How Will Accepting Grace Change Your Life?

The Grace Folder

I bet if I were to open the file folder in your brain titled “Grace” … there’s probably not much in there. Maybe there are some of the documents in this folder that say something like:

“Grace means unmerited favor.”
“God saves us by His grace.”
“Grace is the opposite of works.”
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound…”

Then there’s probably some miscellaneous files in there about God’s love and goodness, God’s blessings, and of course, some files on Jesus. You might look at those files and say “I guess these belong in the Grace folder. Not sure why, but this seems like a good place to put them.”

That’s at least what happens when I open the Grace folder in my head.

There Must Be More to Grace

Here’s the problem: The Grace folder should have everything in it. We should have to buy hundreds of thousands of filing cabinets, millions of external hard drives, and cover the earth with computer servers to store all the data on God’s grace. The Grace folder should not only be the biggest folder we have, but every other folder about our lives and about God should reference back to the Grace folder.

Ok, let’s lose the metaphor.

The problem is that we think too little of God’s grace. We don’t understand it in general, and we don’t know how it connects to our daily lives. But grace is central to God’s character and works. It’s arguably the most central and distinguishing doctrine of Christian faith. It’s at the root of our eternal salvation and our daily growth. It’s at the core of making sense of our identity and living out our faith.

Yet we don’t know what grace actually means for our daily lives. For our relationships, our work, our emotions, and more. It’s confusing. All we can muster up is something like “grace is unmerited favor.”

There must be more to grace.

Grace is the Foundation

The more I’ve studied the Bible and thought about grace, the more I see grace as foundational to everything about God, the Christian faith, and our lives. It’s the skeletal structure and connective tissue of who God is, who I am, and who I can become. Grace is the root and fruit of God’s creative and redemptive works in the world. Paul says that the end result of God’s salvific works are all “to the praise of his glorious grace” (Ephesians 1:6).

Grace is also at the heartbeat of God’s Word. Once you hear it, you’ll find that the beat of His grace is not isolated to a few stories in Scripture – it’s everywhere in His Word.

Grace is at the root of all spiritual growth. The apostle Paul said, “by the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Corinthians 15:10). Paul said that. He was one of the most educated people in his day, and he attributed it to grace. He was the most successful missionary in the church, and he attributed it to grace. He had the most profound life change, and it was all grace. All of his transformation and impact on the world – which still continues to this day – is due to God’s amazing grace.

Grace Changes Everything

Now consider this: Grace changes our eternity. That’s something to think about.

Accepting the grace of God in Christ literally changes your eternal destiny. God’s grace saves us from an eternity in hell and secures for us a joyous home with Him in the new heavens and new earth forever, along with millions of others. Grace quite literally takes us from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7) and shapes us to look like and reflect the image of the eternal Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Lord (1 John 3:2). That’s the power of God’s grace.

If grace can do all of that, imagine what accepting grace will do for your day to day life, for your thought life, for your job, for your relationships, for your troubled past, for your sin struggles and bad habits, and even for your successes.

If accepting God’s grace changes your eternal destiny, then it must be at the root of untold, exciting potential change in your life now.

Grace must be at the root of not just overcoming sin and dealing with our guilt but also of overcoming our shame, our regrets, our pain and trauma. Grace must be central to maintaining healthy relationships, having a healthy sense of self, and honestly pursuing God for God – not just for what He gives us but for who He is.