Week 2 · Lesson 3
What Is Grace
Week 2 of 23 · Unforgiveness and Grace
When was the last time somebody gave you something with no string on it?
Take your time with that one. Because for most people in here the answer is either a long time ago, or never, or somebody who is not here anymore.
Somebody gave you money, they wanted something. Somebody put you on, you owed them. Somebody showed up for you, it came up later in an argument. That is how it has worked and you learned it early.
So when a man stands up and says God gives you something you did not earn and cannot pay back, you do not hear good news. You hear a setup.
Key ConceptGrace Is Not Getting Let Off. It Is Getting Covered.
People think grace means it did not matter. Like God looked at what you did and decided it was not a big deal.
If it did not matter, nobody would have had to die.
Grace means it mattered so much it had to be paid, you could not pay it, and Somebody else did. The debt was not cancelled by pretending. It was cancelled by being covered.
Being told you were never that bad is a compliment. Being wanted anyway is something else.
Romans 5:8 says God showed His love in this, that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. While. Not after you cleaned up. Not once you had a stretch of doing right. While you were still in it, still doing exactly what you were doing.
That timing is what ruins people, because it means there is nothing you can do this week to make Him love you more, and nothing you did last week that made Him love you less.
Journal Question
What have you decided is too far? Everybody has one. Write it, or write around it if you cannot write it plain. Then answer where it lands if that verse is true.
Teaching PointWhy Free Is Harder Than Earned
If you cannot earn it, you cannot hold it over anybody, and you cannot hold it over yourself either. Plenty of people would rather carry a debt they can work off than take a gift they have to accept. A debt keeps you in control.
To take grace you have to admit what it is for. That means somebody knows the whole thing. Most people would rather carry it alone forever than have one person know all of it.
And that sits wrong, because not being able to pay somebody back feels like being under them. It takes a long time to understand that God is not holding it over you. That is not who He is.
Activity
Write this sentence out: there is nothing I can do to make God love me more, and nothing I have done that makes Him love me less. Read it out loud once. Then write which part of you does not believe it.
Spiritual Takeaway
Three questions on a beach, for three denials at a fire
Peter was the one who said he would die before he left. Said it out loud, in front of everybody. Then that same night, standing by a fire while Jesus was inside getting worked over, a servant girl asked if he was with Him and he said no. Twice more before the sun came up.
Not soldiers. Not torture. A girl by a fire, and he folded.
And Luke says while he was still talking, Jesus turned and looked right at him. Then Peter went out and broke down.
Now go to after. Jesus is alive, and He shows up where Peter is fishing, which is what Peter went back to because that is what a man does when he thinks he blew it for good. And Jesus does not bring up the fire. He cooks food on a fire on the beach, feeds him, and asks him one question three times. Do you love me.
Three questions for three denials. Not to rub it in him. To give him one back for each one he lost. And then every single time, He gives him something to do. Feed my sheep.
Read that again if you have ever thought you disqualified yourself. The man who folded in public got restored in public, got his assignment back, and ended up the one the whole church was built on.
That is what grace looks like when it lands on somebody. It does not just wipe it. It hands you back something to carry.
Tell one person you trust one true thing about yourself that you have been carrying alone. Not the whole thing if you are not there. One thing. Grace does not become real to somebody until another person knows and stays.
Take it one week at a time.
Defining Narratives · Week 2 Lesson