Who Is Sustaining Grace?
The short answer is that Sustaining Grace is the person of the Holy Spirit. But like the Israelites, they could not take the shortcut into the Promised Land but wandered around in the desert, taking a long circuitous route, to arrive at their final destination. We’re about to make a similar journey, but I promise that it won’t take 40 years.
I had the benefit attending a Bible study series on systematic theology on GRACE. You don’t have to be a seminarian to study grace in this way. But by examining how a long line Christians have wrestled and found consensus around these heady topics, we can enrich our own personal faith. It provides the coat rack for you to hang your hat, coat, and scarf. Let’s take a look!
Introduction - What are the Types of Grace?
Multiple ways of describing GRACE help differentiate specific ways God RELATES to us during various points in our spiritual journey. Faith traditions, denominations, and individual theologians have added descriptors to color this understanding. The categories are useful, but it’s not necessary to conform to any one set of terms. Essentially, I believe that the root of God’s relationship with us in all instances is by GRACE alone. Like stem cells that can differentiate into a host of cells with a specific purpose, so the various types of grace discussed here are manifestations of God’s holy love for all people. We’ll examine common grace, saving grace, sanctifying grace, and finally, sustaining grace.
What is Common Grace?
Why are so many people who do not acknowledge God or even actively oppose God alive right now? This question preceded the answer: Common Grace. Common Grace covers every living thing. Figuratively speaking, common grace is keeping our molecules and atoms together. It’s the force behind our very existence.
Systematic theology organizes key Bible verses to support this concept. Acts 17:25 states that God “himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else.”
Building upon existence and life itself, common grace expands to include a kindness and generosity toward everyone without prejudice or bias. God causes the sun to shine down on both the “evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and unrighteous” (Matthew 5:45).
Common grace explains why there are seeds of truth in every religion and culture. It’s why any person can love unconditionally and selflessly. The world would be a miserable place if only Christians were capable of acting truthfully and forthrightly. Our children would grow up to be emotional cripples if only Christian parents could demonstrate unconditional love. On the contrary, some Christians’ actions toward corruption, cruelty, and abuse are the biggest indictment against the truth of the gospel. Thus, Common Grace is ubiquitous.
Included in Common Grace is God’s mercy and forbearance that gives each person time to discover Jesus as Lord and Savior. Paul wrote that it is God’s “kindness that leads us to repentance” (Romans 2:4). Some scholars have further distinguished this as “prevenient grace” which is a fancy term for the grace that precedes our knowledge and acceptance of the next major category — Saving Grace.
What is Saving Grace?
Saving Grace is the heart of the gospel, what I have termed, “the essential message of Christianity.” This is traditionally what distinguishes a believer from a non-believer, a Christian from a non-Christian. It’s summarized in a cute acronym for G.R.A.C.E. - God’s Riches At Christ’s Expense.
Saving Grace is NOT
I used to think that grace was a uniquely Christian concept. I heard the anecdote where a group of religious scholars were debating on what made Christianity different from all other religions. As the group discussed the finer points of doctrine and practice, C.S. Lewis enters into the room and asks, “what is everyone talking about?” Upon hearing the supposed controversy, he triumphantly declares, “That’s easy. It’s grace.” I heard this story in my youth and accepted it without question. I remember feeling very special for being part of a unique religion.
I also listened to pastors like Tim Keller explain how all other religions were pragmatically the same. There were a set of rules, moral law, or standards that adherents had to live up to in order to merit God’s favor. For Islam, the five pillars, and for Judaism, it was the Ten Commandments and the prescriptive ritual regulations. And for every other religion, there was a similar body of things to do and things not to do.
I was also taught those who claimed no religion have an internal set of morality that they were trying to adhere to, whether they realized it or not!
Amid this backdrop, I encountered many different people and found this was not entirely true. The concept of God’s grace, that God forgives, accepts, and loves us, was prevalent across the board. However, there were nuances in the different faith traditions. With Islam, God’s magnanimous forgiveness was conditioned upon true repentance. With Judaism, grace was a part of God’s faithfulness and loving-kindness to his chosen people. When I immersed myself in 12-step groups, people who claimed no particular religion often quoted this slogan, “but for the grace of God, go I.” This means that the sobriety and freedom an individual found was attributed to God as a free gift and not something earned or merited. When I spoke to atheists, they outright rejected their worldview was a type of religion or that they, on some unconscious level, believed that a god existed.
Since my Christian upbringing went counter to my live interactions and real life experience, I needed to go back to the Bible to understand what truly distinguished Christianity from other religions, innate spirituality, or competing worldviews.
Saving Grace IS
Pivotal to Saving Grace is the verse, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith; and this not of yourselves. It is a gift of God, not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2: 8,9). The pastor teaching systematic theology asked the class, “In this verse, ‘and this not of yourselves,’ what is the this referring to?” We stumbled around for an answer until the pastor resolved the uncomfortable tension of our collective ignorance.
He said that the this is a reference to faith - that having faith was the gift. In my Christian walk so far, I saw that my having faith was some type of belief or action in which I participated that made the difference between being a Christian or a non-Christian, being saved or unsaved. Here, I was being asked to take a closer look at the foundation of my own religion.
Having faith in Jesus as my Savior was not some ultimate commandment to replace the others. Having faith couldn’t be a work. It had to be something else. But what?
Becoming a Christian required a complete paradigm change in understanding how God relates to me. Under the paradigm of works-based righteousness, repentance and faith were works, something that I could claim as my action, something that I could accomplish. The test is whether it is something that I can boast about - can I take credit for it? If the answer was yes, I was not grasping the essential message of Christianity.
As I studied further, the concept of righteousness was not being morally righteous. It was having a right relationship with God. The word that Paul uses to explain his revelation was a legal term. It was God’s “not guilty” verdict over the accused. Because it was a legal standing, I was not innocent nor morally improved. Quite the opposite. I was guilty of the crime, but the legal declaration of “not guilty” superseded this fact.
Theologian Karl Barth calls this God’s imputed righteousness. The paradigm change is that God has labeled us morally righteous so that we can have a right relationship with God and others.
Saving Grace is a surrender that God, apart from my intrinsic value or self-assessment on my defects, has declared me worthy of every blessing He has for me, including eternal life. It is an acceptance that God, apart from my resume of moral accomplishments or self-condemnation of my crimes, has wiped the slate completely clean and replaced it with Jesus’ ledger of perfect moral righteousness.
I’ve articulated “having faith” as surrender and acceptance to contrast the modern connotation of adhering to a set of beliefs. One more word to drive this point home is trust. Trust is a funny word because I can claim to trust all that I want, but whether that trust is genuine depends on my actions.
There’s a scene in the movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade where Indiana Jones must cross a chasm to find cup Jesus used the night before his death. To do so in faith, he cannot rely an internal belief alone. Indiana Jones takes a step forward and puts his full weight into his front foot over the chasm. In so doing, he discovers that there was an invisible bridge. His action lead to knowledge, which is then incorporated so that he put one step in front of the other. However, there is that first step of surrender, acceptance, and trust which describes the gift of faith that is active in saving grace.
Practically speaking, a genuine trust action is both a private self-admittance and a public affirmation that a person has chosen to accept Jesus as their Savior. This is why a “sinner’s prayer,” response to an altar call, or water baptism often mark a person’s turning point. For those who were immersed in Christian community from birth, it’s difficult to identify an event or line that marks a transition from non-Christian to Christian. Every believer’s story is unique and this slow maturing and emergence of faith in Jesus is also categorized as Saving Grace.
Saving Grace is CONFUSING
I had to hear the essential message of Christianity dozens of times before I understood it. When I pose the question about the essential message to people who have been Christian for decades, many were unable to answer it with real coherence. Some atheists were better able to describe the confusing and paradoxically message of Christianity with more accuracy. They reject it for those reasons, but at least they grasp how there’s something about it that is illogical and even offensive.
If this concept is a little confusing and uncomfortable, then it is an indication that you are on the right track. If not, then it’s indication that I’m not being clear. So allow me to confuse you even more!
Christians can point to many actions of this surrender, acceptance, and trust without having the internal paradigm transformation in relating to God. Because the actions demonstrate whether an internal change has occurred, there is an emphasis on the right actions. However, it’s typical for all of the actions to originate from the works-based mentality rather than a gift-based mentality of relating to God. People claim “having faith” as a work and then point to church attendance, being a good moral person, and even having certain political stances as the marks of the internal change.
Here are some tests to help you figure out whether you understand Saving Grace. A natural conclusion to understanding this good news is that a person can “sin” as much as they want. Paul asks the rhetorical question, “Are we to continue to sin so that grace may increase?" (Romans 6:1) His understanding takes the whole moral law out of the equation with regards to our relationship with God. If anything, God wiping our sins away only demonstrates God’s generosity toward us, and in some way magnifies what a great person He is. Paul answers his own question, “Certainly not!” in the next verse, but if we do not at least momentarily reach a conclusion of licentiousness (we can do whatever we want), I question whether we have heard the essential message of Christianity.
The book of Jude, a small but crucial letter, is devoted to curbing licentiousness that had infiltrated the church. I believe this underscores how a true grasp of the gospel message gets right up to the line of abandoning all moral standards to the point it needs to be reigned in.
Another test is being able to contrast the gospel with “God accepts us because He loves us” or “God forgives us because we repent” message from other religions.
Remember earlier when Paul explained that “God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance.” The author of John writes that the Holy Spirit “convicts the world of its sin.” (John 16:8) These verses taken together demonstrate that even the act of turning away from our sin and turning to God is a gift, not something that we can claim credit for. Even Islam believes that God forgives if we repent.
In college, my small group leader asked our group about the role of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. The message is that Jesus paid the penalty for our sin and that is why we are forgiven. “If this is true,” he challenged, “then why repent and try to change our behavior?” The question was piercing. He pressed the point, “can God choose to forgive some sins because of Jesus’ sacrifice and other because we repented?” The conclusion was that the repentance is independent to our being forgiven by God. Forgiveness is 100% based on this sacrifice. Changed behavior is an outgrowth God’s kindness.
What about love? Yes, God loves us, but love is not the basis for a restored relationship. There was a slow awareness of this truth for me as well. Tim Keller explained that it was out of God’s love for us that He sent Jesus to earth to die on our behalf. But the basis for forgiveness was God’s justice, not His love.
He pointed to 1 John 1:9 which states, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Because Jesus’ death wiped out our debt, God cannot exact payment for cancelled debt. Put another way, it would violate an implicit double jeopardy clause in God’s justice system. If we’ve already been tried and convicted of a crime, we can’t be tried again for that same crime.
The “At Christ’s Expense” part of the G.R.A.C.E. acronym is activated and sets the Christian message apart from others. The idea that God’s love is unconditional has so permeated into Western culture as a given that it’s difficult to communicate how Christianity is different. When I speak, I now say that God’s love is unconditional and guaranteed to help articulate the essential message. The basis of forgiveness is not God’s love, nor faith as the ultimate commandment, nor repentance as another action that earns God’s favor.
The essential message of Christianity is that both faith and repentance, come not from ourselves, but from God. Everything is God’s work, and none of it is from human works. The ability to have a relationship with God stems from what Jesus accomplished on the cross.
There’s a scene in Back to the Future where Doc Brown explains time travel to Marty McFly. He opens up the time machine and shows him the Flux Capacitor and declares, "This is what makes time travel possible.”
If you can picture the cross instead of the Flux Capacitor, this is what “makes a relationship with God possible” whether it is here on earth or as a transport to heaven. Jesus’ historical actions here on earth, which is a reflection of Jesus’ actions that transcend space and time, is what allows for every human being to have a connection with the Source. I believe this is the truth whether a person believes it or not.
The truth value of personal belief depends on the object of faith. There is either an invisible bridge or there is not. The intensity and genuineness of my belief can’t affect that either way. Paul communicates this to Timothy saying that “if we are faithless, he remains faithful, for he cannot be untrue to himself.” (2 Timothy 2:13)
Receiving Saving Grace means to surrender, accept, and trust in this confusing new paradigm.
What is Sanctifying Grace?
The process by which the new paradigm causes a transformation in the person’s life is known as Sanctifying Grace. Again, many look to changes in behavior and actions to point the presence of Sanctifying Grace, literally becoming more holy. However, this process is the inner change of becoming a new person and maturing in character which occurs below the surface. Many Christians describe this part of relating to God as becoming more Christ-like.
Like the other types of grace, it is imperative to recognize that becoming a new person does not come from human effort. The same power that brought about Saving Grace is active for Sanctifying Grace.
The early church in Galatia missed this crucial point. Paul rebuked them when he wrote, “O foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you?” He expounded, “Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now made perfect in the flesh?” (Galatian 3:1,3) The Spirit refers to God’s redeeming work and the flesh refers to human effort.
The problems of early Christians persist today where many continue to try become more holy and more Christ-like by working and striving to be a better person. The problem is rooted in a disconnect to the essential message of Christianity.
As I young Christian, I understood that there was nothing I could do to make God close the door on me. This was the unconditional love I was spoon fed. As I matured, I intimately understood that there was nothing I could do to make God love me more. This took me to another level.
I understood that God loved me unconditionally, but there was an aspect of my lived-out faith that was still trying to make God love me a little more than others. I needed to recognize that surrender, acceptance, and trust was BOTH a “one and done” event and an ongoing process.
To lose sight that my relationship with God and my foundational identity had forever been changed permanently, created an unconscious insecurity in me. That I still needed to prove myself worthy of the grace bestowed on me, and that my actions and maturity could make me more lovable. That somehow this would induce God to love me more.
To lose sight of the ongoing process aspect of sanctification meant I saw difficulties and strife as a sign that I was failing God and not measuring up.
I needed both insights to recognize that suffering and perseverance were the necessary ingredients which led to character growth, that transformation in my being.
Each time that I thought I’d “arrived” in understanding God’s fundamental relationship toward me was through grace, I eventually saw there were depths to this mystery. In my walk, I resigned to the fact that I couldn’t make God love me more and gave up trying to control God’s attitude toward me.
In time, I saw that I was still trying to “predict” ways I could induce God’s love for me. Maybe I couldn’t change God’s constant and unfailing love for me, but if I engaged in the right devotions, I could make it more likely that I would receive more blessings from Him. This was just another form of control.
Again and again, I came up against this principal that maturing as a Christian was just as miraculously God’s work as my first becoming one.
Within the framework of sanctification is where I discovered Sustaining Grace.
What is Sustaining Grace?
Sustaining Grace is the answer to the question, “How does God relate to us during spiritual droughts?” It has a similar flavor to Common Grace which answered “Why are people alive despite their opposition and indifference to God?”
The categories converge because, in hindsight, Sustaining Grace is Common Grace. God sustained the Israelites for 400 years as slaves in Egypt, and God sustained them for 40 years in the desert. In between, there were miraculous signs and wonders, escape from slavery, and the parting of the Red Sea. This type of deliverance is analogous to Saving Grace. However, before and after, the Israelites like all God’s children were surrounded by Sustaining Grace.
Christians can look back on the story of their lives and see glimpses of God who led them to that “come to Jesus” moment. Recognizing the many preludes to that God-encounter becomes the jumping point to deepen the continued work of God in maturing and growing.
Sustaining Grace converges with Sanctifying Grace because we can take no more take credit for maturing in our relationship with God, than a seed can take credit for germinating, pushing through the soil, and flowering. And the desert seasons are a type of pain and trial that produces character and makes us holy, but not holier-than-thou. It is part of the internal and external transformation.
The beauty of Sustaining Grace is that it is present and powerful despite ourselves. It is the workhorse of God’s grace. It’s the day-in and day-out work that helps us survive when we are down for the count and propels us to put one foot of the other through the most difficult seasons of life. It’s there in both times of severe trial and pain as well as the humdrum and daily grind of life, often marked with numbness and apathy.
Moving From What To Who
How does Sustaining Grace as a concept move to Sustaining Grace as a person? After 20 years of studying and living out these insights, God brought me to another new level. The evolution went from grace as a property to power to person.
At first, grace was a property or characteristic of God’s nature. This is the realm of God is loving and faithful. It’s an intellectual building block. A familiar saying in Christian communities describes grace in contrast to two other concepts, justice and mercy.
Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don’t deserve. It’s useful, but also has the flavor of a Santa Claus God that foregoes his list of naughty and nice and decides to give presents to all his children. To stop here would create a caricature of God.
Next, grace was a power. It was the power that brought me to faith in Christ. It was the power that created the universe and raised Jesus from the dead. It was the power that created this paradigm transformation in me as Saving Grace. Paul described it was a “mighty power that raised Christ from the dead.”
Finally, grace was a person. To the church in Rome, he wrote the “Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from the dead, lives in you.” The person is the Spirit of God — the Holy Spirit — which Christian believe reside in the believer’s “heart” when they surrender, accept, and trust Jesus.
Sustaining Grace Is a Person
Back to systematic theology, the pastor later taught about the Holy Trinity and how the Holy Spirit was the least understood part. There is more developed thought on God, the Father and God, the Son, but less understood about the mysterious Holy Spirit.
The foundational part of the study means asking the correct question. The pastor pointed out that the question should not be “What is the Holy Spirit?” but “Who is the Holy Spirit?”
Not surprisingly, ways of describing and defining the Holy Spirit jump back and forth from the what and who. Someone once explained to me that you have the Father and you have the Son. The Holy Spirit is the love that passes between them. And then in the next breath said that the love was not a thing, but a person.
Recognizing that the question of Sustaining Grace is similarly a matter of “Who is Sustaining Grace?” and not “What is Sustaining Grace?” led me the understanding that Sustaining Grace is the Holy Spirit.
The grace that sustained me during spiritual droughts a Person that brought across the doorway into God’s house. Neither was it my doing nor obtained by my human effort. I might have come to the doorway on my feet, but like a newly married bride being lifted up and carried across the threshold, the Holy Spirit carried me. That is the same picture of Jesus carrying us in the spiritual droughts where we see only one set of footprints. The Holy Spirit was the power and person that raised Jesus from the dead.
And the person of the Holy Spirit does not just live inside of me, but walks next to me too.
