You may have been taught at a young age that salvation is by God’s grace. I was raised from childhood that salvation is all about God’s grace. But, and it’s a big but, the whole religious system I was raised with only featured grace in that one specific spot.

Grace was what only God did and God only did it once for each person. God’s grace touched your life only if you felt sufficiently bad (guilt) and sufficiently turned away from sin (repentance). “Salvation” was all about if you trusted Jesus then God’s grace would ensure that you would be “saved,” meaning that you would go to heaven for an eternity with God after you physically die one day.

I was taught that all of that stuff about future salvation was about grace. If you had received God’s grace and been “saved,” then you were encouraged to move from the bare minimum “salvation” by grace to becoming a real faithful Christian through “sanctification” by works. You could not be a good Christian without working really hard at it. There was an enormous amount of anxiety and guilt tied to Christian living. Grace as God’s power or heart or character or action was left out of Christian living as well as everything else.

I disagree with a bait and switch religion that claims spiritual life begins with a small magical sprinkle of grace and continues through an enormous amount of hard work, duty, guilt, and anxiety. That’s not Christianity at all, it’s another religion entirely. I believe something different. I believe God is gracious in character and action, and I believe God’s grace is woven all through the Bible and all through our world.

Reflection Questions

  • What were you taught grace was about? Where has there been grace in your vocabulary and thinking?
  • If grace is God’s action rather than a very specific narrow thing, does that change anything?
  • What is the relationship between God’s action and ours? How important is the way we answer that question?