Grace

Grace is the word the whole gospel leans on, and the one most easily counterfeited. It means favor we did not earn and could never earn: God moving toward us first, while we were still in the wrong. Nearly every religion runs on the opposite engine, some version of "be good enough and God will accept you." The gospel turns that around. God accepts you in Christ before you are good, and it is that acceptance, not your effort to win it, that finally begins to make you good. Lose grace in either direction, by trying to earn it or by presuming on it, and you have lost the gospel itself.

Favor you did not earn

The classic definition is one short sentence of Paul's: "by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9). Every clause closes a door on merit. Saved by grace, not by us, a gift, not wages, with nothing left over to boast about. Paul guards it so jealously that he says grace and earning cannot even share the same sentence: "if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace" (Romans 11:6). And he fixes the timing, which is the whole scandal of it: God did not wait for us to improve. "God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8). Grace is one-directional. It begins in God's heart, not in our worthiness, and it reaches us at our worst.

The earliest Christian voice outside the New Testament said the same thing in the same breath, writing to Corinth while some who had known the apostles were still alive:

Rooted in His character, not our merit

Because grace starts with God, its ground is His own purpose and kindness, not anything He found attractive in us. "The grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men" (Titus 2:11); He "saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace" (2 Timothy 1:9). This is why grace can be utterly secure: a gift that hung on our performance would be as unsteady as our performance. Anchored in God's character, it is as steady as He is.

The first ditch: trying to earn it

The oldest mistake is to turn the free gift back into a transaction, to add our law-keeping as the thing that finally tips the balance. Paul calls this not a harmless extra but an emptying of the cross: "if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain" (Galatians 2:21). To the churches reaching back toward earning, he says something startling, that they have not climbed higher but slipped off the very thing that held them: "whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace" (Galatians 5:4). Grace offends the religious heart precisely because it will not let us pay. The elder brother, furious outside the party, is the portrait of a man who would rather earn than be given to.

The second ditch: presuming on it

The opposite error treats grace as permission, as if forgiveness in advance were a license to sin freely. Paul saw that coming too, and answered it before anyone could finish asking: "Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid" (Romans 6:1-2). Real grace does not loosen its grip on how we live; it is the very power that pries sin's fingers off us, "teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly" (Titus 2:12). Jude has a hard name for the counterfeit, men "turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness" (Jude 4). That is grace cheapened into license, and it is no longer grace at all (see when grace becomes a license).

Grace all the way through

Grace is not only the door; it is the whole house. We are saved by grace, but we also stand in it, "this grace wherein we stand" (Romans 5:2), grow by it, and will be brought home by it. The Christian life is not grace to begin and gritted teeth to continue. When Paul begged to have his weakness removed, the answer he got was the pattern of the whole thing: "My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9). Grace meets us not only at the start, in our guilt, but all along the way, in our weakness. It is sufficient. There is always enough (see the security of salvation).

Where this lands

Grace is not finally a doctrine to be argued; it is a gift to be received with empty hands. The only thing you are asked to bring is your need, and the moment you try to bring anything else, a record, a resume, a reason He should, you have stepped off grace and back onto earning. So come the way the gospel actually invites you: not as the worthy, but as the welcomed. Christ has already paid for the gift (see the cross); grace is simply God pressing it into the hands of people who could never have bought it, and then teaching those same hands to live (see faith that works).

Related: When Grace Becomes a License, The Cross, The Security of Salvation, Faith Is a Verb, Born Again, Repentance, Sanctification, Rest, Justification, and Lordship. Scripture from the King James Version, linked to BibleHub; the words of Christ are marked in purple.