What is your definition of Grace?

[notinvain]

These are mine.

The first time we experience Grace is when God has pity on us because of our weakness as humans to obey his laws. He knows well of our sinful nature and he provides us a way out if it's "death like grip" on us so that we can actually live out his requirements for our lives. Not because we have to, but because we are able to!

Grace is his answer to our prayer that we are weak and incapable of living out his laws in our hearts which should produce in us our sorrow for not being able to obey, which brings us to repentance. Repentance leads us to the truth.

Grace is what God gives us to bring us to repentance in the first place, he wants all of us to come to repentance so that we can be saved!

Grace is not like anything we as humans we could ever truly fathom, at least not in the capacity in which God displays it!

 

[johnd]

Grace is Jesus loving us th-issss much!

 

[kelco]

John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten son so that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condem the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.

 

[Bon]

In Romans 6 Paul explains the operation of Yahweh's grace on human beings. The chapter is a profound study in the transformation that takes place in the life of a True Worshiper under Yahweh's grace.

In the last verse of the previous chapter Paul writes, "That as sin has reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Yahshua the Messiah our Master."

The words, "grace reign through righteousness" are key. The New Testament in Modern English translates the phrase, "now grace is the ruling factor, with righteousness as its purpose and its end."

Grace is not static. It is active and it is to work in the believer's life.

Yahweh's grace has an objective: that we will turn from sin to live rightly. Obedience is the means by which that is accomplished. That means to keep His law, since sin is clearly defined as the transgression of the law, 1John 3:4.

Paul explains further in chapter 6 how grace works.

"What shall we say, then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? Yahweh forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?" (vv. 1-2)

To accept Yahweh's grace-His pardon for our sins-and then to continue our sinful lives as if nothing had happened is to pervert the whole idea of grace. We make Yahweh's grace a mistake if we accept His pardon only to repeat the sins.

Shalom from Bon

 

[muffler dragon]

These are mine.

The first time we experience Grace is when God has pity on us because of our weakness as humans to obey his laws. He knows well of our sinful nature and he provides us a way out if it's "death like grip" on us so that we can actually live out his requirements for our lives. Not because we have to, but because we are able to!

Grace is his answer to our prayer that we are weak and incapable of living out his laws in our hearts which should produce in us our sorrow for not being able to obey, which brings us to repentance. Repentance leads us to the truth.

Grace is what God gives us to bring us to repentance in the first place, he wants all of us to come to repentance so that we can be saved!

Grace is not like anything we as humans we could ever truly fathom, at least not in the capacity in which God displays it!

Here is a thread I started on Grace in another forum. The OP is how I view grace and define it.

http://www.christianforums.com/t734953

Shalom,

m.d.

 

[Yebo]

Greetings from a sunny South Africa

Mercy = not getting what you deserve
Grace = getting what you don't deserve

 

[IDS]

Saying that grace is unmerited favor is like saying Christmas is December 25th. It is true but there is so much more to it.


G od

R estoring

A nd

C leansing

Entirely


Mercy will always leave open the door
Grace will welcome home and then restore


We were made to have an intimate, close relationship with GOD and each other. When sin entered that was disrupted and destroyed. Grace undoes the damage of sin.


S eperate (from GOD and others)

I nterrupt (the flow of the Spirit)

N egate (our witness and His promises)



Grace is more than mercy shown. Grace is being restored. Grace is the Holy Spirit returning home and cleaning His house. Grace is a work of GOD we can never obtain by our works.


.....peace.....

 

[HumbleMan]

Grace is the immeasurable gift God has given us. Grace is undeserved, but given none the less because of His love. Grace is salvation.

 

[walking_by_faith]

Grace is not just God imparting salvation in the absence of our merit...it is God imparting salvation in the presence of our demerit.

 

[Unnamed Servant]

grace is the purpose of God to give you the righteousness and the promise that you do not deserve. - John Piper from The Faith- Grace - Certainty Connection September 19, 1999 Romans 4:16-21

Love-In-Christ,

Unnamed Servant

 

[johan777]

Grace according to the Message:
Rom 5:17 If death got the upper hand through one man's wrongdoing, can you imagine the breathtaking recovery life makes, sovereign life, in those who grasp with both hands this wildly extravagant life-gift, this grand setting-everything-right, that the one man Jesus Christ provides?
Rom 5:18 Here it is in a nutshell: Just as one person did it wrong and got us in all this trouble with sin and death, another person did it right and got us out of it. But more than just getting us out of trouble, he got us into life!

 

[mythbuster]

Grace is the Lord being with our spirit. Paul's final words. II Timothy 4:22
This is to enjoy God exclusively. From his fullness we have received grace upon grace. John 1:16 His grace is sufficient, and it is by this enjoyment that we are perfected in weakness. II Corinthians 12:9. The final words in the Bible are "The grace of the Lord Jesus be with all the saints, Amen." Revelation 22:21

remember Lot's wife.

 

[Green Orchid]

Mercy = not getting what you deserve
Grace = getting what you don't deserve

That's what I was going to say!


Grace is much more than just saving grace. Since grace is God giving us what we don't deserve, just being alive is a grace of God!
Grace is the reason why I can get up when I fall.
Grace is what motivates me to worship the Lord.
Grace should be behind everything we say or do because everything that God says or does to us is because of his grace!
Grace is the channel through which God manifests all his attributes.
Grace - charis: the unmerited favor of God

 

[JohnJones]

Grace is no magic wand that eradicates sin silently under the table without any human involvement. "Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD" (Gen 6:8) Was that it? Was it BOOM, Noah is saved? No. God gave him advanced warning about a flood, blueprints to a boat and the wherewithal to built it. Under the New Testament, Christians are saved by grace. Boom, they're saved? No. God gives them advanced warning about a place called hell, the instructions on what to do to get into Christ and the wherewithal to endure to the end. Paul says "For the grace of God that bringeth salvation hath appeared to all men, Teaching us that, denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world;..." -- Grace doesn't boom pow zoom save us - it teaches us what to do. (Titus 2:11)

 

[mark kennedy]

A good working definition for grace is unmerited favor. I Paul's epistles, especially Galations, he describes it in such a way that it sounds like spiritual fuel. Its interesting that the word for gift of the Spirit is grace. In fact Charisma actually means grace. Grace is what gives us the power and will to strive to enter the narrow gate.

I remember shortly after becoming a Christian I was praying and finally after God kept changing the subject with me, I finally said, Oh I give up. I don't know how God answers your prayers but for me it was like he reached down and grabed me and said, its about time.

One more thought I would like to share, grace is free for us but it cost God plenty.

In the final hours of darkness, in the garden there he prayed,
Father take this cup from me, is there any other way.
As his prayer turned into pleading, his sweat turned into blood,
Father prepare me now your will not mine be done.

The thousand came to take the one, and there he stood betrayed,
By the kiss that found forever, the lamb that would be slain.
When the said which one is Jesus, he spoke these simple words,
And the thousand fell before, the answer that changed the world.

I AM HE he said...
(Terry Talbot, I AM HE)

Grace and peace,
Mark