Grace is the greatest word in the language, because Grace is the greatest concept in the Universe. I speak of grace as God uses the word. Certainly the word grace was around before God introduced the gospel of grace and Paul began to preach it. The Greek speaking peoples even used the word as a greeting. But God invested this finite word with infinite meaning. It became a destiny-changing, life-altering word when God got through with it. It is a power-filled word...full to overflowing, and it can change any life--your life, my life--in a moment of time. The word describes an adventure in Time that expands into Eternity, but, more than that, it is a window on the soul of God.

Paul uses the word grace to identify the infinite generosity of God. Religion does not! Religion has always been frightened, even angered, by God's pure grace. Religion is busy right now modifying grace, down-sizing it, compromising it, trying to make it fit the narrow confines of human logic. It will not fit! It is not a word belonging to earth and time, but to Heaven and Eternity. It tells us something about the nature of God that man desperately needs to know, but is reluctant to discover. Grace is the most shocking commodity in all of Creation. If "grace" doesn't shock you, bowl you over, boggle your mind...it isn't grace!

Grace comes from a root meaning "gift." A gift is always something absolutely free to one person because fully paid for by another. Anything other than that isn't grace. We can't stress this too much, because most Christians view grace as simply a more lenient form of law. Law is a system of conditional blessing and cursing. It has a perimeter. For instance, when a Jew under Law committed adultery, he went beyond the perimeter, beyond what the Law allowed. He transgressed, trespassed, crossed the line. He lost the blessing of the Law and incurred its curse.

Grace is a system of unconditional blessing. Our blessings aren't set before us to be earned by a merit system, as under Law. They are conferred on us in Christ. "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ." (Ephesians 1:3) Israel was imprisoned by the Law. Unfortunately, most Christians conceive of grace as a larger prison with more freedom, but a prison none the less. This wrong view of grace, that it is a more lenient, more generous law, causes Christians to be imprisoned when God meant us to be free. Free to serve Him, not because we have to (Law), but because we want to (Grace). Freedom is never a license to sin; it is always a liberty to serve!

Many object to pure grace on the grounds that, "If God doesn't punish us when we sin, we can sin all we want to." This objection reveals the inferior motivation with which some seek to serve God. I say seek because one who refrains from sinning in order to avoid punishment is not serving God, but self. Many don't realize that they are actually admitting that there are sins that they want to commit that they refrain from committing only because committing them would prove costly to themselves. Some have defined grace as unmerited favor, some as undeserved kindness. Grace is not only God's favor apart from any consideration of man's merit, it is God's favor in spite of man's demerit!

God's Word defines grace by describing it. We can tell what grace is by what grace does. Romans 3:24 says, "Being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus." To be justified is to be declared righteous. This means that God continues to give us a right standing with Himself by His grace. "Freely" means gratuitously--without a cause. Christ is said to be hated by man "without a cause." It is the same word here translated "freely." There is nothing in Christ to elicit the hatred of man. The cause of man's hatred arises in man, not in Christ. God justifies us without any reason for doing so existing in us. There is nothing in us requiring, or even inclining, God to declare us righteous. The cause is in Him, not in us! We are justified because of who and what He is, and not because of who and what we are. All of this is by His Grace. It is through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. "Redemption" means "purchase." It is the language of the slave market. To redeem a slave meant to buy a slave, to pay the purchase price. Here the word is intensified. Here it means to "buy the slave out" of the market place. We were not only paid for, but removed from the auction block! And this redemption is in Christ Jesus. This is grace!

Occasionally I hear someone object to the freeness of salvation as "cheap grace." Grace can never be "cheap." It cost God the life of His Son. The highest price that will ever be paid in all of Eternity was paid for us on Calvary. Our salvation cannot be "cheap." It is the most expensive entity in the Universe, but it is totally free to us because fully paid for by Another. This is what makes it a gift. Again, a gift is always completely free to one person because fully paid for by another.

This great truth of the freeness of our salvation cannot be understood by an unsaved person because it is only spiritually grasped. This is why so many seminary professors balk at salvation by grace. The flesh can only conceive of God saving man on the grounds of man's goodness. That man has no goodness that God can accept, and so God saves man on the grounds of His own goodness, lies beyond the capacity of unregenerate man to grasp. It must be disclosed to the soul by God.

It has been suggested that G-R-A-C-E stands for God's Riches At Christ's Expense. Not bad! Because grace is all that God the Father is free to do for you and me because of the death of His Son on Calvary. Grace is not Christ, through His death, "throwing the door of Heaven open." Grace is Christ buying Heaven for us and seating us at the Father's right hand.

The Bible's God is infinite in His perfections. Religion's god is not. Religion's god, like the gods of India and Greece, has limitations like man. God's generosity is infinite. It is boundless, measureless, endless, inexhaustible. Religion is fleshly. It cannot apprehend the concept of a God of limitless generosity. Religion's god will not save man apart from man's merit. The Bible's God only saves man apart from his merit!

If we remember that the carnal (fleshly) mind is just as carnal when it resides in a believer as in an unbeliever, we will better understand Christian opposition to the grace of God. Christians frequently object to the teaching of pure grace on the grounds that it encourages sin. I do not take this objection seriously, even though it is so widespread. First, because God's Word, while it acknowledges that grace can be used as an occation to the flesh, teaches that grace, when understood, is the greatest motivation to true holiness that the universe will ever see. Second, because the flesh would never object to violating the revealed will of God. No, the flesh objects to the grace of God for one reason only. Grace is the death of pride. It sweeps man from the stage and leaves God alone with all the glory. Man's excuse for rejecting unadulterated grace may be that it is an incitement to sin; his reason will always be that it does away with his pride. In grace, God does all the giving and man does only all the receiving. Grace is God's extension of kindness to totally ruined sinners. Until we are ready to admit our total ruin we will not be in a position to appreciate infinite generosity. God is not a Maxwell Street merchant. Salvation is not God making bargains with men. Religion will always insist that man must add something to the crosswork of Christ. God's Word will not tolerate any additions. Either Christ did all at Calvary, or He did nothing there! If the death of God's Son provided 99% of your salvation, and you had to contribute 1%, you would be completely lost until you anteed up your one percent. When you did, you would have saved yourself--become your own Savior. Ninety-nine percent saved is 100 percent lost! God is the only Savior in Scripture. He saves without any help from anyone else. And He saves on the basis of His own infinite generosity. A generosity without measure. Grace is the window through which we view an infinitely generous God.