Old Word, New Meaning: Grace

Psalm 86:1-5; Hebrews 4:15-16

So far in our sermon series looking at old, or Old Testament, words given new meaning after the death and resurrection of Christ, we’ve looked at sacrifice, covenant, and righteousness. Christ, through his death on the cross, became the sacrifice for our sins, meaning that we no longer have to offer sacrifices to connect with God, ask for forgiveness, or seek blessings. We can connect with God through faith in Christ, are forgiven of sin through Christ’s death on the cross, and receive the blessing of eternal life through Christ’s resurrection – nothing more than faith is required. Through Christ’s death and resurrection, all the Old Testament covenants came to an end. No more trying to live according to a complicated system of laws, rules, and sacrifices; now our two commands are summed up in love, to love God and love one another. Where the law restricted freedom, love frees us. Before Christ, to be righteous with God one had to be right with God. We still need to be right with God, but righteousness is no longer something we try to earn - righteousness is reckoned, or credited, to us based on our acceptance of the gift of grace which Jesus offers us on God’s behalf. Righteousness is ours as a gift of grace. This brings us to our word for today: “grace.”

Before we turn to our discussion of grace, however, we did learn a few other things along the way. We learned that at one time awful had the same meaning as awesome, that a cheater was a title for a person who worked for the king or queen of England in claiming property for the crown, and that calling someone a bully was a term of endearment but calling someone nice was an insult. All of these, of course, must be true because they came from a careful scientific survey (AKA Google search). This week my Google search was a bit different. Today’s focus is not on words that have changed in meaning over time but on words that, for most of us here this morning, simply didn’t exist when we were born and then, at some point, entered our vocabulary. Here are a few examples. We could start with the words cell phone and laptop but think about photobomb, emoji, blog (which, by the way, I learned is short for weblog), voicemail, spam, selfie, onboarding, and cryptocurrency. Words enter our vocabulary as the world around us changes and it may surprise you to know that “grace” is one of those words. 

Did you know that the word “grace” isn’t in the Old Testament? Now I know some of you will tell me that it does, and you’ll cite me some verses to prove me wrong. So, to clarify, in our English Bibles there is a Hebrew word occasionally translated as “grace,” and that word is “hen” or “chen.” The word “hen” makes its first appearance in Genesis 6:8 which in some translations reads in English, “Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.” However, “hen” is more accurately defined as favor or mercy or blessed. What Genesis 6:8 really means is that Noah, because of his faithful life, was favored (or shown mercy or blessed) in the eyes of God. Throughout the Old Testament, just as we heard a few minutes ago in our Scripture reading from the Psalms, a common prayer is that God be gracious (“hanun”) to us. That same word appears in a priestly benediction found in Leviticus that often ends our service: “May the Lord bless you and keep you … may the Lord be gracious unto you.” God is occasionally, in our translations of the Old Testament, described as a gracious and loving God. 

But in the before-Jesus context, the prayer was that God remove punishment or suffering or that God show favor through blessings. When the people of Israel suffered from famine or attack from other nations or empires such as Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, and Rome, the perception was that their circumstances had been brought about due to their disobedience. In their view of God, they believed that their suffering was warranted and so they prayed for removal of suffering and restoration of blessing. Their history as a people affirmed for them that God would hear their prayers and show mercy and favor because God was merciful and faithful.

All this being said, while the word “grace” doesn’t appear in the Hebrew Bible, the concept of grace is certainly present as a theme and characteristic of God’s nature. But by the time of Christ, something more was needed. From the time of Creation, God had intended that all people of all nations be blessed. But the covenants, to that point, were all with the people of Israel. What about all the other people, the non-Jewish people? How were we to be included? The answer is “grace.” Grace, as defined in the New Testament, incorporates each of those Old Testament definitions, and then goes much further. Grace is a gift of God offered through Christ which brings not just blessing, favor, and mercy - it frees us from the guilt of sin, makes us children of God, makes us co-heirs of the kingdom of God with Christ, restores us to wholeness with God, and offers us the promise of everlasting life. 

If there is one word more than any other that defines what it means to be a Wesleyan or a Methodist, the word is “grace.” That one word is the heart of our Methodist tradition. In the mid-1700s, when John Wesley was preaching and Charles Wesley was writing hymns, there were two dominant schools of religious thought. The first was the Enlightenment which, simply stated, taught that human beings, through our intellect and technological advances, could improve themselves and draw themselves closer to God. We, through our own efforts, could and would, in essence, save ourselves. I’m not sure the 300 years between Wesley and us make a strong case for Enlightenment thinking. The second came out of the Reformation and was championed by John Calvin and his followers. The Calvinist view was that God’s grace was available only to a predetermined or predestined number of people who were known as the elect. Those who were the elect would receive God’s grace; if you were not of the elect, you would not, could not, receive God’s grace. So, one view said God’s grace wasn’t necessary and the other said it was necessary but completely up to God to decide who would receive it and who would not. Wesley, in his reading of Scripture, believed in an expansive view of grace that began with God’s promise to Abraham - “all nations of the earth will be blessed through you” – and was summed up in Acts 2:21, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” Grace, Wesley said, was a gift of God available for all and offered to all. As with any gift, we can accept it or reject it, but the choice is ours. And Wesley spoke not just of God’s grace as one gift, he spoke of three gifts of grace: prevenient, justifying, and sanctifying. 

Prevenient is a word that means “coming before.” Prevenient grace is a gift of God to each of us that is born within us. It is based on the idea of God’s universal love for every human being, It requires no response from us, it simply is; it’s a unilateral action by God that enables us to intuitively understand that there is a higher power, something or someone greater than ourselves, and something that gives our lives meaning and purpose. When we ask philosophical questions like, “Why was I born?” or “What is my purpose in life?” or when we find ourselves looking at the world around us or the birth of a child and wondering at the diversity of life, that is prevenient grace at work. Buried within our DNA is the desire to ask questions and to seek truth … and since the Bible tells us we were created in the image of God, that desire is a part of God inside of us. But there’s another part of God inside of us as well, and that is human freedom. Just because the desire to question and learn is within us doesn’t mean we have to put that desire into action. God’s grace doesn’t force us to respond; it gives us the freedom to choose to respond. Prevenient grace pulls us towards God and affirms for us that God wants us to respond and accept the love that is offered. This is the first stage of grace and it’s up to us to decide whether we will take the next step. 

If prevenient grace comes to us as a gift of God’s love, the second stage, justifying grace, is a gift made available through the love of Jesus Christ that led him to the cross. Justifying grace represents the fundamental message of the Christian Gospel: salvation through faith in Christ alone. According to Wesley, justifying grace is the grace that saves us from sin and reconciles us with God. When we receive this gift of grace, we are justified before God which means, for God, it is “just as if” we never sinned. We are forgiven, we are adopted into God’s family, and, as we learned last week, we are made righteous with God. 

We receive this gift of justifying grace when we proclaim Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. We admit that we are powerless to live a perfect life. We accept that Christ came to offer himself as the one-time-for-all-time sacrifice for our sin, and we affirm that Christ is not only the Son of God but is God. We place our faith, our trust, in Christ and in Christ alone. As the Bible says in Acts 4:12, there is no other name - other than Christ - by which we can be saved. It’s a gift of grace because it isn’t a matter of earning or deserving, but one of receiving and responding. It has nothing to do with rules or merit or how we live in comparison to others; it has everything to do with committing to following Christ. 

If we are restored to righteousness with God through faith in Christ, then what

more grace is needed. Wesley’s answer was sanctifying grace. If prevenient grace comes as a gift of God and justifying grace as a gift of Christ, sanctifying grace is a gift of the Holy Spirit. The central idea is that once we choose to follow Christ our lives will change … not because the law requires it, but because our hearts and minds have been transformed and we want to change to become more like Christ. The problem is, we are still human. We still have within us human desires such as pride, greed, envy, jealousy, and anger - things that aren’t very Christ-like. How can we change? Grace is the only answer. The Holy Spirit is alive and at work within us to nudge us, convict us, encourage us, and empower us. When we fall down, grace lifts us up and encourages us to do better. We aren’t condemned by our failures, we are encouraged by our successes. 

Hebrews 4:15-16 speaks of the promises of grace. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are - yet without sin. Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.” As high priest, Jesus is our spokesperson, our advocate, to God. If we proclaim him as Lord, he will claim us before God. But the wonderful thing about Christ is that he understands us. He lived and was tempted as a human. He never gave in to sin, but he understands how we are tempted and why we sometimes give in. He sympathizes with us and stands with us; and so, we can approach God’s throne with confidence because it is a throne not of judgment and punishment but a throne of grace. No fear. Just love. And the promise that we will receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

And now, having received grace upon grace upon grace, there’s only one thing left to do. As Jesus said in Matthew 10:8: “As you have freely received, freely give.” We show grace to others when they don’t deserve it because we have been shown grace when we didn’t deserve it. Grace never ends. Thanks be to God. Amen.