Put bluntly, the American church today accepts grace in theory but denies it in practice. We say we believe that the fundamental structure of reality is grace, not works - but our lives refute our faith.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Grace is a much more accurate word to use when dealing with the state of human existence. God gives us unmerited favor through Jesus Christ, and since Adam and Eve, our lives have depended on it.
The truth, whether we admit it or not, is that grace scares us to death. It scares us primarily because it wrestles control and manageability out of our hands - introducing chaos and freedom.
The word 'grace' means after we must have done everything humanly possible, we must leave the issue with God. That is grace.
The Gospel is about grace and we all know that grace is about us receiving from God blessings that we don't deserve.
Grace must find expression in life, otherwise it is not grace.
Grace is thickly counter-intuitive. It feels risky and unfair. It's dangerous and disorderly. It wrestles control out of our hands. It is wild and unsettling. It turns everything that makes sense to us upside-down and inside-out.
That's the big difference between Christianity and other religions. The difference between Works and Grace or Do and Done.
As a pastor in a Protestant church, my whole ministry centers on the conviction that by grace we are saved through faith. And it's not our faith that delivers us, as if believing something, anything at all were pleasing to God. It's the object of our faith - Christ's life, death, and resurrection - that saves us.
I do not at all understand the mystery of grace - only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.
Grace is everywhere as an active orientation of all created reality toward God.