Exploring Grace & Worship, Part One

After having an edifying discussion with my wife this last weekend while we were at a local coffee shop, she wanted me to discuss the topic of grace and worship. More specifically, how to define the terms and what they generally mean. Much can be said about both words and what they are meant to convey when used. But some Christians do seem a little confused when it comes to clearly understanding what grace and worship are. To that end, I would like to touch upon the subject and God willing, shed a little light on what both mean, and perhaps what they do not mean.

The first mention of the word grace in Scripture can be found in Genesis. “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord,” Genesis 6:8, KJV. As an aside, a very similar event occurred with Mary in Luke’s gospel where we read, “And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favor with God,” Luke 1:30, KJV. Apparently the same Greek term for “favor” in this verse of Luke is typically translated as grace, and is the first occurrence of the word in the New Testament. The Greek term, “charis,” is translated “grace,” 130 times in the NT, and “favour” a mere 6 times. See Acts 7:46 for another example of finding favour with God.

Look at the verb preceding the word, “grace.” Both Noah and Mary found grace; they did not win, merit, earn or purchase it. Grace was found. Grace is the antonym of work, according to Scripture, Romans 4:4. Whatever constitutes a work is not of grace; I would amend this by saying that anything that is done as work to merit what grace freely gives is a dead work and opposes the nature of God’s grace. Again, grace is found, not earned. Religion lies about the nature of God’s grace, telling man that we can and indeed must earn grace. But this, according to the Bible, is an oxymoron. The grace of God is freely given through Jesus Christ our Lord, and it is most potently and readily seen in the gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation to anyone who believes it.

But again, what is grace? If I were pressed to succinctly define grace, I would say that it is the unmerited, condescending love of God. To be clearer, it is a love that is not earned but freely given, and descends from God above to man below; it is an expression of God’s love for His creatures and may be received from Him freely through the message of the gospel. The Hymnal, “Grace Greater Than All Our Sin,” written by Julia H Johnston in 1911 does a fine job of expressing the simplicity, sincerity and immense power of how God’s grace enters into and transforms the lives of those who find it. When approaching the concept of grace, we find it to be the absence of human will, ego, privilege or pedigree. John says of those who come to God solely by grace through faith, that these, “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God,” John 1:13, ESV. In the very next verse John depicts Jesus our Lord as being, “full of grace and truth,” John 1:14, ESV.

Our Lord is full of grace, that is He is grace-ful. When something is graceful, it is seen as elegant, beautiful, mesmerizing even. Such a one is gracious and winsome. Of course it would stand to reason that Jesus is full of grace, since He is, “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn (the inheritor) over all creation,” Colossians 1:15. Hebrews states, “[Jesus] being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person,” Hebrews 1:3. Without doubt our Lord is full of grace because He is God, and as the Scripture states, “for God is love,” 1 John 4:8. John expresses God’s person in terms that equate love’s existence with the fact that God is. Because God exists, so does love, because God is love and expresses it more clearly than His creatures. He did so by giving us His own Son as a ransom for sin, that whether we accept Him and repent, believing in the gospel, or reject Him and remain hateful and hating Him, the witness of His endless love remains. It is this love that calls to sinners, no matter how blackened we are by the stain and guilt of what we have done that can capture even the worst of us in His net. 

Grace is God’s love reaching down to liberate sinful man from his own ruin; not because we deserve to be freed. We lost any claim or right to that in Eden when our first father disobeyed. Rather, despite our hatred of God and contempt for truth and purity, God pierces through it all with the light of His grace, embodied in the person of His only begotten Son, to do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He loves us, and by doing so, saves us. Grace is the call of an offended God who does not want His enemies to perish, but rather to come to their senses before life is spent and hope is lost. We will consider worship next, God willing.