With permission of the author, here’s a post by my friend “superdaviss” Dave from the Rumor Forum that said so eloquently what I have been trying to grasp about the grace of God:

I’d like to share from my experience a misunderstanding of grace that I guess I held to for a long time and have only recently (last 5 years or so) come to let go of (I think…I hope). I think a lot of believers have the notion that we try our best and that grace is what picks us up when we fall. The idea is that grace only comes into play when we screw up…almost like spackling paste: grace is there to level out the holes. But the truth as I understand it is that even when I seem to be doing everything right and not really screwing up that every step EVEN THEN is by grace. Grace isn’t the inflatable rails that they put in the bowling alley gutters for the little kids. It’s there the whole game…strikes, spares, splits, gutter balls. To use the words of Spurgeon, I am “forgiven by grace, renewed by grace, transformed by grace, sanctified by grace, and preserved by grace.” I think we cheapen grace when we make it effective only in response to our screw ups (of which mine are countless). I was freed from a lot of pride, boasting, guilt, and shame when I began to understand this. I’ve still got a lot to understand.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2004 at 5:20 am and is filed under Theology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.