What is “grace”?

Some people today define “grace” as “God’s riches at Christ’s expense.” Others gloss it as “unconditional gift” or “undeserved favor.” Still others prefer to see it as God’s favorable disposition toward his people. However, the word grace in the New Testament (Greek charis) simply means “gift.” The content of the gift is determined by its context. For example, the definition “God’s riches at Christ’s expense” makes perfect sense in the broader context of Ephesians 2:8.

For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God.

But does that same definition fit 2 Corinthians 12:9?

[Jesus] said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made
perfect in weakness.”

What about 1 Corinthians 15:10?

By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”

The more fitting definition of “grace” in these two passages in Corinthians seems to be “power.” Grace is God’s power manifested in Paul’s weakness in the first, and in his ability to work harder than others in the second.

Do We Give Grace?

What about 2 Corinthians 8:3–4? Do the glosses “unconditional gift,” “undeserved favor,” or “a favorable disposition” work here?

[The Macedonian believers] gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor [same word for grace] of taking part in the relief of the saints.”

Grace here is not the immaterial gift of salvation or spiritual power. Rather, grace is the material gift of money or resources.

That may surprise you. Have you ever described the act of giving money as the giving of “grace”? Paul clearly does in 2 Corinthians 8–9, not just once, but six times (8:4, 6, 7, 19; 9:8, 15). The money bag he carried from these predominantly Gentile churches to the poor saints in Jerusalem is, strangely enough, “grace.”

But what is even more surprising about 2 Corinthians 8–9 is how the material grace of humans is inextricably connected to the immaterial grace of God.

Grace as a Person

To motivate the Corinthians to contribute, Paul begins 2 Corinthians 8 by speaking about the grace of God. “We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given” (2 Corinthians 8:1). He then expands the definition of this grace in 2 Corinthians 8:9: “you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that although he was rich, for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.”

Grace, in its chief manifestation, is the gift of a person (Titus 2:11–14), our incarnate, crucified, and ascended Savior. To receive all the benefits that this gift of grace achieved, we must, as Calvin argues, receive his person: “as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us” (Institutes, 3.1.1).

In 2 Corinthians 8:9, we find that the gift of Christ’s person is given to us in the gospel — he lowered himself, so that we, through his poverty, might become rich. And this gift comes from God. It is, after all, “the grace of God” (2 Corinthians 8:1).

“Christ’s self-giving love is the paradigm for human expressions of material grace toward others.”

I find it fascinating that when Paul wants to encourage human giving in the church, he placards the divine grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is the fundamental expression of giving grace as he gives himself. Paul does this intentionally to teach the church that Christ’s self-giving love is the paradigm for all human expressions of material grace toward others.

Interestingly, the only two instances where the phrase “the grace of God” appears in 2 Corinthians 8–9 are when Paul speaks of God’s giving (2 Corinthians 8:1) and human giving (2 Corinthians 9:14: “the surpassing grace of God on you [Corinthians]”). What’s the connection? God’s divine gift of grace fuels the human giving of grace to others.

God’s Grace and Ours

Consider 2 Corinthians 9:7–8. After stating that “God loves a cheerful giver” (quoting Proverbs 22:8), Paul takes a step back to explain the source of one’s giving. “God is able to make all grace [divine grace] abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work [human grace].” Also, 2 Corinthians 9:11: “You will be enriched in every way [by God] to be generous in every way [toward others].” Divine grace propels human giving.

But why is this the case? Why does our human giving depend on God’s initial gift of grace? Because “all things are from him, through him, and to him. To him be the glory forever and ever” (Romans 11:36). As Paul asks the boastful Corinthians, “What do you have that you did not receive? Why then do you boast as if you did not?” (1 Corinthians 4:7). The only appropriate response is, “Everything is a gift from God’s hand.”

David also declared, “All things come from you” (1 Chronicles 29.14). John the Baptist also affirms what David declared: “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven” (John 3:27). James agrees: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights” (James 1:17).

But God always gives his grace to his people for a particular purpose. We see this in 2 Corinthians 9:8 above (indicated by “so that”) and 9:11 (indicated by “to be”). When people in the world give gifts, they determine the purpose of their gifts. But when God’s people steward God’s grace, the purpose of giving must align with God’s purposes.

Thanks Be to God

Why? Because our possessions are God’s. He’s the Giver and the owner of grace. We’re simply stewards who mediate his grace. In a sense, we’re co-owners, but God never relinquishes his divine right over our possessions.

This becomes evident when we discover who receives thanks for the gift that the Corinthians give to the Jerusalem saints. Paul writes,

You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. For the ministry of this service is not only supplying the needs of the saints but is also overflowing in many thanksgivings to God. By their approval of this service, they will glorify God because of your submission that comes from your confession of the gospel of Christ, and the generosity of your contribution for them and for all others, while they long for you and pray for you, because of the surpassing grace of God upon you. Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!

“Ultimately, humans do not receive from, but through, other humans. The giver is God.”

Why will humans direct their thanksgiving to God rather than to the human giver? Because, ultimately, humans do not receive from but through other humans. The final giver is God. He therefore deserves the final glory.

But does this mean that when I receive a gift from another human, I should never thank that person? Of course not. John Calvin’s Geneva Catechism #234 is helpful here. He writes,

Question: But are we not to feel grateful to men whenever they have conferred any kindness upon us?

Answer: Certainly we are; and were it only for the reason that God honors them by sending to us, through their hands, as rivulets [or streams], the blessings which flow from the inexhaustible fountain of his liberality. In this way, he [God] lays us under obligation to them, and wishes us to acknowledge it. He, therefore, who does not show himself grateful to them by so doing, proves himself to be ungrateful to God.

We thank God by thanking others, remembering that his gifts come from him but through others. And so our thanks should flow through others back to God — the Father of every good and perfect gift — as Paul does when he ends 2 Corinthians 9:15 by saying, “Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!”

More than Human Love

Recently, a close friend of mine bestowed on me a very generous gift. I was floored by his loving generosity toward me and my family, especially my mom. He loved my mom with an earnest love for widows.

But his love was no mere human love. It was divine. Not that my friend is God. But God loves through means. Ηe channeled his abundant love on us through this friend, allowing us to witness the beauty of divine and human grace for those in need. His act of generosity was simultaneously a gracious act of self-giving, and it immediately redirected my eyes and heart to the self-giving love of Christ. It was therefore more than fitting to turn to my friend and say, “I thank God for ‘the surpassing grace of God upon you’” (2 Corinthians 9:14).

It was a long, shameful walk back to the hunting cabin.

For well over an hour, I had sat in the deer stand, happily reading and enjoying the quiet morning. Then I felt the loose bullets rattle in my pocket. I turned and looked. Oh no.

I had forgotten my rifle.

No choice now but to go back for it. The rest of the men in our extended family were tucked away in their own stands. They wouldn’t see me go back for my gun. But they would hear about it. Oh, would they. The cabin, teeming with our wives and children, would all too gladly report on my “hunt.” I could see pairs of eyes gawking through the window as I came up the dirt road. They gathered around and met me with barbs and laughter at the door.

Years later, I’m yet to live it down (and rightfully so). Now every fall we hear, “Remember the time Uncle David . . .”

Hunting Without a Rifle

I’m a terribly amateur hunter. I easily smile and chuckle about once forgetting my rifle. For me, the real joy in that quiet deer stand is unhurried Bible meditation and prayer. Getting the big buck is a distant second.

As a pastor, however, it would be a serious shame if I took the stand without my weapon. That is, if I entered the pulpit without the sword — without the staff, the wand, the scalpel for the most exacting of operations, the singular instrument of our holy calling. Without the Book, a Christian preacher is unequipped and incompetent. He is left, tragically, to preach his own ideas, his own preferences, his own lifehacks, his own self. When the act does not begin, persist, and conclude with faithfully delivering the message of another, it is, in reality, pretend preaching, not the real thing.

But with the Book in hand, with the Scriptures, with the word of truth about Christ and his work — and with the one weapon well-worn and cherished, internalized and rightly handled — the mere man, finite and fallen, is God’s man for the preaching moment. This blade, well-known and well-handled, can take the head off an evil giant, and perform the most delicate of surgeries on saints. With it, take to the pulpit with a holy and humble confidence. Without it, take a long walk back to the cabin.

Put the Word to Work

As the apostle Paul ascends the mountain to that great “preach the word” peak in 2 Timothy 4:2, he charges his protégé and dear friend to use Scripture to fulfill his calling.

Use Scripture — that might sound strange. But this is not the use of exploitation or abuse. Rather, this is the use of attention, reverence, and trust. Take it up. Put it to work. God gave us his Book not to file it away on the shelf, but to use it. Read it, explain it, preach it. Repeat. And don’t dare pretend to preach without it.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable . . .

Scripture is profitable, beneficial, useful (to greatly understate it!) in the pastoral calling. With Scripture in hand, and in his mouth, the preacher is competent, capable, proficient for the various aspects of his calling — “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). But without it, he is incompetent, incapable, inept — no matter how elegant he sounds or what a “good communicator” he is.

How, then, might preachers today, both current practitioners and those who aspire, answer this timeless call to use the Book?

1. Handle It Privately

First, we hold it, touch it, taste it for ourselves, in private — and ideally for some years before regularly taking it into a pulpit. And then, once preaching, we continue to handle it privately in all the times and seasons we endure as pastors, and as Christians.

We learn to use Scripture to help others by using it to feed and restore our own souls morning by morning. First, we learn — over time, not overnight — how to handle Scripture for ourselves, leaning on God’s Spirit. He may be pleased to give early flashes of insight and sovereign protection from error, but he doesn’t make preachers without putting them to work and conditioning them for the long haul. The arc of good preaching is years in the making, beginning with understanding and applying God’s word rightly in our own minds and hearts and lives. The competent pastoral use of the word emerges not mainly from study sessions prior to public messages but from long-standing patterns of being conformed to God’s word in secret.

So, first, long before preaching, we quietly learn to handle God’s word for ourselves. We meditate on it and enjoy it — and enjoy God in it. We steep our souls in Scripture for years. We seek to know God’s word, as much as we can, inside and out, and have it take root, and bear fruit, in us.

2. Handle It Publicly

We then turn and make God’s word explicit in public teaching. In our sermons, we show God’s word to be our authority and driving inspiration — not our own ideas and opinions and observations and cleverness. We get our key insights from lingering in Scripture, and then we work to show our hearers where we got them. We don’t assume they will see it without our help, so we labor to make them see it for themselves.

Saturating a pulpit ministry in Scripture happens both directly and indirectly. Directly: by drawing attention to particular words and phrases, and quoting chapter and verse. Indirectly: by preparing and preaching from the kind of soul that is constantly shaped by Scripture over time, to think and feel in God’s cast of mind, rather than the world’s and our own.

3. Handle It Rightly

Now, when any modern man, in this age of the triumphant self, embraces the personal preciousness of God’s word and resolves to preach that Book, not his own thoughts and self, he has crossed the first critical hurdle. He becomes indelibly persuaded to handle the word, to use it at the heart of his preaching, and he does. This is a glorious start. The miracle has begun. Yet to fully instantiate the apostle’s vision in his final epistle, a second critical hurdle comes: rightly handling the word.

Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly handling the word of truth. (2 Timothy 2:15)

That is, with a studied, steady hand, guide the word along a straight path. No distortive twists, no gratuitous incisions, no clever detours, no sleight of hand. With the skill of holy familiarity, take the blade from its scabbard, and wield it with precision, care, and self-control.

Handling Scripture rightly — that is, using it, without abusing it — can happen in countless ways, but here consider just two challenges among them.

Understand Truly

One, rightly handling means not cutting corners in the work of understanding what this text means (and does not mean). Study your passage for yourself long before you’re up against the deadline, and long before you check commentaries and other’s insights. Make time to steep in and ponder the text well before preaching it. And as you move from broad study to the narrow outline and presentation for this message, build your sermon on what you have seen for yourself, or can genuinely own as yours if another voice said it first.

Apply Duly

Two, rightly handling entails not cutting corners in the work of appropriate application, which can be the more challenging labor for many of us. We will not be content to have the message remain distant, and not bridge the gulf from the biblical to the present world.

This too will require planning ahead, giving ourselves space, and having the patience to discover what this particular text really means for our church (and not). We will not content ourselves with preaching right ethics from the wrong texts. We will yearn to do justice to the particular passage in front of us. We won’t make a habit of or excuses for forcing square Scriptures into round pegs of application. If the desired application is not there, we’ll find a faithful way to address it, and apply the text and/or another text that genuinely addresses the felt need of the congregation. We seek to work with the grain of God’s Spirit, not against him.

Whom Does the Sermon Exalt?

We could consider other misuses. A preacher might use Scripture, but too sparingly, garnishing his own ideas with verses out of context. He may abuse Scripture when the moral burden of his sermon originates elsewhere, with Bible texts then artificially pressed into a subordinate role, to show God on the side of whatever cause. Scripture also may be in use technically and yet without fitting priority and centrality. Opportunities for error are endless.

Good and faithful preaching is not only science but art. It’s a lifetime skill learned over years and decades, not weeks and months. Make a list of all the possible requirements in Christian preaching (including appropriate focus and sufficient brevity), and no single sermon will check all the boxes. In the complexities of the art, and the diversities of biblical texts, and vast variations of congregations around the world and throughout history, producing one single litmus test for preaching is likely impossible. But perhaps one check would come close: Whom does the sermon exalt?

We might ask, in the end, does the preacher himself look best? Do the hearers feel themselves raised up above all? Or is Jesus supremely exalted? Preachers, young and old, who aspire to use Scripture rightly, in their devotions and in their pulpits, can scarcely ask themselves enough, Who is supreme in this sermon?

The sky was the kind of blue if blue could burn, blue on fire, lit by the sun blazing high above the hills in winter on a morning when there are no clouds. A sky like that makes it easier for a soldier to die. It’s the last thing he sees, and there is comfort in knowing some things will live forever. (The Well-Spoken Thesaurus, 16)

Have you ever seen a sky like this? A sky ablaze and serene, reaching down to dying men with the warmth of a mother’s arms or the caress of a wife’s hand? This sky, burning blue, eases the soldier’s passing. He is dying — he knows the wound. Among thoughts of loves lost, future days unlived, last words never spoken, he gazes up, and there, a painting more beautiful than he ever remembers. What a Sistine Chapel to canvas this theater of war — unsmeared, unshot. Beauty amidst death. Loveliness amidst terror. A flower sprouts in a bloody field. As his eyes begin to stare beyond this world, he almost smiles.

A sky like that makes it easier for a soldier to die.

This world has many such skies, skies (figuratively speaking) that make it easier for us to face death. They seem to say, in their own way, Everything is going to be alright. But earth’s burning skies do not always (or even often) tell the truth. As much as they may quiet the conscience at the end of a life we thought well-lived, we may still, in fact, be unprepared to die. Then, such skies deceive like a decorated hallway on our way to a place we never meant to go. Men, women, and children have slipped into death with a degree of consolation, only to awake in confusion. They died under the comfort of a burning blue sky that gave way to a living nightmare.

If our soldier could have heard the speech of the sky that day, he would have heard a fiery sermon about the glory of God (Psalm 19:1). A sermon rebuking his thankless and dishonoring life toward his Creator (Romans 1:20–21). A sermon pleading with him to turn from sin to a faithful God who remembers his own with mercy (Jeremiah 31:34–37). The sky burned blue-faced, yes, with earnest appeals: “Confess your sins; look to the perfect sacrifice — Jesus Christ — who died under a skyless night that sinners might wake to eternal Day. Trust in him completely, before you lose your soul forever!”

Earth’s Best Skies

Reader, do you know what sky would ease your death, if death came sooner rather than later? Is it trustworthy? Let us turn our gaze to some of the most vivid skies earth contains, skies that, apart from Christ, will cheat us in the end — the true, the good, the beautiful. These firmaments put man in touch with something beyond himself. Yet we can die beneath these heavenlies without being welcomed into heaven.

The True

Many men have died under the serene skies of a thoughtful life. They have wondered and thus wandered beyond the maze of carnal stupidity. They will not die as a cow eating grass. They are men, not beasts. They agree that the unexamined life is not worth living. They believe in true and false; they believe in logic and mathematics and science and philosophy, and even that a higher power must reign above.

Such men ask hard questions and cannot be satisfied with shallow answers. They read and listen and converse and challenge and will follow where the evidence leads. They think and test their thoughts. What they believe, they know, and what they know can correspond very well with God’s reality. They answer some questions correctly. They do not bow to Jesus as the Truth — they too have exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and for this they shall perish — but they stand more approximate to truth than their unthinking, unserious, uninterested, and easily distractable peers. To trap them, Satan must at least use the good cheese.

When they come to die, they recognize that they die in a nest perched on a higher branch. They have read better books, dined on better thoughts, lived more efficiently, productively, rationally, humanely. Worldly wisdom, perhaps, but better than worldly idiocy. They die under a sky of thought, yet never fearing the happy prayer of Jesus:

I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will. (Luke 10:21)

The Good

Another brilliant sky is the virtuous one. The great Village of Morality boasts the most captivating atmospheres for sons of Adam to die beneath. Creeds and religions of all sorts coexist under these colors and pat themselves on the back till death.

These feed the conscience memories of goodness, offer their doubts the wine of good works — You weren’t perfect, but you did your best. They despised the pellets and dirty water left in the hamster wheel; they never ran after those lusts. They have learned some version of decency, civility, discipline, which, at points, overlapped with the right, agreed with conscience, acted in accordance with God’s law.

Such a man believes that without morality, he is no better than the dog he pets or the worm he puts on the hook. He may not get it all right, but he cannot live without attempting goodness. Reading C.S. Lewis, he cries amen:

The man without a moral code, like the animal, is free from moral problems. The man who has not learned to count is free from mathematical problems. A man asleep is free from all problems. Within the framework of general human ethics problems will, of course, arise and will sometimes be resolved wrongly. This possibility of error is simply the symptom that we are awake, not asleep, that we are men, not beasts or gods. (Essay Collection and Other Short Pieces, 313)

Such may conserve traditional ideals of right and wrong, may warmly embrace sanity and live in friendship with natural law, may still know the meaning of duty and honor, and thus sicken at the decadence of a culture bartering Christian constraints for pagan perversions.

“Faith in the Son — dwelling in him and under his blood — is the only safe sky for mankind.”

But still, they themselves do not follow Christ. Yes, obviously boys are boys and girls are girls. Yes, of course murdering children is an abomination ladled from the bottom of the pit of hell. Yes, our government should end its war on the natural family. But no, I personally don’t worship Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of my life.

This is a pretty sky, prettier than the drab and polluted grey of the demonic ideologies of the time, but an unsafe sky to die beneath nonetheless.

The Beautiful

Overlapping with the first two, the beautiful is “an intrinsic quality of things which, when perceived, pleases the mind by displaying a certain kind of fittingness” (Jonathan King, The Beauty of the Lord, 9). As paint in the right place and proportion gives us a lovely painting, and as music in the fitting keys and proper sequence soothes the ear, so a life well-proportioned, bright with varying colors, gives off a sort of beauty, even if unredeemed.

Such lives unveil a father worth imitating, a friendship we want, a great romance we envy. They pursue high ideals; they live, in some sense, for others. This initially pleasing (but Christless) life fills the world’s novels, television series, plays, and movies. It is the beauty of the human experience: The replaying of moments — special and common — that make this life worth living. The beautiful contours of the human story that we relate to, know, and can glimpse as inexplicably precious. Our story — filled with tragedy and triumph, family and failure, music and misery — is still authored in pleasing font, still valuable.

And if we can look back at the four seasons of life and see love, or at the faces surrounding our deathbed and see it returned in their tears, this can soothe the sting of death as it overwhelms us. The burning blue sky is the wife’s hand or the memory of a beloved mother you hope to see again.

This compelling aesthetic is the hope of many. She is a smiling sky, a beautiful expectation. Yet while it imitates the second great commandment (loving your neighbor as yourself), it doesn’t pretend to attempt the first (loving God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength). The loveliness toward man is spoiled by the heart’s unloveliness toward God. The “love” is seen as idolatry in the end, a pleasing mural painted on a rotting house. More unjust is this love than a man who adores his dog and neglects his wife, or the woman who feeds her cat and starves her grandmother. Lightning will soon erupt from this clear sky.

Parting Clouds

Christ, dear reader, Jesus Christ. All loves inevitably fall and die and decay while we still serve the world, the flesh, and the devil. No matter what sky makes it easier for us to die, faith in the Son — dwelling in him and under his blood — is the only safe sky for mankind. “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him” (John 3:36).

All truth is found in him — “I am . . . the truth” (John 14:6). All goodness is his, and he is “the righteous one” (Isaiah 53:11). All shafts of beauty beam from his crown to earth — “He is the radiance of the glory of God,” “the king in his beauty” (Hebrews 1:3; Isaiah 33:17). Apart from him, this world’s best truths, highest goodness, and most suggestive splendors spoil, fester, and stink. The corpse, though embalmed, decays, smells, and returns to dust.

But what a sky, burning blue and gold and silver, is Christ to the soul. Gaze up, as Stephen in his death, and prize not the horizon for its colors, but heaven for its Christ. “Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God” (Acts 7:56). Look to him — as Truth, Goodness, and Beauty himself — and die looking to him. He is the only sky that makes it not only easier to die, but far better.