Grace offers more than it asks for. Here’s a familiar example. Have you ever seen a child who had a nickel they refused to trade for a dime? Grace is part of what motivates a Dad or a Grandfather to make the offer. It’s grace because the child is being offered something more valuable than what they already have. But the offer is refused. To the child’s eye, the nickel is worth more because it’s physically bigger than the dime.
Grace: An Unrequired Offer
The offer to trade doesn’t have to be made. That’s another way it resembles grace. And the offer is also part of teaching a child the relative value of money. That’s certainly something that needs to be learned.
Mission Support
How many Christians never learn these same lessons? No, I’m not asking about nickels and dimes. Our Heavenly Father asks us to give Him something. We know its value to us. We don’t know the value of what He wants to give us in return. He doesn’t have to make the offer. He could leave us with what we have:
If God never did another thing for us, it would be OK. He’s already done enough!
But the limitless grace of God will never stop with what He has already done. He desires to do more than we can ask or imagine! (See Ephesians 3:20-21) This is something about our Father we must learn.
Grace Teaches Us
Which is worth more?
When the Lord offers to give us something better or greater than something we already have, that is definitely a matter of grace. But His offer is about more than what we choose to hang on to or let go. It’s about teaching us. And the subject is trust. Will we trust Him with our ‘nickel‘ that looks so big to us and accept what He offers? Based on His scale-tipping promise, I can assure you we will always come out way ahead!
Like all of God’s promises, there is the matter of context. The context for this scale-tipping promise is Luke 6. Jesus’ teaching in this chapter is part of what we call the Sermon on the Mount. Yes, that sermon is found in Matthew 5-7. But preachers of every era have preached the same sermon more than once. In Jesus’ day there was no radio, television, or internet. A message had to be preached more than once if it was to be heard by most of the people.
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The grace evidenced in God’s scale-tipping promise is so much more than we can comprehend. We’ll get to the paradox and promise of Luke 6 in the next post.
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