This miscarriage in the understanding of grace trades on defining God's disposition to be for human beings as though grace could somehow be decoupled from its concrete embodiment in the promise, as though it could somehow stand apart from Christ's unreserved embrace of the Other. Grace is more than just a juridical act by which God saves us from our sin. Prior to any such action, grace is the very reality of who God is. Trusting the divine promise is meaningless unless we first trust the divine life by which the promise is what it is. Indeed, to receive the grace of God is to be ushered into the drama of God's life so as to participate in the sphere of God's reign.
Grace is more than boiler plate definitions.
It is a dramatic act in which the God who is for human beings and with human beings in Jesus Christ calls us by the Spirit's power to be for and with one another. Grace is God's determination not to be God without us. But in thanksgiving for all that God has done to embrace us in Christ it needs to be learned again and again. Outlook home page .