Speaker: Darlene Sala | Series: Encouraging Words

Paul so often began his writings to the New Testament churches with the greetings, “Grace and peace.” Bible teacher G. Campbell Morgan says that “grace” was first of all in Greek an intellectual and artistic word. It included the idea of “beauty as against ugliness, health as against disease, order as against chaos, all the realm of that which is beautiful.”

But in the process of time it came to mean a desire on the part of God to impart these things of order and beauty and life to others—a giving.      Finally, the ultimate meaning of grace came in the New Testament. Grace was not merely order and beauty and loveliness, and the desire to give those gifts, but also the activity that carries out the desire. Grace, writes Morgan, “is ultimately the activity of God which puts at the disposal of sinful men and women all the things that give delight to Him.”[1]

So, grace is first, all that is orderly and beautiful, then it involves God’s desire to give that to us, and ultimately the action of God to make it possible.

Think of it this way. When a baby is born, the parents look at that little one and anticipate all the wonderful experiences they want to share with their child–the fun they will have together on picnics and camping trips, and in sports, and all the other joys of family life. Because they love that little baby, they can hardly wait to give to him out of the life and joy in their own hearts. Giving, therefore, is not a duty but a joy.

Is God so different? Out of His heart of love, He has made us spiritually rich. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” wrote Paul, “that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9).

God’s grace! We don’t deserve it, but stop right now and say, “Thank You, Lord.”

[1] G. Campbell Morgan, The Corinthian Letters of Paul (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1946) 14.