What's So Amazing About Grace?

by Philip Yancey

Many years ago I was driven to the conclusion that the two major causes of most emotional problems among evangelical Christians are these: the failure to understand, receive, and live out God’s unconditional grace and forgiveness; and the failure to give out that unconditional love, forgiveness, and grace to other people. . . . We read, we hear, we believe a good theology of grace. But that’s not the way we live. The good news of the Gospel of grace has not penetrated the level of our emotions.

Grace comes free of charge to people who do not deserve it and I am one of those people.

What blocks forgiveness is not God’s reticence—“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him”—but ours. God’s arms are always extended; we are the ones who turn away.

Obviously, Jesus did not give the parables to teach us how to live. He gave them, I believe, to correct our notions about who God is and who God loves.

grace does not depend on what we have done for God but rather what God has done for us.