God’s grace is a concept that often transcends human understanding. In this world, we are accustomed to thinking in terms of fairness, cause and effect, and the notion that what we receive is proportionate to what we give. Our understanding of merit and reward is often centered on what seems just—where effort leads to an equal return. However, God’s grace suspends all these expectations and defies our limited human logic. Grace is not earned by our deeds, nor is it measured by the quantity of our faith. Instead, it is an unmerited gift, freely given by God to those who may seem deserving and to those who may not. This suspension of cause and effect is difficult for many to comprehend, yet throughout Scripture, we see that God’s grace reaches all. It flows not from the amount of our faith or our works, but from the boundless love and mercy of God.
The first question I want to explore is: How strong does our faith need to be in order to receive grace? To answer this, let’s examine three stories of faith from the Bible.
The first is the story of Doubting Thomas (John 20:24-29). Thomas had followed Jesus for three and a half years and witnessed Him walk on water and raise Lazarus from the dead. Yet, despite these miraculous experiences, Thomas insisted he would not believe in Jesus’ resurrection unless he could see and touch Jesus’ wounds himself. Jesus’ response to this unreasonable request is not one of anger or judgment but of grace. He met Thomas in his doubt, offering the proof he sought. This demonstrates that grace is not contingent on unwavering faith. Even when Thomas exhibited no faith at all, grace was extended to him. Jesus shows us that grace can meet us even in the midst of disbelief.
Next, consider the fearful faith of the disciples during the violent storm in Matthew 8:23-27. The disciples, experienced fishermen who had likely weathered many storms, were terrified when a tempest struck while Jesus slept in the boat. They woke Him, panicking, and said, “Lord, save us! We’re going to drown!” Jesus rebuked them for their lack of faith, asking, “You of little faith, why are you so afraid?” Yet, despite their fear and weak faith, Jesus demonstrated grace by calming the storm. This story shows that even when our faith falters, God’s grace prevails. Grace is not dependent on the strength of our faith, but on God’s power and love.
In contrast to Thomas and the disciples, we have the story of the Roman Centurion (Matthew 8:5-13), a Gentile whose great faith Jesus praised. The Centurion believed that Jesus could heal his servant with just a word, without even needing to be physically present. Jesus marveled at the Centurion’s belief and declared that he had not found such great faith even in Israel. Yet, even here, the Centurion’s faith did not earn him grace. The story underscores that grace is not a reward for strong faith—it is a gift given freely by God, whether one’s faith is great or small.
An important lesson emerges whether our faith is as great as the Centurion’s or as uncertain as Thomas’s, grace is available to all. It meets us in our unique situations and is not a product of our faith’s strength but of God’s generosity.
The second question to consider is: How good must our deeds or piety be to receive grace? For this, we turn to the parable of the vineyard workers (Matthew 20:1-16). In this parable, a landowner hires workers at various times throughout the day but pays them all the same wage, regardless of how long they work. Those who had labored the entire day grumbled, feeling it unfair that the latecomers received equal pay. The landowner responded, “Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?” This parable teaches that God’s grace is not aligned with human concepts of fairness or effort. The workers who labored all day felt entitled to more because of their longer service, but the landowner, representing God, demonstrates that grace is not earned by the amount of work we do. It is given because God is generous, loving, and merciful, not because we deserve it.
There are three key points to draw from this parable. First, it emphasizes the invitation to enter into a relationship with God. All the workers, regardless of the hour they were hired, were invited to work in the vineyard. This reflects the universal nature of God’s grace—it is extended to all, irrespective of timing or merit. Second, the persistence of God’s invitation is evident. The landowner returns multiple times throughout the day to hire more workers, just as God continually invites us into His grace. This is in line with 2 Peter 3:8, which reminds us that God’s timing is different from ours, and His patience extends beyond our understanding. Lastly, the parable illustrates that judgment and reward are God’s prerogative, not ours. Just as the landowner chooses to pay all the workers the same wage, God’s grace does not follow human logic. It is not based on how much we work or how deserving we think we are—grace flows from God’s boundless generosity.
To further illustrate this, consider a powerful example that encapsulates complexities in faith. In Mark 9:14-29, a father seeks healing for his possessed son. When Jesus tells him that everything is possible for one who believes, the father cries out, “I do believe; help me overcome my unbelief!” This raw admission of mixed faith and doubt highlights the complexity of belief. Yet, Jesus responds with grace, healing the boy. This story beautifully demonstrates that grace is not contingent on perfect faith or flawless works. It is given in response to a heart genuinely seeking God, even when that heart is wrestling with unbelief.
In conclusion, God’s grace defies our human expectations and calculations. It is not dependent on the quantity of our faith or the merit of our works. Whether we have great faith like the Centurion, little faith like the disciples, or are caught in the throes of doubt like Thomas, God’s grace remains consistent and available. Grace, in all its fullness, flows not because of who we are or what we do, but because of who God is—a God of love, mercy, and abundant generosity.
David: In all these parables, what is it that grace does for the people who receive it? In one case, the workers all receive the same wage at the end of the day no matter how many hours they worked. In another case, someone’s son is healed, the centurion’s servant is healed. Grace seems to come with rewards. Is it the purpose of these parables to convince people that God will give them grace by healing them of their cancer?
Reinhard: By faith, we can demonstrate that God’s grace is on each of us, on the people. The parables illustrate three levels of faith: no faith, little faith, and the Centurion’s faith. The Centurion was a God-fearing Gentile who had seen or heard about many of the miracles Jesus performed. In the early days of their association with Jesus, the disciples had little faith. In Thomas’s case, his doubts were expressed long after the mission of Jesus was completed. The little faith of the disciples eventually grew into strong faith after the Holy Spirit came to them after Jesus’ ascension to heaven. Thomas doubted the resurrection. This is key. He didn’t believe the resurrection took place.
Before and during Gethsemane, before Jesus was brought to the high priest, the two figures of note are Peter and Judas. This was near the end of Jesus’ mission. Peter lost faith because he looked upon Jesus as the Savior who could do anything, because he had seen him heal and even resurrect people. So when Jesus was captured, Peter assumed Jesus could easily escape persecution. He denied Jesus, and wept bitterly, when he realized that Jesus was actually going to be persecuted. So too with Judas, who also thought that Jesus could do anything and get out of the situation Judas’ betrayal put him in. That’s why, when he realized that Jesus was actually captured, put on trial, and doomed, Judas took it so hard.
All these people show their lack of faith, even at the end of Jesus’ ministry. But we see the transformation of the disciples when Jesus went back to heaven and the Holy Spirit started working with them. Peter and John showed faith when they used God’s power—Jesus’ power—to heal the beggar, the blind person, and others. So there’s an evolution I see in the faith of the disciples. It’s the same with us. As we live our Christian lives and learn, including in our Sabbath discussions, we grow in our faith. We benefit from our discussions, we gain from all the learning, and our faith grows stronger. The more we learn about God’s love, the more we discuss, the more we grow
C-J: Relationship, as Reinhard just described, is based on human expectation, but faith is a gift from God. When I say “I want this,” it’s not an act of faith—it’s really a commandment. “You better give me this.” But with God, the gift of faith is one of imbuement that allows us to comprehend through a different channel of awareness. Everything else is concrete. “This makes sense. This doesn’t make sense.” “I know I’m supposed to believe this, but I still need proof.” But when God imbues us with a holy faith, a holy revelation, grace is part of that faith.
Grace, to me, is what the Centurion did—he said, “Just say it and it will be done.” That is grace, imbued together, welded together in that faith. I wouldn’t have done that in my conscious, this dimensional understanding of truth. And I think that was the big problem all the time. The disciples were fishermen, their reality included the oppression of Rome, the intermingling over many, many years of Roman culture, language, belief systems, currency—all of which chipped away at what the Jews had interpreted through their rituals and their text. But over time, when Jesus came, they were saying, “I’m so tired of war. I am so tired of trying to figure out how to survive in this.” So, when Jesus came, it was like, “I hope you’re the one. I really do, because I just can’t keep doing this. I don’t want my children to live like this. Where’s the inheritance that we always speak about?”
Over what we heard last week, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve repeated to people that we are only one step away—that choice is only one step away from faith and grace in our decision-making. We have to be able to receive it, and when we do, it’s not of our own understanding. It is an act of faith, of grace. We have to activate it by being a receptacle. All this other stuff is tradition, narrative, ritual. It coalesces people to be on the same page, but really it’s a very personal relationship with God.
Michael: When Reinhard listed the faith levels of the people, it seemed the less you’re into religion, the more you have faith. He said the disciples were with Jesus, but they had little faith. And Thomas, even after three years or longer, had no faith. But all of them ended up receiving grace, which is fascinating. The grace that they got, at least as documented in the Bible, was through miracles. But I wonder if we can look for grace in our lives to see it differently than just a curing of cancer or something like that.
Don: Related to that question is the question: If it’s not faith that gives you grace, then what’s faith good for? If I get grace with little faith, with medium faith, with skeptical faith, with doubting faith, with great faith—then what is the purpose of faith if it doesn’t bring me something?
Kiran: The purpose of faith is to grab hold of Christ. Some of us may need very little faith to grab hold of Jesus; some of us need a lot of faith to grab hold of Jesus. We’re all different. But Paul says in Hebrews that God made sure to give each one of us enough measure of faith so that we can grab hold of Christ. Grabbing hold of Christ is nothing but grace, and it is Jesus who takes care of us once we grab hold of him. He’s the one who takes care of us afterward. He’s the one who matures our faith from wherever we started, all the way to graduation.
It’s not that we don’t grow in grace or we don’t grow in faith, but to accomplish what we need to accomplish, which is to grab hold of Christ, we all have sufficient faith. We don’t need to worry about making it bigger or greater.
When you read the gospels, you can’t avoid seeing miracles. There are so many miracles. Every page, every chapter, has some miracles. Even today in Christian circles, whether you turn to Christian radio or whether you look at YouTube videos of Christian faith, you see a lot of healing. Traditional churchgoers don’t see so many miracles.
During the time of Jesus, having leprosy or being possessed by a devil, having a disease, was seen as being cursed by God. People thought that if you had leprosy or a bleeding issue, you were such a big sinner that God cursed you. The disciples even asked, “Why is this child born blind? Was it his mistake, or his parents’ mistake?” They thought the parents did something terrible, and that’s why the child was born this way. For people with such thinking, Jesus, being God, going and touching them and healing them was unmistakable proof that He loved them beyond measure.
Today, if I had leprosy, I wouldn’t think of my sins or my parents’ sins. I would think of bacteria. When I think of cancer, I think about my diet, pollution, or something else. But even today, some people might think, “What mistakes did I make? Why did God curse me this way?” The other thing we have to realize is that God uses every measure available to improve our faith or to grow us in grace, and sometimes he uses disease.
I read When Breath Becomes Air by an Indian-American neurosurgeon at Stanford University. While he was still finishing his residency, he got cancer and died. He wrote this amazing book and talked about how, when you get a major disease like that, one of two things happens: It either ruins your family, or it strengthens your family. He talked about how he struggled with divorce and other issues. He was contemplating it, but then when the disease came, he had to make a decision, and his wife had to make a decision. Even though he died, even though they had a child, this whole experience, because of the maturity he had or the blessing of God, made him very strong with his wife and child. In my mind, that is grace. We’re all going to die, but having such a good relationship with your family that lasts longer than the life you live is a blessing.
So today, maybe in this Western society where we are not worried about the curse of God, the grace we need is for something else—to make us better human beings, to love others, even those who are not nice to us, to love each other and to love ourselves, to love God, even when we are going through existential situations.
Reinhard: We have to learn how to develop our faith stronger in God. Grace comes only from God. There are two opposite ways of developing faith. It can be small or it can grow larger. That’s why we need to get closer to God in our spiritual life. We learn lessons from the Bible, from Jesus’ life. If even the disciples, when Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and the angel asked them why they were looking for the living among the dead, still didn’t believe Jesus’ words to them, that in three days He would be resurrected. None of the disciples believed that.
That’s why, when Thomas heard about it from the other disciples, he was maybe a little bit uncertain, because the other disciples—even Peter, when he ran to the tomb—didn’t expect to find Jesus alive. They didn’t have this much faith yet. They were still in the stages of developing it.
It’s the same thing with us. In the early days, we need to develop our belief. Jesus said to Thomas, “Blessed are those who believe without seeing.” That includes us. We haven’t seen Jesus—we didn’t live in that time—but we believe. That’s the faith we have to exercise. We need to have a kind of spiritual exercise in our belief, we have to use our faith, and God’s grace will help us with that. Our knowledge of God and our faith in Him will grow.
Carolyn: I want to have the faith that I have in Jesus. I believe that grace has covered me, and I can stay covered as long as I keep my faith, and that implies I must work at it. In order to have faith, we have to do something, we have to say Yes to it. We have to be receptive—but that too implies an element of work on our side. We need communication with God constantly, perhaps to ask: “What, Lord, do you want me to do?”
C-J: There are times when I’m more active. I go to the gym more, I read more, I think about it more, I have praise and worship going in my house—like being pumped up and physically fit. But then I also know that there have been times in my life where, like in the “Footprints in the Sand,” God is carrying me. I think that faith is so difficult to comprehend as humans because we want to take control, but really, I have very little authority over my life if I’ve truly surrendered to this relationship—not even the belief system, but this relationship with the Divine.
And maybe using guardrails that are common denominators in terms of behavior, etc., it’s really God that makes me hungry and thirsty, not my desire or my need due to trauma in my life or an event or a person. God makes me thirsty, and that’s the grace. You know, something will happen, and I’ll just start to feel like, “Wow, I just want to read the Word of God. I just want to hear the sound of praise and worship.” I really think it’s a fallacy when we think that God can’t live without us. We can’t live without God—not to our fullest potential.
Kiran: There is something that we have to do. Let’s call that “work.” The work that we need to do is very clearly mentioned. First, Jesus said, “My yoke is easy.” So, whatever the work is that we are supposed to do, Jesus calls it a yoke that is easy. What is it? You can see it in John 3:19: “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.” So the first point is that we need to love or want to be in the light, and Jesus is the light. The second point is that we need to accept the invitation. In the parable of the wedding feast and the parable of the vineyard workers, the people who accepted the invitation were in the wedding feast or in the vineyard.
The third point is that we must go through the narrow gate, which is a difficult experience. When we come into the light, we are exposed. We’re exposed to God, to the host of heavenly angels, and everybody. During that phase, we go through this vulnerable experience of being stripped away of our dirty clothes and being clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ. This process is personal, and each person has to go through this. I think going through that process is a kind of work because you are being vulnerable in front of God. God sees everything that is in you and everything that is in me—not to burn us, but to heal us and to transform us.
The fourth point is that we must commit to a relationship. Jesus talks about the vine: “I am the vine; you are the branches. You stay within me, and I stay within you, and then you bear more fruit.” So here is the aspect of relationship. God is asking us to stay within Him, and let Him stay within you, which is nothing but being in a committed relationship with Jesus.
So these are all “works” but all are easy. You stay with God. When He invited you, you accepted the invitation, so you’re inside the camp. Now He is helping you through your personal transformation. Every day, He is exposing you to His light, making you vulnerable, and transforming you. I think continuing to do that process is the work that we have to do. That yoke is easy in the sense that, because we love the light, it’s easy for us. If we don’t love the light, then it’s very difficult for us.
Sharon: As a senior citizen in my walk with Jesus, I’m thinking over the course of my life, and there have been times where I’ve had little faith in the grace of God. What I really think faith is, for me, is an anti-anxiety medication, because faith gives me peace. The navigator of the ship in the storm of my life is the creator of the universe, and He can master the storm for me. So, faith for me has matured into a trust because after all the many, many experiences I’ve had in my walk with Jesus, just resting (an easy yoke!) in the love of Jesus, I know that He has always been there to save me from myself. He’s been there to bring me peace.
So the role of faith in grace, to me, is what gives me peace—an anti-anxiety dose of comfort, knowing that “Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.” And if I just trust Him and just walk with Him, His grace is sufficient. His power is perfected in my weakness, and together, we’re going to make it. The yoke is easy, and the burden is light.
Don: In the book of Hebrews, we’re told that Jesus is both the author and the finisher of our faith. So if we leave the work to Him, we’re in pretty good hands.
Carolyn: I feel we fail daily, and we have to recapture faith. Sometimes we can become so low in our faith because we feel we are not doing enough. This is where we die daily.
Don: Doing things—works—are for our own sakes, not for God’s. It somehow makes us feel better, makes us feel like we’re doing something, gives us the sense that we’re on the right track, but that’s really the anti-anxiety medication that Sharon referred to. It’s not something that God needs, but we need it. And that’s, I think, what obedience does in the Christian’s life—it gives the sense that you’re making some progress, that you’re on the right track, that you’re within the guardrails, that you’re on God’s side, that you’re taking His yoke and doing something.
For God, that’s all just filthy rags. But for us, it’s something that we seem to need in order to keep ourselves on the right track.
Anonymous: Grace seems hard to comprehend and wrap our minds around. But think about the story of the manna, and how whoever took less of it didn’t lack anything, and whoever took much didn’t have any leftovers. Grace is like that: Always exactly as we need it, no more, no less. In simple terms, grace is the meeting of every lack, or the provision for every lack. So when we take less, there’s enough grace. If we take more, we don’t have extra. Grace is always enveloping us to provide for every good thing.
As for faith: I read somewhere in my devotionals a definition of faith other than what the Bible defines it as: Faith is believing what God says. So when you read God’s Word and you take it by faith, you believe it. This is all we need to do. The definition of faith in the Bible is the conviction of things we don’t see. So if God says so, it is so—that’s it. When we believe what He said, it’s not hard, but it takes practice. It takes growth. It takes time to get to the point where you believe everything God says. You don’t argue; even when you don’t understand it, you still obey it. You do it, you believe it, you expect it to happen. It’s not just “Yes, that’s good that God says that,” but “Oh no, period—God says it will happen in my personal life, in the world, in everybody’s life.” What He says will happen, and we’d better believe that.
Carolyn: Obedience is an active burden that we are to carry, and when we fall short, our faith can fall short. Therefore, we have to come to the Lord all the time to ask for forgiveness. That’s kind of where I feel like the work comes in—with the word obedience.
Kiran: I used to think that having accepted Jesus as my personal Savior, and He has given me the Holy Spirit and everything, so now I have to try really hard to be obedient. But I’ve now come to understand that obedience is a consequence of accepting God’s grace. Obedience comes because God transforms our hearts. We see this in the New Covenant, where God says, “I will write the law in their hearts. I will transform their hearts. I will make them my generation.” So it is God’s job, and when He transforms our hearts, we naturally exhibit that obedience.
What does obedience look like? It looks like the fruits of the Spirit: gentleness, goodness, kindness. Because what good am I if I have never committed adultery, if I have never stolen anything, if I have never done anything wrong, but I live in a monastery? What good am I to people? I could lock myself in a cabin in the middle of the woods and live there for 50 years and not break any commandment, but what am I good for?
God wants us to go beyond that. He wants more than “Do nots”—He wants us to “Do good,” to overcome the evil in this world with good. And we cannot do that on our own. He has to transform our hearts because, to begin with, we are born with an inclination to do everything selfishly.
When He transforms our hearts, the obedience that comes out of us is that we become loving and lovable people to others. It’s all about others now; it’s not about me anymore because I’m taken care of by God. Now let me go and take care of His children who are in the darkness or who are struggling—like the sheep that was stuck in the bushes and waiting for rescue. We become the hands and feet of Jesus.
So it could look different for different people, but I think that’s how obedience looks. For a long time, even today in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, people think, as I used to think, that obedience means you never sin. But that’s not what God means. Of course, God doesn’t want me to commit adultery, He doesn’t want me to steal or kill. But it goes beyond that. He wants me to love others and sacrifice my time, my finances, my energy—if need be, even my life for the sake of other people.
Such people are not easy to spot. They are like the water that goes underneath the mat—you don’t realize the mat is getting wet, but they are the ones that go and water the earth. We only see the bad people on TV.
Carolyn: I think it has to do a lot with what you’ve been putting together. And I don’t know if I fully understand it, but the first covenant and the second covenant—that’s on my heart. But we are still expected by God to follow the first covenant as well as the second covenant, which is written in our hearts.
Kiran: In the Mosaic Covenant, all the people at Mount Sinai agreed to obey God’s commands. But all the other covenants have God doing something for us. For example, in the Abrahamic covenant, God says, “I’m going to make your children like the stars of the sky or the sand on the beach,” and Abraham doesn’t say anything else—he just simply stays quiet in agreement.
The only covenant requiring people to do something was the Mosaic Covenant—where Moses presented the Ten Commandments, and said, “If you follow these, you will flourish; otherwise, you die.” And they said, “We will do it.” But the Books of Deuteronomy and Chronicles are about how miserably they failed.
Covenant means being in a relationship with Him. And He clearly said that we are faulty humans, because we have a selfish bent in us. When He says: “Let me take care of you,” you say, “Yes, take care of me. Initiate the faith in me, mature the faith in me, walk me through the whole journey.” I think that is the covenant we are all in—a covenant relationship with God.
David: There isn’t a big legal document with “Covenant” written in Gothic lettering at the top and lots of fine print at the bottom. The problem is if we don’t find fine print we’ll make it up, then get stuck in it. Jesus said, “The burden is easy,” but we make it hard. The God in Kiran urges him to go out and preach and do good works for people. The God in me doesn’t do that. But I believe the same God is in both of us.
I look around me, I see a tiny sliver of the universe, and I think, “Gosh, this is good. This really is a good place to be, and based on what I see of this sliver, the universe is a good thing that some force has put together.” That force, which most call God, is thus a force of goodness. Goodness must, by definition, love everybody and must give its grace equally to everybody, no matter what.
Grace does bring comfort, I think, for all who feel that they need it. The God inside will provide grace—comfort—when it is needed in this life, but it’s also the assurance of freedom from cancer and blindness and every other ailment in the afterlife. That’s where there is no cancer, no blindness, no ALS. It’s the assurance of things to come. That’s the ultimate grace.
The grace we receive in this life, for those who can see it, is comforting. For those who can’t, there is still always that ultimate goodness, that grace, of the assurance of a hereafter that most call heaven ir paradise. So to me, it’s all pretty simple, and as C-J keeps reminding us, it is personal. It is individual. It’s a relationship between you and the God, the Holy Spirit, that’s inside you.
Don: I think the answer to the question about what the expectation should be may be answered by Michael next week, when he will show that grace may actually lead to blindness as a necessary step in fulfilling our covenant with God. So maybe there’s a disadvantage waiting around the corner of grace rather than always smooth sailing.
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