God's grace not only provides us with salvation but also transforms and motivates us to live purposefully for Him, as evidenced by the life of the apostle Paul.
Simply put, grace is God's favor. This includes His undeserved and unearned blessings, His singling us out for special privileges and responsibilities, and His divine operations in our lives to accomplish unthinkable feats for His glory and honor.
“Grace” in the New Testament is commonly referred to as “favor” in the Old Testament. Grace becomes more prominent because it is associated with the free salvation we receive from God by faith in Jesus Christ (Eph. 2:8). But the grace we receive is no different than the favor Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob received. It is two sides of the same coin. The most parroted definition of grace is “God’s unmerited favor.” So, when we speak of God’s grace, we are talking about God’s favor toward us, which is also operating on our behalf.
How Grace Operates in Our Lives
Grace is not just what we receive from God but also how we live for God. It is more than soteriological. Grace governs every aspect of our lives. This is most evident in the testimony of the apostle Paul to the church in Corinth, where he exclaimed: “For I am the least of the apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me has not been in vain, but I labored even more than all of them, and not I, but the grace of God with me” (1 Cor. 15:9-10 LEB).
Paul highlights two aspects of grace in the lives of believers.
1. God’s Grace Makes Us. Like all of us, Paul had a troubled past when it came to his relationship with Jesus Christ. Despite being a religious leader and Bible scholar, Paul harassed the followers of Christ in the early church—arresting and even consenting to their deaths. Because of this, he felt unworthy of being called by Christ to be a leader in His church. But it is called grace because none of us deserve it. Paul was an apostle because God demonstrated favor toward him and chose him to arguably be the most influential apostle of them all.
God has also called and chosen us by His grace to do a great work for Him (2 Tim. 1:9). We may not all be an apostle Paul, but we are who we are by God’s grace. His grace wooed us to Jesus when we were dead in trespasses and sins. It was His grace that gave us the faith to believe the gospel. And His grace is working in us to be better spouses, children, managers, workers, and neighbors. It is His grace that conforms us to the image of Christ. And His grace will help us move along as we persevere until Jesus returns.
2. God’s Grace Moves Us. Paul wanted to be clear that God’s grace was not wasted on him. It made him exert more effort than all the other apostles, whom he deemed more worthy than himself. He assessed that he should do the most since he was the least. But it wasn’t Paul's activity that deserved credit for whatever great feats he achieved; it was the grace of God that served as the agency for what he could do for the kingdom. BDAG states: “Paul knows that through the [grace] of God he has been called to be an apostle, and that he has been fitted out with the powers and capabilities requisite for this office from the same source.”[1]
As recipients of grace, our lives must be driven by something more than fame and fortune. When we reflect on just how unworthy we are of God’s favor, it spurs us to join Him in His mission to reconcile the world back to Himself through Jesus Christ. Grace is more than a gift we receive; it is a goad that moves us to do more for Christ than we did before we put our trust in Him. It is an ever-burning desire to carry out our calling to also be apostles (sent-ones) for Jesus.
Were It Not for Grace
In Larnelle Harris’s song, “Were It Not for Grace,” he speaks about the place “where human effort is all in vain.” His point is that no matter what we attempt, we can never satisfy God’s righteous demands. But thanks be to God that grace filled the gap! Thus, it becomes the driving force that makes us into the people God has destined us to be, and it moves us to do the work He has destined us to do.
From the cross to the crown, we recognize that grace has been the escort ordering our steps to salvation and directing our service to saints and sinners. Sometimes, it is good to stop and reflect on how far God has brought us and how much He has accomplished through us. When we do, we will soon conclude that God’s grace guided us.
Dr. Isaac Hayes is an Assistant Pastor at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, Illinois, and author of Men After God’s Heart: 10 Principles of Brotherly Love. He also has a Doctor of Ministry degree from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Follow Dr. Hayes on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube at @RevIsaacHayes.
[1] William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 1080.
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