What do Christians mean by grace?
The doctrine of grace results from the doctrine of lordship, referring to the God of Israel in the Old Testament and Jesus of Nazareth in the New Testament.
Grace in the Old Testament
In the Old Testament context, lordship means that the Creator does whatever he chooses to do. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth, in the seas and all deeps.” (Psalm 135:6). This was not a foreign idea for ancient religions. The gods had power over men, and they exercised it as they pleased. As human lords were tyrants, so were the gods.
Ancient Israel claimed that God was indeed Lord - his will unchecked and unchallenged. But contrary to false pagan gods, God's will for his people was good. Moses was given a glimpse of God’s glory at Sinai and the image was one of kindness. “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord.’ And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19). The Lord does whatever he pleases, and he pleases is to be gracious to his people.
Just as no force on earth could theoretically challenge a tyrant god’s pettiness, neither could any power thwart a gracious God’s goodness. If a cruel tyrant condemned you, you stood condemned without recourse. If a gracious lord pardoned you, you stood pardoned without further accusatio\n. His will was final, and in the case of our God, his will was gracious.
Grace in the New Testament
In the New Testament, Jesus goes about making similarly gracious claims. “And when Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven.’ Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this man speak like that? He is blaspheming! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’” (Mark 2:5–7). The scribes understood this scene better than us, though they didn’t like its implications. They immediately understood that Jesus was acting as a lord—as The Lord.
Imagine a man is owed a debt from his neighbor. The man owed the debt is within his right to forgive the amount. He would have to be willing to accept the financial loss himself. If he can do so, the debt can be forgiven with no further questions asked. But now imagine another man who walks into a bank. The bank owns various debts to various parties: mortgages, auto loans, personal loans, etc. The man walks into the bank and simply declares, “All the debts owed here are forgiven.” This story is absurd. No man has the right to forgive these debts because they are not owed to him.
But a lord could do exactly that. A lord is a person of such power and resources that he could assume all those debts and simply declare them forgiven. He could stake his own wealth against the debts and wipe them clean. You and I don’t do things like this because we can’t. We aren’t lords. We are not so immensely powerful and personally wealthy as to assume the debts of random people that we meet.
Yet Jesus does precisely that. He forgives and assumes our debts. He simply declares the accounts settled against his own name and account. The graciousness of Jesus is controversial because it is lordly. As the scribes remarked, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” Who has the divine right and cosmic abundance to assume the cost of the wrongs of random people passing by? Only the God Moses glimpsed could do so, and this was precisely the point Jesus was making.
Grace in Parables
In his teachings, Jesus conveys this message in a parable. “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how” (Mark 4:26–27). The message here is admittedly cryptic, but I believe still within the theme of the graciousness of the Lord. The simple story illustrates the life of a seed, growing and thriving whether we understand it or not. So it is with all the ways of the Lord. “Who has measured the Spirit of the Lord, or what man shows him his counsel? Whom did he consult, and who made him understand? Who taught him the path of justice, and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?” (Isaiah 40:13–15). The Lord does whatever he pleases, and we do not know how. Nor does he owe us any explanation. You will give an account of your life to the Lord, but he owes you no such reckoning.
Jesus continues, “The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear” (Mark 4:28). The farmer plants and reaps, but if he is honest he knows he has very little to do with the growth and life of the plant. “The earth produces by itself” — of its own unseen power. Likewise, Jesus reminds us that the lordship of Christ has a life of its own. He makes a command and an action follows. He extends grace and grace is therefore extended.
Jesus concludes, “But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come” (Mark 4:29). The seed grew, the plant grew, and the harvest grew. All of this resulted from the unseen power of life at work in nature, and none of it was the result of our power. God describes his lordship the same way in Isaiah. “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it” (Isaiah 55:10–11). The Lord’s will always gets results.
He is Lord, and if he willed our destruction, we would be destroyed.
But he doesn’t. We overlook that too often in the miracles of Jesus. If his miracles were merely displays of power, then it would be just as effective for Jesus to strike people dead as to heal them. He could give people leprosy rather than cure it. He could summon storms rather than calm them. But the miracles of Jesus are not merely acts of power, they are signs of the kind of power that comes from God. This is the God whose glory Moses glimpsed. His omnipotence is aimed at doing you good.
You see, Jesus could have even told a different parable. He could have said, “A farmer plants the seed, but the ground is dry. The rains never comes, so only a frail stalk grows. Once the puny stalk grows, the storm finally comes, but with wind rather than rain and crop is destroyed.” If the parable's point is simply that Jesus is Lord and a powerful one at that, then this parable works. But that isn’t the point. Jesus is Lord, and this Lord is gracious.
The Graciousness of Christ
In the work of Christ, we constantly see God’s lordly power on display but it is not the fickle petty power of tyrants. It is the generous power of God who says you are forgiven as he heals your wounds. All of this is done for you. None of this is done by you. This is what Christians call grace. It is the God of Creation, the Lord of the Universe, acting with all his might to do you good, and no one can stand against it. Of course, this doesn’t keep us from trying. But even our obstinate opposition at the end proves again the Lord’s power.
He is giving us grace day after day. It will grow something. We may grow a crop of hate from his imparted love, but there is a crop just the same and therefore a harvest. The harvest language found in Mark 4:29 seems to be a quote or allusion drawn from Joel 3:13, a text not about grace so much but rather about judgment. “Put in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe. Go in, tread, for the winepress is full. The vats overflow, for their evil is great.” Similar language is used in the dreadful images of John in Revelation. When God says, “The harvest has come,” then the harvest is come, whether it be a harvest of praise or justice.
I know I am straddling a doctrinal fence here. I believe you have some sort of choice in the matter, but at the same time, I believe the effectiveness of the Lord’s will is not in doubt. He has poured out his grace, and his grace will grow something within you. The Lord has declared it, and he will have his harvest.
Thus the question for us is simple. What is God’s grace growing in your heart?