What is it? What do we do once we understand what it is?

Grace, the unmerited favor. What is unmerited favor? Christians talk a lot about grace. Preachers have done thousands of hours of sermons on grace. You cannot evangelize without talking about grace. Grace is woven into the fabric of our everyday Christian lives, but do we really understand what it means. I want to answer this question, but answering this question creates two more questions. One is, how does unmerited favor apply to our salvation and two once we understand unmerited favor, what should our response be? See how the first question, what is unmerited favor, leads to the next question, how does it apply to our salvation, then leads to the last question, what should our response be? Three very serious questions to ask.

Throughout our Christian journey we should be asking questions. Asking questions and looking for answers is the essence of Theology. Theology? Okay, we have added a fourth question, except, this one is very easy to answer. Let us go ahead and answer it, so we can focus on the 3 questions on grace. Theology is the study of God. More specifically it is the study of the nature of God. His character and who He is. Whether you want to be or not, every Christian is a theologian. When you ask a question about God or when you say why God, you become a theologian. R.C Sproul said, "theology is inescapable". It is inescapable because, as Christians we yearn to understand our God. It is through theology, the study of God that we begin to learn about the "gift", an eternal "gift", and this "gift" has changed our lives forever. We call this gift grace, and it is a beautiful gift.

What is a gift? Here we go with the questions again. A gift is something given to someone that was never asked for. Something someone gives out of appreciation, or during a celebration. Most of the time the gift is from the heart, out of love, and in some way, may change that person. Also, a gift, and this is the big one, is something given to you that was not earned. See, if you earned it then it is not a gift. That is called a payment, you deserved it, you worked for it. A gift is not a payment.

Back to the 3 questions purposed in the beginning. First, the Biblical definition of grace is free and unmerited favor shown to guilty sinners who deserve only judgement. There is that word, "unmerited". Okay, now, let me begin to answer our first question by defining "unmerited favor". If you could ask God anything what would you ask? Let us look at a question asked by a rich, young man during Jesus' time. Luke 18:18. This young man asks Jesus a question. "Good teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life"?  How do I live forever? This is essentially what he is asking Jesus, and it is the most intelligent question you could ask the Creator of the universe if He were standing right in front of you. How can I not die? The young man wanted to know how to live forever, and people today are still asking that same question. Everyone wants to live forever, but the question is how. God is the giver of life and He alone has the answer. The opposite of unmerited is merited. The definition of merit is "being worthy or deserving". We work for what we deserve. We like to think that all we possess in life is because we worked for it, therefore we deserve it. It is merit, or payment for our hard work and accomplishments in life. Here in lies the problem with merit when it comes to inheriting eternal life, human merit plays no part in it. Working for the Kingdom of God does not get us into heaven, nor does our work keep us there. How much you do for God or His kingdom in your short life has no merit to eternal life. Michael Bloomberg, the one time, governor of New York City and billionaire news mogul, was interviewed by the NY Times about his accomplishments on gun control in the United States. He has spent a lot of money and time trying to get, what he sees as a moral issue around guns in the United States. This is what he told NY Times about his "life time" of hard work and what will happen to him on judgement day. When he dies, he said, "I am telling you if there is a God, when I get to heaven I'm not stopping to be interviewed. I am heading straight in. I have earned my place in heaven. It's not even close." Michael Bloomberg thinks heaven is like a college degree you earn it by studying and working hard. To him it is all about what you do and how well you perform. The more "good" you do in your life the easier it is to get into heaven. That is the definition of PRIDE, and what does God think of pride? Proverbs 16:5 "everyone who is proud in heart is detestable to God". Peter says, "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble". 1 Peter 5:5. As Christians we fall into this pride trap at times. Some of us fall in and never get out. We think we need to work. We need to work, or God will lose favor in us. He will think less of us. We say to ourselves; He will not bless me unless I am out there working for the kingdom. There are a lot of Christians that work really hard at trying to please the LORD. R.C. Sproul was a pastor, broadcaster and started Ligoner Ministries. In his life he wrote over 60 books on Theology. If anyone worked for the Kingdom it was Dr. Sproul. This is what he had to say about working for the kingdom. "Perhaps the most difficult task for us to perform is to rely on God's grace and God's grace alone for our salvation. It is difficult for our pride to rest on grace. Grace is for other people– for beggars. We do not want to live by a heavenly welfare system. We want to earn our own way and atone for our own sins. We like to think that we will go to heaven because we deserve to be there." Spiritually speaking we have nothing to give to God. We are bankrupt, spiritually speaking. We have nothing to give to God that would qualify for merit into heaven. That is why God's gift of Christ is unmerited. Yes, we deserved judgement and death, but He has given us eternal life. Unmerited, we were given a gift and that gift has changed our life. Nothing we can do on our own to gain internal life. It is what God did and we are the recipient of this unmerited favor. All Christians have received it by unmerited favor. Now, this leads us to the second and third questions. How does unmerited favor apply to our salvation, and what do we do now that working for the kingdom is not a requirement?

Theologically speaking salvation is deliverance from the power of sin and the penalty sin brings. It is called, "justification". We are redeemed because of the unmerited favor of God, but we still sin. We cannot escape it. We see sin everywhere, and as we grow in Christ it becomes very apparent in our own lives. We become acutely aware of how unworthy we are of salvation, but the Sprite in us pushes on to overcome. Jesus the Christ lived a perfectly sinless life, but he was condemned and murdered. He was the sacrifice that took on our guilt, our sin nature, and was brought to bear for it so that we could have salvation. That we may be justified before an almighty God and because of the complete sacrifice, God looks at us and sees Jesus. God, the father, sees Christ the son in all Christians. Salvation was granted because of the atoning work of Jesus which is unmerited favor given by God to guilty sinners that believe in Jesus Christ. Paul says this, "For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him" 2 Corinthians 5:21. The unmerited favor shown to us by what Christ did give us salvation from our sin nature. There is no work or merit to earn that buys us salvation. It was a beautiful gift that the Apostles and Disciples in the first century called the "Gospel". The Gospel is translated "good news". I think we as Christians all agree on this point, but why is it we still carry around the guilt or fear of falling out of favor with God. How many times have we done poorly in our Christian walk and failed and thought my relationship with God is damaged? If this were true, why was the message of Christ's salvation called "good news"? I see no good news in guilt. With all of the times we fall short and defy God is it possible that we can fall out of favor with God and lose our salvation? John 3:16-19 says whoever believes in Him will not be condemned. John 6:37 Jesus says, whoever comes to me I will never cast out. Romans 8:1 Paul says, therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Those who believe in Him; no condemnation, we will never be cast out. These are strong words from Paul and from Jesus Himself assuring us that no matter what we have done or will do our salvation is secure. No more guilt about how many times you missed church or walked by the homeless without helping or the number of times you should have evangelized or gone on that mission trip and did not. Those things do not matter to entering heaven. Christ is all that matters. Now we have reached the third and final question. In knowing what unmerited favor is and how it has secured our salvation what should our response be? Where do we go from here? Why not sin? There are no consequences if we are saved by grace and granted every lasting life. No matter how many times we screw up God sees Christ and we will still be allowed into His heavenly kingdom. So, what do we do as Christians? What should our response be to this revelation? Romans 3:8 Paul understands that we are saved no matter what and he says, "And why not do evil that good may come"? Some Christians during Paul's day were legalist, just as some Christians today are legalist. Paul goes on to say, "some people slanderously charge us with saying". Saying what? How can you be saved if you continue to sin and not work for the kingdom? Why do anything at all?

When people are generous to us, what is our response? We want to be generous back. We show gratitude for the generosity that has been shown to us. We, at some point, do something for them and ultimately grow closer in your relationship with that person. What should we do when God shows His generosity? A generosity that exceeds all others. We want to do something for Him to show our appreciation. Do we call it work? No, we love doing it. Right? David Curtis the head paster at Berean Bible Church of Virginia Beach Virginia said this, "The solution is not to add a bunch of rules to grace. The solution is to teach the magnificent boundless generosity of God's grace so that men and women would live for God out of gratitude rather than out of a sense of duty. Too many today are teaching duty and obligation instead of gratitude." Love the Lord your God with all of your heart, mind, body, and soul and love your neighbor as Jesus loves you. No threats, no legalism, but as a a call of gratitude for the unmerited favor we have received. Romans 12:1 Paul is talking to the Roman Christians about living out their gratitude for God's grace and generosity as a commitment. That is what God wants to see. He wants us committed as a Christian to changing our heart. Fight the flesh, focus less on earthly endeavors. Do not conform to this world but be transformed by the renewal of the Holy Spirit through Jesus the Christ and discern what is good and acceptable and perfect. Want to go on mission trips and evangelize? Do it. Want to help the poor? Do it. Before you go…Check Your Motive. Why are you doing it? Make sure your heart is right first. That is what God wants in return for unmerited favor. A gracious, generous heart, not how many people we can bring to church on any given Sunday. A hen and a pig were walking by a church and a sign on the church said, "How can we help the poor?" The hen and pig began to discuss ways in which they could help the poor. The hen said, "We could offer them a ham and egg breakfast." The pig responded, "That would require a contribution on your part but total commitment on mine." Which one are you? If you are the chicken, fine. God loves you. If you are the pig, great, but what is your motive? Where is your heart? Is the commitment out of gratitude or are you just looking for crowns from God? Another box checked on your check list of things you need to do for God. If you choose to work, before you start, please check your motivation. Why are you doing it? Gratitude? Great! Make a commitment and stick with it. In your heart decide, are you doing this out of genuine gratitude for the unmerited favor God has given or are you doing it out of fear or some work based idea that you want God to keep loving you. Motives. What are your motives? Motives are everything in our walk with Christ. We have been shown unmerited favor when we did not deserve it and this grace has given us salvation from sin and death. Now, no matter what we do we will never fall from grace, our works are filthy rages to God, but we continue to work, we continue to show grace for other because of gratitude for the love our heavenly Father has shown us through the gift we have in Jesus the Christ. All we do should be a sacrifice to God because life is not about us.  "For who has known the mind of the Lord, or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him that he might be repaid? For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. Amen." Romans 11:34-36