By Grace saved through faith
Ephesians 2:8-9 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.
One Sunday morning during our Christian formation time, an older woman who had been a churchgoer her whole life said, “I don’t think I understand the concept of grace.”
I chuckled and responded, “I don’t think I understand it either!”
In all seriousness, grace runs counter to the Protestant work ethic and the tenets of capitalism and can indeed be difficult to understand.
We learn from a young age that people deserve what they get, both bad and good. The Christian narrative of grace, of God’s love freely given to us while we were in a state of sin, does not compute.
Every day, I try to understand grace, to rest in the knowledge that nothing I do can either lose or win God’s love for me, and I’ll probably be trying to understand it for the rest of my life. No one can boast because grace is the free gift of God.
MOVING FORWARD: Is grace a distant theological concept or a lived-in reality in your life? How can you move toward a deeper understanding of God’s grace?
PRAY for the Diocese of Eha-Amufu (Nigeria)