messengers is grace (1 Cor. 15:10, Eph. 3:8)
Their endurance under persecutions is grace (1 Pet. 2:19; 2 Cor. 12:7-9)
The response of faith in the hearers of the grace message is grace (Eph. 2:8-9)
The continuation of their new life in Christ is grace (Acts 13:43).

In fact, the terms of our entire relationship with God could be called “the covenant of grace.”

That’s comprehensive.   It has to be, because of the radical effects of our sin, ruining everything, sapping energy, warping thoughts and motives, and making us spiritually deaf, blind, and lame.

Thank God, He covered all the bases, and filled every crack.  Anything less would mean He wouldn’t even be talking to  us.  And even if He did, we wouldn’t tolerate it.