11. What is Grace - Part I
Chapter Five
Beloved, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God; and we receive from him whatever we ask, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.
1 John 3:21–22
Throughout my academic training, I was repeatedly dismayed by the ongoing debate about the relationship between “faith” and “grace,” between our moral obligations and God’s abundant mercy. As I read the scriptures, I wondered whether I am “justified by works”1 or “justified by His grace as a gift.”2 And if redemption is a gift freely offered, then why did Jesus command his followers to lay down their lives and love their neighbors?
One day, my confusion finally dissipated while I watched God’s seeds of Life, Light, and Love move within me. The realization seemed to hit me all at once. “The seeds are God’s grace!” I exclaimed aloud, with the exuberance of a child. When I exercised my soul through works of faith, I was being simultaneously filled with grace. During the days and weeks that followed, I studied the miraculous dynamic between the movements of my soul and the Word flowing within me. I wanted to know, with precision, how my labor of faith and God’s gift of grace danced together.
I began by observing the soul’s luminous mist, where through sustained attention and conscious effort we cultivate freedom. Every time I engaged this soul aspect, I saw multiple seeds of Life enter my soul. As they did so, the mist of my soul expanded and became more luminous. In addition, my freely chosen thought or action was infused with these seeds, thereby carrying Life out into the world. Within and around me, my act of faith multiplied the Presence of Life.
Similarly, whenever I freely chose to turn away from selfish preoccupation, the seeds of Life and Light appeared. Coming forth from the pearly gateway, both types of God's seeds entered my soul, expanding and brightening both the mist and the golden light respectively. Next, I saw the seeds continue outward to the shadowy source of my selfishness, weaving together into a single stream of golden Light. Thus transformed, the Light accompanied my faithful action, making it a vehicle of God’s Light.
Finally I studied the effect of offering love from my heart. As I reached out to another with my soul, I saw the fulness of God’s Word—Life, Light, and Love—flow into my soul, resulting in the expansion and illumination of all three soul aspects. Then God’s seeds interwove with my thought, word, or deed, filling my act of faith with the fulness of God’s Word. As the seeds moved outward into the world, I could no longer distinguish one from another, for the entire mass was a glistening cloud of white that held me and the one I loved in God’s embrace of Love.
Grace is the Word
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father. […] And from his fulness have we all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.3
Like faith, grace is a challenging word to define. Luke, the author of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, upheld Stephen as an exemplar of grace. Known as the first Christian martyr, Stephen performed “great signs and wonders among the people.”4 Those who were present at Stephen’s death said “his face was like the face of an angel,”5 and that he was “full of the Holy Spirit.”6 Luke seemed to believe that Stephen’s profound intimacy with God—evidenced by his miraculous abilities, his fearlessness, and his heavenly appearance—revealed God’s grace within him.
Later in the Book of Acts, a story about Peter offers another glimpse into Luke’s definition of grace. Peter was presiding over a council of early Christian leaders who were wondering what to do with converts who had not been circumcised according to the Jewish custom. After much debate, Peter stood up and declared,
Brethren, you know that in the early days God made choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God who knows the heart bore witness to them, giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us; and he made no distinction between us and them, but cleansed their hearts by faith. Now therefore why do you make trial of God by putting a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we shall be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.7
In this powerful speech, Peter affirmed that submission to the Mosaic Law was a yoke too heavy to bear. However, the grace that comes through Jesus made the path to God accessible to Gentile and Jew alike. Grace is portrayed as an alternative to the Law that offers the same outcome but in a universally achievable manner.
James provides another essential piece of the conceptual puzzle of grace:
Unfaithful creatures! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God. Or do you suppose it is in vain that the scripture says, “He yearns jealously over the spirit which he has made to dwell in us”? But he gives more grace; therefore it says, “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.” Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and he will draw near to you.8
In this fiery rebuke, James reveals that we who receive God’s grace experience two outcomes: the devil flees when we resist him and God reciprocates when we draw near. James called these outcomes, “grace.”
From the three passages given above, we can craft a definition of grace. Stephen was “full of grace” because his words, deeds, and physical appearance were imbued with God. Peter proclaimed that we are “saved through grace” because Jesus made immediate access to the Word available to all mankind. And the extraordinary outcome of faithful action to which James testified is the presence of God moving in and through our souls. Grace is God’s Word.
In his Gospel prologue, John wrote that Jesus was “full of grace and truth,” meaning that Jesus was the fulness of God’s Word made flesh. Because of the Word poured out in Jesus’s blood, “we all received grace upon grace,” for we now have immediate and unlimited access to God within us.
Jesus’s death and resurrection linked faith and grace together in a reciprocal relationship. In a miracle that I simply cannot capture with language, our works of faith form a bridge between Creator and Creation. Whenever we exercise our souls in thought, word, or deed, God’s Presence is multiplied within and around us, and all Creation shares in the glory of God.9
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James 2:24
Romans 3:24
John 1:14,16–17
Acts 6:8
Acts 6:15
Acts 7:55
Acts 15:7–11
James 4:4–8
Romans 5:2