What's Grace, and What's So Amazing About It?
‘The Denial of Peter’ by Carl Heinrich Bloch (1834-1890).
Peter was devastated. He was disappointed, angry at himself and utterly embarrassed.
This same Peter who loved and followed Jesus so closely - possibly the closest of all the twelve disciples, who had declared so proudly that he would never fall away, had just denied Jesus not once, not twice, but three times in one night.
The limitations of his faith and courage had been laid bare; he had failed Jesus. Deep down, he was not a loyal and selfless follower of Jesus; he was just a slightly over-confident guy who was too scared that he might die.
Does that sound familiar? It does to me: the humiliation of my sin – everything from selfish, greedy or bitter thoughts, to the times when I hurt those around me and everything in between – catching up with me, highlights that I’m not good enough. That I’ve failed again. That I’m, at best, a striving girl who sins too much and too often for God to still love me.
Which is why it struck me to read Mark 16:7, when the angel said to the two women at the tomb: ‘“go, tell his disciples and Peter”’ that Jesus has risen.
And Peter? Why Peter? Why the Peter who denied Jesus three times, who turned his back on Him as He went to the cross?
Jesus wanted Peter to know that He had died and come alive precisely for people like him. That precisely because of his weakness, He was included in the grace that Jesus said He would bring. So what is this grace Jesus talks about?
Grace is Gained Righteousness At Christ’s Expense.
Romans 3:23 tells us that as sinners, we have all fallen short of God’s standards of righteousness. Yet Romans 3:24 declares that by the grace which came through Jesus’s death and resurrection, we are freely justified and redeemed.
Grace means when God looks at us, He doesn’t see our flaws and imperfections or the many, many times we’ve failed Him; He sees the blood of Jesus, which has cleansed us of all of it. He doesn’t see a sinner who could never do anything good enough for Him; He sees a child He deeply loves.
Though I constantly catch myself in sin and weakness, Jesus died to pay the cost for all of it, and He came alive to win over all of it. I could never reach or please God on my own, but grace has brought me to Him.
Grace is why although I alone am not perfect, I don’t need to be; my righteousness doesn’t depend on me - it depends on the one who declared “it is finished!” when He died for me. His grace is constant and constantly perfect, precisely because my performance is not. Grace is why I am not hopeless or helpless, even when it feels like my sinful nature has taken me too far from God. Even Peter who denied Jesus thrice was called personally and compassionately by name, because grace was fully available precisely for people like him.
So perhaps grace is why Christians live differently. If failing to be perfect is inevitable, grace is the difference between hopelessly striving and hopefully striving: we know that even when we fail, we are loved.
Grace goes against every human instinct. Its unconditionality goes against reason and logic, and its accessibility goes beyond social status, wealth or intelligence. Grace is the indication of just how far-reaching and limitless God’s love is for us: though we cannot do anything to fix ourselves or please God enough - God would do something so ground-breaking and life-changing for us (Romans 5:8). Grace is God reaching out to us in the midst of our battles with insecurity and failure, and saying that He’s already won the war for us.
Grace is why we are more than just people that sin too much and too often; we are people who are unconditionally and radically loved.
Chloe is a first-year law student from Hong Kong. When she’s not stress-reading in the library or pulling late nights and all-nighters, she can probably be found in a debate tournament somewhere in the country, or mostly searching for a piano or guitar to play.
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