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Grace has two sides, a giving side and a receiving side. God gives. We receive. How do we receive God’s grace? By faith. Faith is the only appropriate response to the grace of God for it is the only response that appropriates the grace of God. We must believe in order to receive. The gracious pardon, power and provision that God freely offers us must be received by faith in order for us to personally experience it. It is only ours by trusting in Jesus. By grace, through faith, our sins are forgiven and our future is secured. Day by day, we look to Jesus in faith for all that we need, confident that His grace will deliver it.

Salvation is received, not achieved. We cannot do anything to deserve it or earn it, not even acts of obedience or righteousness. God does it all… The Father wills it. The Son secures it. The Holy Spirit administers it. What a gift! What a God! He doesn’t help those who help themselves; He helps those who cannot help themselves. From start to finish, it’s all by grace… Chosen. Called. Converted. Completed. Someday every genuine believer will be fully and forever delivered from the presence of sin into the presence of God. Not because we are able to keep the law, but because Jesus is able to keep us.

What does it mean to be “saved” by grace? It means to be rescued from something for something. From sin, for righteousness. From Satan, for God. From punishment, for reward. From death, for life. From hell, for heaven. From wrath, for joy. From brokenness, for glory. We must be rescued because we are incapable of reversing the curse on mankind caused by our sin. God is undoing all of the horrible things that sin has done and replacing them all with good things, beautiful things, joyful things, perfect things, eternal things. This is all by grace, which means…The only requirement for salvation is receiving it by faith.

If you think you can simply be a “good person” to get into heaven when you die, then you have grossly underestimated what God requires for entrance. Something we need to understand is this: our standards may be low enough that we can meet them, but God’s are high enough that we never will. As sinners, the best we can do does not measure up. The good news is this: We don’t have to because Jesus already did on behalf of all who put their trust in Him. Jesus lived for us. Jesus died for us. Someday we will be accepted into heaven by grace through faith in this: He exchanged His perfect life for our imperfect ones.

Nothing is free. When a gift is received, someone had to first secure it. Someone had to cover the cost. Someone had to pay. You and I are grace recipients who are gifted divine blessings. These are… Gifts, not wages. Free to us, not earned by us. Heaven-sent, not earth-generated. But let’s never, no never, lose sight of this truth: they came at a staggeringly high cost. Someone had to pay, and that Someone was Jesus. Except for what He did on the cross, sinners like you and me would get nothing but judgment. Instead, we get every good thing God has purposed for us. We get it all because Jesus paid for it all.

Nothing and everything. If you don’t understand both of these aspects of grace, you don’t understand grace. As sinful people, we can do nothing to meet God’s standards, avoid God’s wrath, deserve God’s blessing, earn God’s forgiveness, or enter God’s heaven. But God did everything by sending Jesus to forgive us, free us and favor us so we can enjoy a rich and restored relationship with Him forever. We don’t buy from, bargain with or bribe God for what He does for us; we receive it freely by faith. The reality of grace is… God doesn’t help those who help themselves. He helps those who cannot help themselves.

The biblical story is about a God of grace sending His Son to people in need of grace to rescue them from sin by grace so we can be welcomed into His family to live by grace and serve as ambassadors who tell others about His grace so they might also experience His grace. This beautiful narrative is one in which God repeatedly reaches down to and out for an undeserving people who repeatedly push against and away from Him. Where sin abounds, grace abounds even more! When you trust in Jesus, you can know this: Your chapter in the story is unfolding, and its end has already been written. Grace has the final word.

We can define grace without really recognizing it. We know grace is God’s “unmerited favor” toward us, but that’s very generalized. What does it specifically look like in everyday life? It looks like: forgiveness during failures, peace during storms, hope during trials, comfort during heartaches, joy during suffering, guidance during uncertainty, rest during busyness, strength during temptation, blessing during good times, help during bad times, and so much more. But even that is not as pin-point accurate as grace really is, for it shows up in countless minutiae within each of those categories. Grace is all around us.

By grace, God serves up an endless feast of soul-nourishing, soul-delighting blessings for those who trust in Jesus. This includes: forgiveness, friendship, freedom, wisdom, power, peace, purpose, joy, hope, security, rest, justice, thankfulness, assurance, deliverance, guidance, significance, endurance, comfort, companionship, care, courage, transformation, satisfaction, love and life. And this is not a complete list! The countless implications and applications of the benefits that are ours by grace are staggering and extend from now until eternity. It’s a buffet, not a bite. In Jesus, we have the life we’ve always wanted.

Grace is the forgiveness, freedom and favor of God given freely to us. It is forgiveness… God is just and cannot simply ignore our sin; He is also the Justifier Who sent Jesus to be punished in our place in order to pardon us. It is freedom… Sin’s controlling, enslaving influence in us has been broken, and we are empowered not to sin as we live by God’s indwelling Spirit. It is favor … Every good thing in our lives is a gift from heaven that would not be ours apart from Him. This grace is unlimited and unending, so even as we stumble in our faith, there will always be… More forgiveness. More freedom. More favor.