Hymn Study - What Grace Is This

1 What grace is this! My Lord and King Has set his face to suffering. My God eternal dies to bring Eternal life to me. 2 What grace is this—That very God Would stoop to lift a cross of wood And walk a road of rock and blood, A sinner’s road, for me. 3 What grace is this! Though Lord of all, He yields to Pontius Pilate’s law And lets the Roman hammers draw A rush of blood for me. 4 What grace is this! Rude agonies! With common thieves he hangs and bleeds. The sinless Son bears each misdeed. He pays for all, for me. 5 What grace is this! Once wrapped in cloths And gently laid in manger-trough, He’s taken, dead, from wretched cross And wrapped again for me. 6 What grace is this? How can it be? He wears this raw humility To lift me to eternity. Such grace—sweet grace—for me.

I was thinking about how I would witness to someone the other day if given the chance and I was thinking of the lessons in God’s Great Exchange(found here) and trying to sum it up in a simple phrase and the word, “grace” popped into my head. It came from me thinking of a phrase first, “Jesus loves you.”

“Jesus loves you” is certainly a true and powerful statement but does it speak to the bordering believer or nonbeliever? Does it even mean what they think it does? What is love? Well I love my wife, parents, children, fellow humans, chocolate, football. That’s great! But each one of those loves is a little different from the next, isn’t it? Which love does God love us with? The Romans had a word, Agape. A quick internet search of this term describes this love as the highest form of love, the love between God and man and it’s certainly true, but that doesn’t describe what it means either.

Agape is an undeserved love that takes into concern the well-being of the soul and expecting nothing in return. It’s truly the perfect word for God’s love, it’s also the perfect term to describe the love we ought to have for our neighbor which is why the leading internet definition is somewhat incorrect. I knew the word Agape, you now know it as well, or perhaps you already did, but it’s not a great term for nonbelievers once again. That’s why the word grace came to mind.

Everyone knows what grace is to an extent, but we really don’t think of grace in definition that often do we? I was thinking of the person I would want to share the message of Christ’s salvation with and how we have life in God through grace. It’s a simple message. I would also ask if they truly knew what grace was.

Think about grace, it is an undeserved act of love for the sake of the receiver expecting nothing in return. By grace we love. It’s a unique sort of love, I love my wife and children, but hopefully they return it as well. I love football expecting a good experience and chocolate expecting a good taste, in fact, with those things, I could arguably lose interest if the response is not pleasing to me. But not so with grace! While grace is a bottomless well that we can continually draw from, each act of grace stands on its own. Out of love and grace for our neighbor we do an act to reflect the love and grace of Christ selflessly. We’ll do it again the next time as well. God has graciously forgiven our sins and thus given us eternal life through faith in Him. He’s also graciously given us homes, food, families, healing, and countless blessings.

Grace is undeserved, it’s not brought to us through repentance, good works, what type of laws we kept, or from what we’ve abstained. No, it was given to us freely and because of it, we do the aforementioned things to show our love in return. The hymn reflects God’s love and grace for us by revealing the humility Jesus experienced and suffered with the purpose of giving us an undeserved never ending life. He was born in a manger, mocked, suffered death, all not to glorify Himself but you. Jesus is undoubtedly worthy of glory and so much so that angels and men alike throughout His life, death, rising from the dead, and ascension through today would declare His glorious nature, but He could be glorious from a throne. He would be glorious with or without us. He came here with the sole intent of making you and me glorious because of grace.

So when you think of God’s love, think of grace. Love your God above all is the first commandment Jesus stated, love Him, by loving yourself by doing what is best for you spiritually, this will place your love for God above all and help reflect Him through your daily living. It’s true, we can do nothing for God out of love or grace because He is fully deserving of the love we give Him nor is there anything we can offer Him, rather we reflect His love He gave us by graciously loving us first. Love your God like He graciously loves you. Love your neighbor is the second greatest command. Show your neighbor grace, undeserved love for the benefit of their spiritual relationship with God. It’s great to love your neighbor by letting them borrow a tool or stopping on the side of the road to help change a tire, but remember them spiritually first and foremost. That is what Jesus is saying here. God is love. Love is grace. God is grace.