"Grace. It's what we crave most when our guilt isexposed. It's the very thing we are hesitant to extend when we are confrontedwith the guilt of others-especially when their guilt has robbed us of somethingwe consider valuable.

Therein is the struggle, thestruggle for grace. It's this struggle that makes grace more story thandoctrine. It's the struggle that reminds us that grace is bigger thancompassion or forgiveness. That struggle is the context for both. When we areon the receiving end, grace is refreshing. When it is required of us, it isoften disturbing. But when correctly applied, it seems to solve just abouteverything. This struggle is not new; it has been going on since the beginning."

-Andy Stanley

We find in the pages of Scripturethat the stories found there often mirror our own stories, and thatwetoo need the very thing we donot deserve: the grace of God.

From the beginning, thechurch has had an uneasy relationship with grace. The gravitational pull isalways toward graceless religion. The odd thing is that when you read the NewTestament, the only thing Jesus stood against consistently was gracelessreligion. The only group he attacked relentlessly was graceless religiousleaders.

Even now as you think about grace, there might be a littlevoice in your head whispering, "It can'tbe that easy!"

"What about obedience?"

"What about disobedience?"

"What about repeated misbehavior?"

"What about bad habits?"

"What about justice?"

"What about repentance?"

It'sthis tension that makes grace so slippery. But that's the beauty and the truthof grace. We don't deserve it. We can't earn it. It can't be qualified. But Godgives it to us anyway because he loves us unconditionally.

The story of grace is your story. And as you are about todiscover grace plays a larger role than you imagine.

The Grace of God

By Andy Stanley

Thomas Nelson

Copyright © 2010 Andy Stanley
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8499-4814-5

Contents

Acknowledgments................................xiThe Story of Grace.............................xiii1. In the Beginning, Grace.....................12. Chosen by Grace.............................193. Surprised by Grace..........................334. Redeemed by Grace...........................515. Ruled by Grace..............................676. Rescued by Grace............................777. Sustained by Grace..........................918. Puzzled by Grace............................107Intermission: Selah............................1199. Accepted by Grace...........................12510. Reborn by Grace............................14511. Filled by Grace............................16512. Saved by Grace.............................17913. Commissioned for Grace.....................193How Sweet the Sound............................211Notes..........................................219About the Author...............................221

Chapter One

In the Beginning, Grace

Grace has been the basis of our relationship with our Creator from the very beginning.

First-time Bible readers are often struck by the apparent contrast between the God we discover in the Old Testament and God as explained by Jesus in the New. To be candid, even people very familiar with the Bible often struggle with this contrast. Several years ago, my wife, Sandra, studied the Old Testament as part of a course that required students to read straight through the historical books, Joshua through 2 Chronicles. Like many longtime Christians, she grew up with a devotional approach to Bible reading, so most of the better-known stories were familiar. But she had never read straight through the narrative portions of the Old Testament.

Early one morning I walked in on her while she was reading, and she looked up at me and said, "I'll be glad when I'm finished with this."

"Really?" I said. "Why?"

She shook her head and said, "This isn't how I view God. Basically, he condones genocide."

Genocide. That term had recently taken on new meaning for us. Three months earlier we had visited Rwanda. We talked to survivors. We visited the genocide museum in Kigali. Horrific photographs and video footage of the carnage revealed the evil that had plunged this African country into darkness for one hundred days, during which at least five hundred thousand men, women, and children were slaughtered. Piles of bodies, mass graves, heaps of skulls. Children who survived were left orphaned and homeless. We also saw the instruments of destruction. The drunken civilian death squads known as Interahamwe preferred the machete, a weapon that created carnage of Old Testament proportions.

After experiencing that somber, haunting place, we cannot speak the word genocide without feeling sick. Sandra was right. The parallels were too obvious to ignore.

In his book The God Delusion, noted atheist Dr. Richard Dawkins declared,

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.

But he isn't the first to draw such conclusions. In the second century, Bishop Marcion was so struck by the contrast between descriptions of God in the Old and New Testaments that he concluded they must refer to different beings altogether. He believed the God of the Old Testament created the physical world and introduced the Law, which was based on retribution, through Judaism. Whereas Marcion characterized the Old Testament God as a cruel and jealous Lawgiver, he saw the New Testament God as a compassionate and loving Father who was concerned about all mankind. He believed this New Testament God revealed himself through Jesus Christ.

While the church in Marcion's day considered his teaching heretical and eventually excommunicated him, one can't help but appreciate his attempt to reconcile the apparent contradictions between God as presented in the Old and New Testaments; the God of war versus the kinder, gentler God who sent his Son to redeem the world from sin.

With all that in mind, it would seem that a study of grace should begin with the gospel of Matthew. On the surface, it appears that the birth of Jesus signaled the beginning of an age of grace. However, a careful reading of the Old Testament reveals grace to be God's preeminent characteristic from the very beginning. So that's where our journey will begin. In the beginning.

* * *

The Old Testament opens with an explanation of how the world came to be. While modern readers immediately dive into the details surrounding the process of creation, the author had far more in mind. Shortly after the Israelites escaped the bonds of slavery in Egypt, Moses wrote this remarkable book as a means of introducing them to God. After more than four hundred years of exposure to Egyptian mythology and a polytheistic worldview, the Israelites' collective memory of God had become distorted. So the first three chapters of Genesis represent far more than just the story of creation. This was Israel's introduction-or reintroduction-to the God of their fathers. This was their glimpse into the nature and even the personality of the God, who had singled them out as his people. After what they had just witnessed-their miraculous departure from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, astounding displays of God's power over people and nature-not a soul among them doubted his ability to create something out of nothing.

They were not looking for an explanation for how things came to be as much as they wanted to know who had delivered them and who they were being asked to follow.

* * *

According to the creation accounts of other ancient religions, the gods took up residence in a preexisting universe. They didn't create the world; they merely ran it. But Moses claimed that the Hebrew God existed before anything. He brought all matter and time into existence out of nothing-not because he had to but, apparently, because he wanted to. And that's where we encounter the very first expression of God's grace.

Philosophers and scientists have been wrestling with a fundamental question for generations: Why does anything exist at all? Or, another way of asking it: Why is there something rather than nothing? Not to worry, we aren't going to spend too much time here. But this question deserves to be explored before we examine the familiar story of creation. It is impossible for us to imagine nothing. But apparently there was nothing before there was something. In the past, some scientists suggested that matter might be eternal. But more recent investigation suggests that matter, space, and time each had a beginning. Something came from nothing. But why? Why something? Why not nothing?

Assuming you believe in God, let me ask this question a different way. Why did God create anything? Some argue that he was lonely, but I don't think so. Even if that were the case, an argument could be made that the act of creation was an extraordinary act of grace. God created life, which...