|
News for the Pews |
Home
15th May 2024
WednesdayReflection
************************
John Piper shares
What Is Grace?
************************
What is grace?
It seems like a simple question, but the answer has a lot of different angles to it.
It is a recent email from a podcast listener named Heather.
"Hello, Pastor John!
I'm shy to ask this question because I'm embarrassed to admit that I struggle to understand one of the most commonly used words in the church today.
That word is 'grace.'
I often hear it defined as 'unmerited favour' or 'getting what you don't deserve.'
And I do understand it this way in the context of Ephesians 2
'For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God.'
"But I don't understand it in the context of texts like 2 Corinthians 12
'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'
Or 1 Corinthians 15
'But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.'
I don't understand 'grace' in these verses. Can you explain it to me?"
Here's one of the reasons I love this question: it gives me a chance to say to Heather and to everybody that we're all really in this together, and I don't have any special advantage over you in answering these questions except maybe that I've had a little more practice.
In other words, what I do when I hear a question like this is something Heather could do or anybody could do.
I open my Bible and I get my concordance, and I look up all occurrences of grace in the Bible.
Two-thirds of all the uses of the word grace in the Bible are in one author: Paul.
No wonder he's called "the apostle of grace."
You are always bracketing your preconceptions and trying to build your conceptions out of all the pieces of the Bible.
It's like a puzzle, where you're trying to put the picture together with all the pieces.
And you know, because it's God's word, that these pieces are going to fit.
If they don't fit in this life, they're going to fit in the next.
So, let's just limit ourselves to Paul, whom she quoted, and to the two uses of grace that she saw.
On the one hand, grace is called - and I think it's an absolutely wonderful phrase - undeserved favour.
Romans 3 says
"[We] are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."
Grace is what inclines God to give gifts that are free and undeserved by sinners.
If it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace."
So, you can't work to earn grace. It is free and undeserved.
Now, that's what most of us have in our minds when we say God is a God of grace. And that's true. It's wonderful.
Our eternal lives depend on it.
None of us would be saved if grace were not undeserved favour, and were not a quality in the mind of God, in the heart of God, in the nature of God.
But then Heather rightly notices another group of passages, also in Paul, where he comes at grace a little differently.
So, what I do when I see things like this in the Bible is to adjust my categories in my head.
I won't say, "Oh, well that can't be, because I've got this category in my head."
No, no, no. You fix the categories in your head.
Now, having seen all the texts, I broaden my understanding of grace as the Bible uses the term.
So, let me draw attention to a precious verse that we all know and love and maybe have never thought about in this term of grace.
Hebrews 4 says
"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace."
That's a throne with the quality and the character and the inclination to treat people better than they deserve.
That's the kind of throne we're coming to.
But then it says,
"that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
Or a more literal translation: "that we may find mercy and grace for a well-timed help."
It is incredibly encouraging that God's grace is both the inclination of the divine heart to treat us better than we deserve and is the extension of that inclination in practical help.
><(((°>
This is an edited version.
The full article and Bible references are avaiable on request
John Piper
is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy.
Contact the Rector
The Revd.
Nic.Edwards
The Rectory,
Church Lane,
BUGBROOKE,
Northampton,
NN7 3PB
Land Line: 01604 - 815496
(Can be accessed from the mobile device)
Mobile: .....
E-mail:
thebeneficeofbhkandr at gmail dot com
Contact the Benefice Office
Sunday School Rooms, Church Lane,
BUGBROOKE, Northampton, NN7 3PB
Land Line: 01604 830373
E-mail:
thebeneficeofbhkandr at gmail dot com
Mon., Tues., Wed,, Thur., Fri.
9:00am to 11:30am
For Baptism bookings (Christenings)
to arrange an appointment please contact
the Benefice Office.
For Wedding bookings:
please contact the Benefice Office to arrange
an appointment.
Who Made This?
Seeing as you asked, if you can give helpful
advice or report factual corrections and
'deliberate mistakes',email:-
regparker3 at gmail dot com
Email addresses shown using words in an
attempt to avoid 'spam',
Type the email address replacing 'at' with '@',
and 'dot' with '.'
|