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"ThursdayReflection"
6th March 2025
'John Piper'
Founder & Teacher, Desiring God
"What Is Grace?"
I often hear the word 'grace.' defined as 'unmerited favour' or 'getting what you don't deserve.'
"But I don't understand it in the context of texts like 2 Corinthians 12:9
'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.'
Or 1 Corinthians 15 v 10:
'But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.'
I don't understand 'grace' in these verses. Can you explain it to me?"
I love this question: it gives me a chance to say to Heather that we're all really in this together, and I don't have any special advantage over you in answering these questions except maybe that I've had a little more practice.
I open my Bible and I get my concordance, and I look up all occurrences of grace in the Bible.
We all go about answering questions pretty much the same way.
Look at all the Bible has to say, and then do your best to see how it all fits together, all the while being humble and submitting your mind to what the Bible teaches.
Let's just limit ourselves to Paul, and to the two uses of grace that she saw.
On the one hand, grace is called - and I think it's an absolutely wonderful phrase - undeserved favour.
Now, that's what most of us have in our minds when we say God is a God of grace. And that's true. It's wonderful.
Our eternal lives depend on it.
None of us would be saved if grace were not undeserved favour.
But then Heather rightly notices another group of passages, also in Paul, where he comes at grace a little differently.
1 Corinthians 15:10
"By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder [that was the effect of grace] than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me."
Grace is not only a disposition in the nature of God, but is an influence that works in us, to change our capacities for work and suffering and obedience.
Now, having seen all the texts, I broaden my understanding of grace as the Bible uses the term.
Now I say, "Well, it appears that the word grace in Paul's use not only refers to God's character to treat people better than we deserve, but also refers to the action of this disposition, which produces real, practical outcomes in people's lives, like being sufficient for good deeds (or enduring the thorn in the flesh) or working harder than everybody else, which Paul says about his own apostolic work."
Now, that does not mean you have to give up that simple definition of undeserved favour. That's true.
That's a good definition.
It just means that the word also embraces the encouraging truth that this favour overflows in powerful, practical helpfulness from God in your daily life where you most need it.
That help is also called grace because it's free and it's undeserved.
This is an extremely edited version.
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John Pipe
is founder and teacher of Desiring God and chancellor of Bethlehem College and Seminary.
For 33 years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
He is author of more than 50 books, including Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist and most recently Foundations for Lifelong Learning: Education in Serious Joy.
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Draw Near with Confidence
So, let me end with a precious verse that we all know and love and maybe have never thought about in this term of grace.
Hebrews 4:16:
"Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace."
That's a throne with the quality (and the character and the inclination) to treat people better than they deserve.
That's the kind of throne we're coming to.
But then it says,
"that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."
Or a more literal translation: "that we may find mercy and grace for a well-timed help."
It is incredibly encouraging that God's grace is both the inclination of the divine heart to treat us better than we deserve and is the extension of that inclination in practical help.
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