Grace. It is more than justice. More than forgiveness. More than mercy. Grace is the unconditional love of God. Grace is being welcomed into the kingdom of heaven. Grace is a gift we can never earn.

Eph. 2:8

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—

Recently I’ve been reading Jack Klumpenhower’s ‘Show Them Jesus’, a guide to the Jesus-centred approach to sharing the gospel with kids. He presents the concept of the ‘God Report Card’, or ‘God Performance Review’ if you like, where you give yourself a mark based on how well you display Godly qualities. How do you think you’d go? Maybe a B+ for kindness, B for generosity, C for selflessness? Well the truth is, in God’s eyes we deserve Es. Our performance review is unsatisfactory- how would you respond to receiving that? I would worry about my job security and financial stability. I would try to justify my actions. I would be ashamed.

God’s forgiveness erases our Es and gives us a clean report card. But we don’t want to bring home an empty report card. We don’t want a blank performance review. We want a perfect report card, with straight As. But As are worthless if they are given for free- someone must earn them …

The thing about grace is that it is a gift that we can never earn. It is by grace we have been saved. So, Jesus swaps His perfect report card for ours. He takes the consequence of our imperfection while we get the credit for his perfection. “This is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God”.

I’m in grade 12 this year, and due to all the school we are missing, a quarter of our assessment has been cut out. I am quite literally getting blanks in my report card. There has been talk of basing our scores on our prediction, or just canning ATAR this year altogether. While that sounds great, when you’ve come all this way, you want your score to be earned. In the same way, we want more than forgiveness, we crave grace.

Right now, we are seeing people with even the best performance reviews being laid off. Occupations are value based on their contribution to keeping our society healthy and our economy functioning. But regardless of your job status, you are a child of God. His grace is a gift that can never be taken away from you. How great is His love for us, that we can trust in Him no matter the circumstance, with the assurance that grace awaits us? 

Prayer: Dear God, thank you for your unconditional love. Thank you for the gift of grace that I cannot deserve. Please help me to live faithfully in pursuit of your grace. Help me to share the gospel so that your children can know the grace that awaits them too. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

A song to listen to:  Grace Awaiting Me

Zoe Webb

Living Church- Creek Road