Grace Defined (Part 1)

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GOG - 20 - Grace Dened (Part 1)

(Part 1) Pastor Nkechi Ene (Mrs.) Grace is a word that has so many interesting meanings. In this article and the ones following, we will explore the beautiful colours of grace by dening the grace of God.

Grace Is Eternal Life Grace comes from the Greek word charis and it means eternal life. Romans 6:23 says, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”. You may ask, “Where did you see grace in that Scripture?” In the Greek, that word translated “gift” is actually the word for “grace”. So, let's read that again, putting the word “grace” instead of “gift”. “For the wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord”. That verse of Scripture for me, is one of the base, foundational, overwhelming, and overpowering denitions of grace. It says the wages of sin is death, but the grace of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

These two words: eternal life are aionios zoë.

Aion is from the root word that means ages.

Aionios means perpetual, everlasting past and future, while zoë is life, literally life as God has it. So, the wages of sin is death but the grace of God is aionios zoë; perpetual life, eternal life, everlasting life, past and present, not just a long life but life as God has it. That is why I believe this denition encompasses every other denition. The grace of God brings you to the level of perpetual life, the same kind of life that God lives. This happens through the gospel of the grace of God.

24 But none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I may nish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God. Acts 20: 24 (NKJV)

The wages of sin is death but when you hear the gospel of the grace of God, you are introduced into a new kind of life, the same kind of life that God lives. You are not introduced into this kind of life for a short while, you are perpetually living the life of God. This gospel is the gospel of the grace of God.

Grace Is The Gift Of God 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast.

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NKJV) 8 Thus He shows for all time the tremendous generosity of the grace and kindness He has expressed towards us in Christ Jesus. It was nothing you could do, you could or did achieve; it was God's gift to you.

9 No one can pride himself upon earning the love of God. Ephesians 2:8-9 (Philips)

In Romans 6:23, the word “gift” there was 8 For by grace you have been saved through the word “grace” (charisma) but in Ephesians faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift 2:8, that word “gift” is different from the of God, “gift” in Romans 6:23. It's the word doron and Ephesians 2:8 (NKJV)

When you believed the gospel, it was the gospel of the grace of God that you believed; and this gospel of the grace of God is the gospel of eternal life. Your faith in the gospel of grace introduces you into aionios zoë - perpetual life. As a child of God, your experience should be aionois zoë always.

Your experience should be to have life as God has it because you have received the gospel of the grace of God, which is the gospel of aionois zoë.

The grace of God is eternal life. Grace is all about the life of God. As a believer, when you say you are living life here on this earth, you are actually living the life of God because you believe the everlasting gospel of grace. Grace came and brought you into a new life, into a new citizenship, a new DNA, and a new way of living: the way God lives.

it means a present; specially a sacrice, a gift, an offering. This is God giving you an offering not you giving to God. It is the gift of God, it is the doron of God. Some people like to give gifts, some like to receive gifts and some like to do both. In this portion of Scripture, it reveals a tremendous generosity and kindness of God. He packaged a present, a gift, a doron, an offering and just gave it to you. Doron also means sacrice. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son...” (John 3:16). That word “gave” is another word, which is not doron but is similar in character to doron, and it means a gift. Doron was a present you didn't pay for but somebody else paid for it.

Every gift you get has been paid for by somebody. You may never know how much.

There are certain shops especially online that when you want to make a purchase, they ask

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GOG - 20 - Grace Dened (Part 1)

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you, “Is it a gift?” If you say yes, they ask you if you want a gift receipt or you want the prices to show. If you want the person to know how much you spent, you can say yes but if you don't want the person to know, you just cross it out on the system.

When the person nally gets the gift, all they get is a blank sheet saying this is a gift from this person and the receipt is removed. My point is that even such gifts has been paid for by somebody. That is the grace of God; it is the gift of God to you.

like that life wants to come upon you, you say, “No”. Jesus has declared Him, He has brought Him out for us to see and made Him known to us by the grace He gave us as a gift. Who would give you in all tremendous generosity and kindness a gift that was paid for? That should tell you something about that person. So, when you begin to explore that gift; you begin to know more and more about that person.

The grace of God is one way that Jesus declared who the Father is.

You'll be a dummy not to know your gift or really use your gift. The grace of God that has brought you into eternal life - aionios zoë, into the kind of life that God lives, that nobody before Christ came had lived, that kind of life was simply a gift of God to you. So, if you are one who struggles with receiving gifts, you need to know how to receive this gift. The grace of God was a sacricial gift to you and someone paid for it.

10 as each one has received a gift, minister it to one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. 1 Peter 4:10 (NKJV)

14 And the Word became esh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14 (NKJV)

Before this time, no one had come full of grace and truth but the Word that was in the beginning became esh, full of grace and truth. John 1:17-18 says, “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. No one has seen God at any time. The only begotten Son, who is in the bossom of (or as some translations would say, who is intimate with) the Father, He has declared Him”. From the Amplied, it says, “He has declared Him, He has revealed Him and brought Him out where He can be seen; He has interpreted Him and He has made Him known”.

The Word that was from the beginning came, full of grace and truth. He came to declare the Father, “I've been with the Father from the beginning, I'm intimate with the Father. None of you really know the Father but there is one way you can know who the Father is, I will declare Him to you. Not just by My words but by this grace that I came with”. The grace of God declares who the Father Is: He's a giver of good gifts. When you understand the grace of God, you will understand the very nature of the One Whose life you live; then you can recognize when a life that is not

The Bible says that as you have received a gift, you should also minister it as good stewards of the manifold grace of God. This means that each one receives the grace gift. So, take the grace gift and begin to minister it, or distribute it. You are to declare with your gift Who God is. You are to showcase this God that you are intimate with because you are living the same life that He is living. That is what you do with the grace of God. That is how God is expressed in you and people see God through you; through the grace that He has given to you. You cannot ignore the grace of God. You cannot live without the grace of God either. You cannot be ignorant of the very essence of the grace of God and know what the grace of God is meant to be in your life.

Grace Is Unmerited Favour 10 to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, 11 according to the eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, Ephesians 3:10-11 (NKJV)

Unmerited favour is God giving to you what you don't deserve. We have established that the grace of God is the gift of God but we didn't quite say whether you deserved that gift or not. If it is the grace of God, then you didn't deserve it. You may ask, “How do you know, Pastor?” Imagine a guy who has worked very well for Satan and has to be paid. “The wages of sin is death but the grace of God is aionios zoë in Christ Jesus” (Romans 6:23). Looking at that verse, it is comparing: the wages of sin is death and the grace of God is aionios zoë in Christ Jesus. This, therefore, means that the person who has worked for Satan and should be paid will be paid with death. He has earned death but this is not where grace comes in. There is something that comes in to snatch death out of the way.

He can't run away fast enough from death; he's earned it, he has to get paid.

Death will come to him unless something intervenes and grabs that payment and that thing is mercy. Mercy withholds from you what you deserve.

For him now, he has no salary because what he worked for had been taken.

Mercy jumped in and took it away. It is great to be stopped from experiencing death but it didn't end there. God didn't just show him mercy and left him, grace came from the other end and gifted him eternal life. He didn't deserve it, he didn't merit it, he should have died. God says, “I just saved you but here is aionios zoë for you instead. I'm taking away death from you and I'm giving you perpetual life as I have it, which you didn't work for”.

You have no business deserving the grace of God, if anything, you should be crawling in gratitude that you escaped death, living like a worm on earth which is the way a lot of Christians live, saying, “I'm so grateful I'm not going to hell”. The gospel of grace is not a gospel of “dodging” hell, it's a gospel of aionois zoë. It's a gospel of experiencing the bigness of God. Mercy cleared the way for grace to hit you with what you don't deserve. In the next article, we will look at other denitions of grace.

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