THE GRACE OF GOD

Grace is more story than doctrine. It's more than forgiveness or compassion. It's undeserved by definition, essential to salvation. And it turns out that God's grace—though it's the only thing we stand on and the only thing we should stand for—is the very thing that we consistently distort and hesitate to extend to others.Why is that?Even now, as we think about the simple and unconditional nature of grace, our instincts cling to complexity and conditions. We wonder: "What does grace have to do with justice or judgement?" "How does grace overcome repeated misbehavior or bad habits?"To understand the story of grace—what it means and how it's misunderstood, why we need it and how it was given to us—we have to begin at the beginning.