Grace is love that seeks you out when you have nothing to give in return. Grace is love coming at you that has nothing to do with you. Grace is being loved when you are unlovable which means you are never unlovable. God loves because God is love. You can’t stop the sun’s rays nor can you stop the constantly lavishing love God MUST send inside you. The cliché definition of grace is “unconditional love.” It is a true cliché, for it is a good description of the thing. Let’s go a little further, though. Grace is a love that has nothing to do with you, the beloved. It has everything and only to do with the lover. Grace is irrational in the sense that it has nothing to do with weights and measures. It has nothing to do with my intrinsic qualities or so-called “gifts” (whatever they may be). It reflects a decision on the part of the giver, the one who loves, in relation to the receiver, the one who is loved, that negates any qualifications the receiver may personally hold. Grace is one-way love. Grace doesn’t make demands. It just gives. And from our vantage point, it always gives to the wrong person. We see this over and over again in the Gospels: Jesus is always giving to the wrong people—prostitutes, tax collectors, half-breeds. The most extravagant sinners of Jesus’s day receive His most compassionate welcome. Grace is a divine vulgarity that stands caution on its head. It refuses to play it safe and lay it up. Grace is recklessly generous, uncomfortably promiscuous. It doesn’t use sticks, carrots, or time cards. It doesn’t keep score. Grace works without requiring anything on our part. It’s not expensive. It’s not even cheap. It’s free. It refuses to be controlled by our innate sense of fairness, reciprocity, and evenhandedness. It defies logic. It has nothing to do with earning, merit, or deservedness. It is opposed to what is owed. It doesn’t expect a return on investments. It is a liberating contradiction between what we deserve and what we get. Grace is unconditional acceptance given to an undeserving person by an unobligated giver. It is one-way love. But remember that grace is God. It is His idea so this deserving routine kind of breaks the branch it hangs on so as to shame folks back to pews. License to sin? None has ever needed a license to slap God across the face while shouting:
“How dare You concoct this overly inclusive grace and remove my entitlement towards feeling better than those losers who think they’re entitled to my hard earned tax dollars! For crying out loud! I’ve got to be better than someone. After all, I didn’t much like never being picked to stay on with the basketball team. Not my fault. I wasn’t athletic and yet those rubes held it against me. They could have at least given me a spot on the bench. You know! Made an exception in knowing I wanted in but just needed minor accommodations. Right?”
Right! The old boy kind of came around as he prattled on. “No one comes to the Father EXCEPT by Me.” Hmmm. I’d say we should begin reconsidering who we think isn’t fit for heaven. Those who are so arrogant to begin sifting the chaff from the wheat are sifting themselves from the wheat they believe they will pompously shake their heads at in a wonderful episode of heavenly gloating. Irony of all ironies.
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