Surrounded week 1

What is Grace?

What is something you like to receive?

Gifts

Life

Money

How would you describe grace?

What is the difference between mercy and grace?

I used to look at them as the same exact thing. I always felt like there was no difference between grace and mercy. As a matter of fact when I was younger it was always told that there really isnt a difference between the two.

Mercy is defined as compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone whom it is within one's power to punish or harm.

So mercy has to do with punishment that meant to be given by someone who has the power to do it but they don’t. If you’re at school and your teacher asks you to do an assignment and you don’t do it, what happens? You are given an F because you don’t deserve the A right?

Grace is defined as courteous goodwill.

Grace doesn't have to do with punishment. Grace is something given.

Grace would be your teacher giving you the A without ever asking you to do the assignment in the first place, then asking you to do the assignment for which the grade has already been given.

God displays both of these from the beginning of scripture.

John 1:14–17 ESV

And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.’ ”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.

The Word that became flesh is Jesus. So he’s saying that in the beginning was the Word that eventually came down and died but not to give us the law or to provide us with a way of living. He came to give us grace upon grace. He gave us truth.

Moses was given a law and a set of guidelines by which to live and through Jesus came the ultimate gift of grace.

I always look at it like this. God’s grace is the prize at the end of the competition. Except in this case we already know who is going to win and we are all given the prize. It is not something that we can even compete for or earn. The prize itself is what drives us to live our lives according to God’s Will. It is not what we do to live in God’s Will that earns us the prize.

As John points out, from the very beginning of all humanity there was a unity between agape and love. Last series when we looked at love and talked about how love was meant to be the foundation for all that we do and how we live our lives, one thing we didn't look at what how we obtain that love. God’s grace for us is the gift he has given us that comes from the love he has for us and all of it was present from the very beginning of time. Love and grace are the essence of who God is.

In the OT, we see stories of grace in