Last week, me and my wife were sitting in our backyard. Between sips of coffee and chasing my kids around, I found myself thinking about the word ‘grace.’ It’s thrown around a lot in church, but as I watched the sun come up, I wondered: do we really get what it means? Growing up, I used to think God kept a cosmic scorecard—a list of things I’d done right or wrong.

But is that really the story Grace tells? Let’s get honest about this wild, counterintuitive idea at the heart of our faith.

 

When Grace Feels Too Good: The Scandal of Unmerited Favor

The dictionary says grace is “unmerited favor.” But what does that look like in the mess of normal life? I’ll be honest—sometimes I struggle with this definition because it feels too simple for something so profound.

If you feel like you don’t deserve grace… congratulations. That’s kind of the point. Grace is considered a free gift from God, not something that can be earned. This challenges everything our performance-driven minds tell us.

Jesus’ storytelling style—think of prodigals and lost sheep—lives and breathes grace. He told stories about fathers running toward wayward sons and shepherds leaving ninety-nine sheep for one lost lamb. These weren’t motivational speeches about trying harder.

There’s no spreadsheet or punch card with God. That blows my mind, still. While biblical context shows grace as God’s spontaneous gift through Christ, we keep trying to turn it into a transaction.

Humans keep score. God doesn’t. Easier said than done. I catch myself calculating my spiritual performance weekly. But grace remains scandalously free—available to anyone who puts their faith and trust in Jesus.

 

Grace Explained: Losing the Cosmic Scorecard

I grew up keeping a mental tally. Good deeds on one side, mess-ups on the other. Somewhere in my young mind, I believed God was doing the same math—watching, weighing, deciding if I’d earned His love today.

Breaking that habit as an adult? Harder than you’d think. We’re conditioned to believe everything has a price tag. Free samples at the grocery store still make us suspicious. So when someone says God’s grace is genuinely free—no strings, no fine print—our skeptical minds start spinning.

Here’s what trips me up: letting myself off the hook when God already has. Often, I hold onto the guilt incurred by my sin and pridefully fail to rejoice in the redemption and forgiveness that Christ has earned for me. This pattern is common among believers—we intellectually acknowledge the grace given to us in Christ but we fail to lay down the burden of our sins. We resolve to increase our righteousness and make ourselves worthy of grace through good works.

Paul understood this struggle. His letters keep circling back to the same truth: you cannot add to grace, and you cannot subtract from it. It’s not math. It’s not a transaction. Grace is God’s spontaneous gift, rooted in His unconditional love, not our performance scorecard.

 

The Reluctantly Grateful Heart

I’ll be honest—sometimes I resent grace when someone “undeserving” receives it. When I see someone who has hurt others experience God’s forgiveness while their victims still suffer, my gut reaction isn’t celebration. It’s frustration.

We’re wired for payback, not handouts. Our emotional honesty demands justice, fairness, consequences. Grace feels… wrong sometimes. Like letting someone cut in line after they’ve been rude all day.

But here’s what I’m learning: letting grace rewire our idea of fairness isn’t natural, but it’s necessary. Cycles of guilt and shame keep us trapped, while grace breaks those chains and leads to surprising freedom.

Think about it this way—imagine trying to repay someone who gave you a priceless painting by offering them your stick figure drawing. That’s us trying to “earn” God’s grace. Charis, the Greek word for grace, literally means “gift.” You can’t earn a gift; you can only receive it.
My reluctant heart is slowly learning that grace isn’t about fairness—it’s about transformation.

 

Grace and the Messiness of Real Life

I’ve learned that grace doesn’t wait for us to clean up our act first. It shows up in broken homes where parents are struggling to make ends meet, in those awkward apologies between friends who’ve hurt each other, and in messy relationships that don’t fit into neat theological boxes.

Sometimes I expect the Holy Spirit to work with dramatic lightning bolts, but honestly? Most of the time, it’s more like a whisper. A gentle nudge toward forgiveness when you’re still angry. A quiet strength to choose hope when everything feels hopeless.

What salvation through grace actually looks like is surprisingly ordinary. It’s offering forgiveness to someone who doesn’t deserve it. It’s choosing to believe tomorrow can be better. It’s small, everyday acts of love that nobody else notices.

Here’s what I’ve discovered about faith and trust—they’re not about having all the right answers in your head. They’re about living like you actually believe you’re loved unconditionally. That changes everything, even when life stays messy.

But here’s what I’ve learned from years of wrestling with these questions—the Bible speaks directly to our insecurities. Jesus never turned away an honest questioner, whether it was doubting Thomas or the woman at the well. Grace, by definition, is undeserved favor. It’s God’s spontaneous gift that doesn’t depend on our performance scorecard.

The beautiful truth? Grace remains constant even when our faith wavers. That’s what makes it incomprehensible love—it defies our earn-it mentality completely.

 

Grace Isn’t a Math Problem—It’s a Sunrise

I’ve spent years trying to solve grace like an equation. If I pray enough, serve enough, love enough—maybe then I’d deserve God’s love. But grace breaks every rule we write about earning, deserving, and performing.

Grace is like a sunrise. You don’t earn it by staying awake all night or being good enough. It simply happens because that’s what sunrises do. God’s love works the same way—it’s about waking up every day knowing His love is still true, because it is.

My part isn’t keeping checklists or hitting spiritual benchmarks. It’s simply openness and trust. Research shows that grace is a spontaneous gift from God, not something we can manufacture through religious performance.

The church isn’t a club for the perfect—it’s a family learning to welcome grace together. We’re all beginners here, discovering what it means to receive love we haven’t earned.

Here’s my invitation: try seeing yourself through God’s eyes for just one day. What changes when you realize His love isn’t dependent on your performance, but flows freely like morning light?

Grace isn’t a prize you earn, but an open-armed gift offered to anyone willing to trust Jesus. Nothing more, nothing less.