Many would describe grace as God’s unmerited favor, but really that’s more akin to mercy. While favor is certainly a dimension of grace it isn’t a holistic view of grace. Grace is favor but it is a favor that EMPOWERS. It gives us ability beyond our own. It literally empowers us with God’s ability to do what we could never do on our own.
God’s grace working in us is SHEAR. RAW. POWER.
While there are numerous things twisted and wrong about the Supernatural TV series, one thing they did do was provide an excellent picture of grace. In the show, two of the main characters are angels. These angels only had supernatural power when they had their grace. When they lost their grace or if their grace was stolen they were left with mere human ability.
Paul understood the power of grace better than most. Check out these verses:
“I do not frustrate the grace of God: for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain.” Galatians 2:21 (KJV) The word frustrate means to neutralize. If grace were defined simply as unmerited (unearned, undeserved) favor rather than a favor that bestowed power on us and in us it wouldn’t be something we could just neutralize. We can neutralize grace or keep grace from working in us by operating in our own ability versus God’s ability. When we operate in our own strength Christ becomes of no effect to us and we fall from grace (Gal. 5:4). Falling from grace doesn’t mean losing our salvation experience. It means leaving that realm of God’s ability and choosing instead to operate through our strength.
You can see why grace is so vital to living a successful Christian life. Paul knew that aside from grace he was left to his own weakness. But with grace, even his weakness was strong! Paul described his thorn in the flesh as a “messenger of Satan” buffeting him (2 Cor. 12:5). Because a thorn referred to people in the Old Testament (Joshua 23:13) we see that Paul was referring to the crowds of haters that were constantly trying to cancel him (the original cancel culture) so they could persecute him. God responded to Paul’s plea for the thorns to be removed by saying, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” 2 Cor. 12:9. This was not God saying He would put Paul on life-support with a steady drip of grace. This wasn’t God saying, “Paul, I’ve given you unmerited favor. That should be enough for you. Get over yourself.” This was God saying He would empower Paul to triumph! God couldn’t change the free will of the haters but He did give Paul His own grace or ability to be strong in any situation.
God’s ability. Let that sink in.
Jesus had it. We can have it too.
Grace is available to us in abundance. James 4:6 says, “But he giveth more grace.” More grace than what? More grace than the power sin has over us. More grace (His ability and empowerment) than any situation or stronghold has to overpower us. Anywhere that sin abounds, grace abounds more (Rom. 5:20).
So what does this mean? Well, let’s define sin first. There are several Greek and Hebrew words for sin throughout the Bible. If you were to take a zoomed-out look at sin as a whole you would see that sin is not just violating the Ten Commandments. Sin is anytime we are living in a standard that is less than what Jesus died to free us from. Sin is anytime we come short of functioning in our new man, our new nature.
Addiction, depression, fear, unbelief…these are all expressions of sin. But where these abound in us grace ABOUNDS MORE. This means that if we choose to partner with God and lean on His ability to overcome addiction or any pattern of behavior that has held us captive, we can activate His grace which is more powerful and more abundant than the thing we want to overcome!
This takes practice. It could truly be summed up in the only thing God ever told us to strive for…entering into rest.
When we finally rest from trying to white-knuckle it,
grace can take over.
I have a million books in my head. It’s possible the next one could be a grace challenge. I hope you’ll stick with me. Podcasting is coming soon, and more teaching in my Getting Life to Work mentorship group…all designed to help you learn to walk in grace to defeat your addictions, codependencies, and repeated patterns of failure.
Because here’s the thing: many of us came to salvation in Jesus and were immediately set free from a whole slew of destructive behavior patterns. But the reality is, most Christians never overcome their most life-controlling issue, whether it be overeating and yo-yo dieting, pornography, codependency, shame-based thinking, etc. The good news is that it is the same grace working in us at salvation that will work in us to overcome that thing we haven’t been able to defeat!
Photo Cred: @where.mike.at
