Grace is a very Christian word. It is something that God gives to all of humankind and it can never be earned. It’s like a priceless gift. Grace is a virtue and an act borne of God’s great love for us. It is in his grace that the Son came to earth to become human and die. It is in his grace that the Holy Spirit has been left as our advocate and guide. It is by his unmerited grace that we can be saved and reconciled to him. That reconciliation is something that we are entirely incapable of earning for ourselves. Once we have received grace, Christ does not say this is enough. We are to give this grace to others as freely as God does to us.
The songwriter Matthew Thiessen once penned these lyrics: “…the beauty of grace is that it makes life not fair.” We hear the second half of that phrase all the time. Life’s not fair. That message comes from all kinds of places; for example, people talking about a situation in their lives, or perhaps from a cynical person who likes to tell that to those less weathered. Regardless of the source, problems arise when we look at life like this. Everything becomes checks and balances. We keep track of what we do in terms of positive and negative. We evaluate people to see if they are positive or negative contributors to our lives and we make decisions accordingly. When someone hurts us, we tell them that they need to shape up or we cut them out of our lives. When someone is good to us they become closer to us. This is just how things work.
When we look at life like this it’s so easy to do good deeds merely for the sake of besting another person. And when we allow ourselves to embrace this view, we also allow ourselves to be comfortable in self-pity when the world doesn’t work in our favor. These are the problems that come from a purely worldly perspective of unfairness. Quite simply, a worldly perspective can stunt our growth and our flourishing as human beings and people of God.
Now here is where we add the entire lyric, “the beauty of grace is that is makes life not fair”. Suddenly, the picture of cynicism and self-pity disappears. In its place, we are left with a picture where undeserving people get what they don’t deserve. How does this happen? It’s all because of the grace of God that unfairness can be beautiful. If life was without grace we would all be condemned because there is nothing we can do to attain salvation on our own. It would be fair for us, because of our sins, to be separated from God forever. It would be fair for us when we are struck by someone to reply with a closed fist, but that’s not what God thinks. He chose the unfair route and sent his Son to show us ultimate grace. Once we partake in that grace, the rules all change. Unfair becomes our livelihood and our standard. Just as grace was bestowed on us, we are to bestow it on the others around us, who are as undeserving of it as we are. Grace invites us to think of how our unfair response to somebody can be beautiful. Yes, life is unfair, and thank God for that.