Core Values: Grace

Grace is the thread that weaves together the tapestry of the story of God’s relationship with humanity. From creation through the present day, his unmerited love and favor has been consistently and generously lavished on human beings - on you and on me. We are recipients of the greatest gift in eternity, but our hearts are painfully fickle at times, aren’t they? We grumble and we complain, we lack gratitude, we covet that which we do not have, all while God has gifted us with the incomparable riches of His grace. 

Incomparable riches.

If we have been blessed with – indeed, lavished – with a gift that is incomparable, why do we continue to seek out satisfaction in things that cannot come close to matching the richness of God Himself?

Sometimes we forget how sinful and broken our hearts truly are apart from Christ. We don’t fully comprehend our own helplessness and desperation we are when left to our own devices. So our view of grace is cheap. Because after all, if I’m not that bad, Jesus didn’t really have to go to the cross, and I don't have to give up anything to accept a gift that isn't particularly remarkable.

On the other hand, sometimes we get so caught up in our sinfulness and helplessness, we forget we have been saved by grace. We forget we are saints! We forget we have been made alive, and there is no condemnation in Christ! Our view of grace is distant. We fail to claim it as our own. 

The truth is, grace was and is costly. And yet it is lavished upon us. 

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a German pastor and anti-Nazi dissident who gave his life for his role in the resistance, once wrote, “Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. It is costly because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner. Above all, it is costly because it cost God the life of his Son: 'You were bought at a price', and what has cost God much cannot be cheap for us. Above all, it is grace because God did not reckon his Son too dear a price to pay for our life, but delivered him up for us.”

When we grasp grace – when we understand the depth of our sin and the unfathomable depth of God’s love and favor lavished upon us through Jesus Christ – we are fundamentally transformed by the Spirit, and we begin to walk in the works and ways that He has prepared for us, out of sheer amazement and gratitude at His invitation to us to do so. 

Grace changes everything. Has it changed you? Have you grasped its depth? 

Let yourself swim in its limitlessness this week. Be loved. Be amazed. Be thankful. Be transformed. Then let us live fearlessly in light of the incomparable riches of God’s grace!

See you Sunday,
Erika