Grace is one of the central concepts of the Bible. It is one of the most wonderful aspects of the character of God the Father and Jesus Christ, and one that plays a key role in Their plan of salvation. The Passover season provides an annual reminder of—and opportunity to follow—the Apostle Peter’s admonition to “grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18).
The topic of grace is a very large one and is widely misunderstood—especially among those who practice the world’s varieties of counterfeit Christianity. It can be easy for us in God’s Church to minimize the importance of God’s grace when we see it abused by those who turn it into antinomianism and reject the beauty and value of God’s law. There is much more that can be said than I can cover in this article, so I encourage you to read Mr. Gerald Weston’s booklet Law or Grace: Which Is It? His answer, of course, is both!
As we approach the Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread, we should remember that these days teach us about God’s grace and about our response to that grace. In The Holy Days: God’s Master Plan, Dr. Roderick C. Meredith wrote, “The Passover pictures the fact that we are ‘being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed’ (Romans 3:24–25)” (p. 14).
In this article, we’ll try to deepen our appreciation of the exceeding riches of God’s grace (Ephesians 2:7). We’ll consider the meaning of grace—how it runs through not just the New Testament but also the Old, how Jesus taught and gave grace, and finally how we should be deeply thankful for God’s grace.
What Is Grace?
One brief definition of grace is that it is the free and undeserved forgiveness and favor God gives to those who seek Him, made available through His Son, Jesus Christ. To forgive is to “stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for an offense, flaw, or mistake” and to “cancel (a debt).” Favor can be defined as “an attitude of approval or liking” (The Oxford American College Dictionary, 2002). Though it is an oversimplification, we might say that when God extends grace to us, it means He likes us! In truth, He loved us enough to send His Son to die in our stead and cancel the huge debt we’ve earned with our sins, even forgetting them—a key part of the New Covenant (Hebrews 10:16–17). These definitions may help in an intellectual way—but, like uncovering a small piece of buried treasure, it takes more digging to fully see the magnitude and beauty of the treasure.
God’s grace isn’t something we humans can earn or deserve, because we have all sinned (Romans 3:23). Yet God loved us when we were still practicing sin. “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).
As is often the case, thinking about physical parents’ love toward their children helps us understand God’s view. I can think of how my wife and I often extend “grace” in a human sense to our three-year-old son. Last summer, we enjoyed a family vacation that included siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, and my son’s grandparents. We had been telling all the children that we would take them to an ice cream shop one evening, and that day had come. My son was extremely excited—like any three-year-old when ice cream is involved—but hadn’t eaten his dinner very well. As the time grew closer for everyone to get in the cars, he had become tired and very cranky. It had also gotten a bit late, so my wife and I decided that we would stay back and just have someone bring back a little ice cream for our son to enjoy the next day. This would allow us to put him to bed early, which he was starting to need.
Well, as the rest of the family began to leave, we could see that our son really wanted not just to get ice cream, but to be part of the family group going out together. My wife’s heartstrings were tugged, and she whispered to me that maybe we should go. We briefly talked about it, and we did go. And our son and everyone had a wonderful family ice cream outing.
This is a very small example—but, as with many parenting moments, it gives a glimpse, however imperfect or limited, of how God deals with each of us as His children. My wife and I extended a bit of “grace” to our son. We extended a bit of “unearned” and “undeserved” favor and forgiveness, not because he had earned it, but because we really like him!
Again, the picture isn’t perfect. Our thinking might have been closer to Moses’ after Aaron’s very rough day at the end of Leviticus 10. And sometimes parents “turn grace into license”; if that ice cream was going to teach him that bad attitudes would be rewarded, we could not have followed through on our desire to extend grace. And, of course, God doesn’t just “set aside” the penalty of His law—His grace toward us meant that the penalty we’d earned would be fulfilled instead by the shed blood of His Son on our behalf.
Yet like my son in this little story, we want our Heavenly Father to extend to us His grace, His unearned and undeserved forgiveness and favor, when we sin.
Finding Grace in the Old Testament
As we strive to understand and appreciate God’s grace, we must not forget to look in the Old Testament, because God’s grace is a central thread there. If you rely on a simple word search for “grace,” you won’t find it as often in the Old Testament as in the New Testament, but here are three simple ways you can recognize grace throughout the Old Testament.
1) Notice words and concepts closely related to grace and its meaning. For example, after God says that He will destroy the earth because of man’s wickedness, we read that “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord” (Genesis 6:8). Many translations use the word “favor” instead of “grace,” and the Hebrew word is often translated as “favor” in other verses in the New King James Version.
Jeremiah’s prophecy about the forgiveness of sins under the New Covenant is another example. “I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more” (Jeremiah 31:34). No one earns or deserves to have their sins forgiven and forgotten, but God chooses to do so and extends His grace to those who strive to repent and seek His forgiveness in faith. And consider this poetic description of how God extends His mercy, His grace, by forgiving sins completely: “For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us” (Psalm 103:11–12). Finding and studying words that convey aspects of grace’s full meaning—such as love, lovingkindness, mercy, favor, and forgiveness—can help us to find examples of God’s grace throughout the Old Testament.
2) Look for the Hebrew word hesed or chesed. The Expositor’s Bible Commentary describes the connection between hesed in the Old Testament and grace. Exodus 20:6, the last part of the second commandment, reads as follows: “but showing mercy to thousands, to those who love Me and keep My commandments.” Expositor’s makes this comment on this verse: “Actually חֶסֶד (heseḏ), which is rendered [“mercy” in the NKJV], is one of the best words in the OT for the grace of God. It appears over 250 times” (Walter C. Kaiser Jr., “Exodus,” The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, 1990, p. 426).
The Hebrew word hesed is used many times in the Old Testament and is very close in meaning to “grace” in the New Testament, though it isn’t usually translated into English as “grace.” Rather, it is most often rendered as “lovingkindness.” Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words shows that hesed can be translated as: “loving-kindness; steadfast love; grace; mercy; faithfulness; goodness; devotion.” Mr. Peter Nathan explained this very helpful point in a Living Church News article (November-December 2014) titled “Charis, Hesed, Law and Grace,” showing how hesed helps us to see God’s grace more fully in the Old Testament.
3) Notice Old Testament examples where God extended abundant grace. Throughout the Old Testament, we see God extending His favor and undeserved forgiveness to people, families, and nations. In Genesis 12 and 20, we read two accounts where Abraham lied, and told his wife to lie, to say that she was his sister and not his wife. He did so out of fear, self-preservation, and lack of faith, yet he is one of the great “heroes” of faith God holds up as an example. God dealt with Abraham—who was just as human and sinful as we are—with grace, extending favor and undeserved forgiveness. Centuries later, Jesus Christ would die, paying the death penalty that Abraham deserved and had earned. Even the “father of the faithful” needed God’s grace and to have his sins atoned for by Christ’s sacrifice in order to receive salvation.
Other examples include that of David and his sins involving Uriah and Bathsheba. God extended abundant grace to David. The nation of ancient Israel received God’s grace again and again as God repeatedly extended favor and undeserved forgiveness to them.
We could even turn to Hebrews 11 and think about all the “heroes of faith” mentioned in that chapter. Many of them led amazing and exemplary lives of faith—however, each one still sinned and therefore didn’t “earn” salvation. In fact, they, too, all earned death. But they will be saved because God justifies them of their sins “freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:24).
As these examples show, there are various ways to find God’s grace in the Old Testament. It doesn’t always appear as obvious as it does in the New Testament, but it is there throughout.
Jesus Christ Was “Full of Grace”
Some may be surprised to learn that the New King James Version doesn’t record Jesus Christ using the word “grace” in any of the four gospel accounts. But the record of His actions shows that grace was and is a key part of His character. He habitually taught and gave grace in His human lifetime.
Consider these New Testament passages: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Indeed, “grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17).
Christ was “full of grace” and “grace and truth came through” Him. Let’s notice two examples during His ministry where He taught and showed grace.
First, consider the parable of the lost (or prodigal) son, which Christ gave in Luke 15:11–32. This famous parable tells the story of a man with two sons. The younger asks for his inheritance before moving away, squandering his wealth on wasteful and extravagant living and becoming destitute. Later, the son comes “to himself” and returns to his father in humble and sincere repentance, fully confessing his sins. When the father sees his son returning, he feels great compassion, runs to greet his son, and hugs and kisses him. He then instructs his servants to prepare a wonderful meal to celebrate the return of his lost son.
This moving story teaches several lessons, including a lesson about God’s grace. The father, who greatly liked and loved his son, favored him by extending grace to him. He gave undeserved forgiveness by celebrating his son’s return and repentance. The son had done everything to not deserve his father’s favor and forgiveness, much less a beautiful banquet and celebration of his return.
One great personal lesson for us is that the father represents God and the prodigal son represents each of us as sinners. Whenever we fall into the role of the prodigal son by sinning, we can be incredibly and deeply thankful that, when we kneel before God in repentant prayer, our Father is willing to receive us with open arms, a kiss, and abundant grace.
Another example is how Christ dealt with the woman caught in adultery. We read:
Then the scribes and Pharisees brought to Him a woman caught in adultery. And when they had set her in the midst, they said to Him, “Teacher, this woman was caught in adultery, in the very act. Now Moses, in the law, commanded us that such should be stoned. But what do You say?” This they said, testing Him, that they might have something of which to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and wrote on the ground with His finger, as though He did not hear. So when they continued asking Him, He raised Himself up and said to them, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” And again He stooped down and wrote on the ground. Then those who heard it, being convicted by their conscience, went out one by one, beginning with the oldest even to the last. And Jesus was left alone, and the woman standing in the midst. When Jesus had raised Himself up and saw no one but the woman, He said to her, “Woman, where are those accusers of yours? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said to her, “Neither do I condemn you; go and sin no more” (John 8:3–11).
Jesus didn’t dispute that the woman had committed adultery. He told her to “go and sin no more.” She deserved to be stoned, according to the law (Leviticus 20:10), but Christ dealt with her with grace. He extended favor and undeserved forgiveness to her, while insisting on the ultimate and necessary response to grace: “go and sin no more.”
Although Jesus didn’t use the word “grace” directly in His preaching, He taught it through other words and through His example. Furthermore, a few decades after His ascension to the Father, He inspired Paul to use the word “grace” quite often in 14 books of the New Testament.
Christ taught and showed grace during His ministry because He was preparing to give His life to pay the death penalty not only for every human being who accepts His forgiveness, but also for every sin each of us has committed. Romans 6:23 explains that, under the New Covenant, “the wages of sin is death,” but Christ paid that penalty so that grace, in its full physical and spiritual meaning, can be extended (Romans 5:15; Hebrews 2:9).
Extremely Thankful for the Gift of God’s Grace
God’s grace truly is one of God’s greatest gifts to us. We should appreciate the irony and brilliance of God’s choice to use an ex-Pharisee, an expert in the law, to explain the concept of grace more directly in Scripture than anyone else! Much as the Apostle John is often called the “Apostle of Love,” the Apostle Paul is sometimes called the “Apostle of Grace.” As Mr. Weston reminds us in his booklet, “The grace side of the coin is Paul’s great contribution to our understanding” (Law or Grace: Which Is It?, p. 4).
In the New King James Version, we find Paul using the term “grace” 97 times in his letters, compared to just 31 uses in all the other New Testament books. And Paul made some of the most direct and helpful statements about the importance of grace. Let’s look at three prominent examples.
• Paul writes of our “being justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed” (Romans 3:24–25).
• He deplores lawlessness: “For sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under law but under grace. What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace? Certainly not!” (Romans 6:14–15).
• And he reminds us that we do not earn or deserve the grace that saves us. “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast” (Ephesians 2:8–9).
These are among the many places where Paul explains that Christians are justified freely by grace, are under grace and not law, and are saved by grace through faith. Sadly, these concepts have been greatly misunderstood and twisted for centuries. But they are true and must be understood. Put simply, Paul is saying that Christians can be freely justified—cleansed and made innocent from past sins—by God’s grace. No amount of obedience or good works can justify us. Christians are “saved by grace” because we must be cleansed, justified, and forgiven of our sins to be saved.
Repentant Christians are not “under law” in the sense of being under the ultimate death penalty that the law required (Romans 6:23). By God’s grace, Christ died and paid the death penalty for each of us. We would each be under the death penalty for our sins, the eternal death penalty, unless God had extended grace to us personally (Romans 3:23). But by God’s grace—made possible by Christ paying the penalty that we all have earned with each sin we’ve ever committed—we are no longer subject to the death penalty of the law. What a true blessing, to be under the grace of our Father and Jesus Christ!
Paul is not saying that Christians don’t need to obey God’s law. As Mr. Weston wrote in his booklet, “All the apostles and writers of the New Testament, including Paul, understood that behavior matters, but no amount of current or future law-keeping can cover our many sins—only the shed blood of the Son of God can do that. That is what we call grace… that supreme gift of God” (Law or Grace: Which Is It?, p. 15).
Paul surely recognized that people would misunderstand or even twist his teaching, so he repeatedly emphasized the importance of the law, as in the sixth chapter of Romans. Peter, too, warned that Paul’s letters could be misinterpreted (2 Peter 3:16–18). And Jude warned about those who would seek to promote lawlessness. “For certain individuals whose condemnation was written about long ago have secretly slipped in among you. They are ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into a license for immorality and deny Jesus Christ our only Sovereign and Lord” (Jude 4, New International Version).
Indeed, if we weren’t required to obey God’s law, there would be no need for grace. The very purpose of God’s grace is to forgive us for and reconcile us from sin—and sin is the breaking of His law (1 John 3:4, King James Version).
The Glory of His Grace
Paul described God’s grace more often and more directly than any other biblical writer, and he often praised God for His grace. Consider these beautiful words:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence (Ephesians 1:3–8).
God’s freely given grace is such an incredible gift, and it is so powerful to cleanse and justify past sins, that a trap we want to avoid is to “take advantage” of God’s grace, leading to us not taking sin seriously enough. This is a trap into which many Protestant denominations have fallen. Yet Paul warned of that misunderstanding clearly, as when he wrote, “What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? Certainly not! How shall we who died to sin live any longer in it?” (Romans 6:1–2). Paul also made the vital point that we are saved by Christ’s life (Romans 5:10), describing how Christ must live His faith-filled and obedient life within true Christians (Galatians 2:20).
Correctly understanding God’s grace will lead to a deep and sincere appreciation for it, and lead to the exact opposite of taking sin lightly. When a Christian truly comprehends and values God’s grace, he or she strives diligently and fervently to overcome sin and to obey God (2 Corinthians 7:9–11). Someone who correctly understands and appreciates God’s grace recognizes the invaluable price that was paid—the life of the Son of God—to make His grace possible in its full power. This proper understanding recognizes the gravity and enormity of the fact that “through Him we have received grace” (Romans 1:5).
So, let’s conclude with the final thought recorded for us in God’s word: “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen” (Revelation 22:21).