“For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God…” (Ephesians 2:8).

Grace is one of those words we use so much we can forget what it means. 

A well-known definition of grace is that it is God’s unmerited favour. In other words, it is God being generous toward us beyond what we deserve.

Let that sink in for a moment. In and through Christ and what he has done for us on the cross, God shows his goodness and generosity toward us even though we frequently sin, live by wrong priorities, live by sight and not by faith, mess up, make excuses, miss the mark, and repeatedly flub his commandments.

Despite all that, God gives us… grace.

Max Lucado captures God’s heart well on this point: “God dispenses his goodness not with an eyedropper but a fire hydrant.”*

None of this excuses our wrong-headedness or our wrong-heartedness. But it stretches our gratitude, deepens our appreciation, and sets us in motion (yet again) to swim in the ways of grace since that is what our Father has showered on us. 

Not with an eyedropper, but a fire hydrant.

It is a gift given in love. Freely. In Christ. To you.

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Notes:

–*Max Lucado, Wild Grace: What happens when grace happens (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2012), 68.

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