“Grace grace, God’s grace, grace that is greater than all my sin.”¹ Grace is a theme that runs like blood through the Christian church. Without grace we have nothing. Yet do we properly understand what grace really is? What is grace? Have you ever stopped and thought? People will often say, “Grace is unmerited favour.” This is true, but does this capture the reality of what biblical grace really is?

In the beginning of the letters in the New Testament there is a common refrain, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”² Yet, what does it mean to say, “Grace to you.” You might think that it is simply a statement of well wishing from Paul. However, there is something far more significant going on than at first glance.

We are told by the Apostle John that Jesus “became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth”³ and “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.”⁴ This is extremely significant. Jesus Christ is the glory of God come from the Father and he is the embodiment of grace and it is in him that we receive grace. Or to say it differently, there is no grace without the Lord Jesus Christ.

Often we fall into the trap of speaking about grace like a substance separate of itself that is simply given to us by God. Descriptions like unmerited favour do not help with this. The communication of grace comes in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we get grace we get Christ. This drastically changes the way we think about grace.

If we come back to the letters of the New Testament and consider again those familiar words, “Grace to you”, we realise that Paul is not wishing that we should have a substance, but rather that we should receive all of the blessing that is founded in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. When we give thanks to God for the grace he has bestowed upon us, we give thanks for the fact that we have given us Jesus.

The wonderful thing about this realisation is that it brings us to bow before God the Father who has given us Jesus Christ, to adore God the Son in whom we find grace, and to praise God the Spirit who has applied God’s grace to us.

1. From the song, “Grace that is greater than all my sin”, by Bob Kauflin. ↩︎
2. Romans 1:7, 1 Corinthians 1:3, Philippians 1:2, etc. ↩︎
3. John 1:15 ↩︎
4. John 1:16 ↩︎