The Greatest Grace of All
Although expansive and limitless in benefaction, Grace can appear surprisingly diminutive or restricted in transaction … largely because its beauty and benevolence do not obviate the compelling requirement for its activation.
The greatest Grace is the gateway Grace through which all other Graces must pass and to which each must pay homage. This one dimension of Grace surpasses all others in hierarchy, attesting to its supremacy and lending itself to divine pedigree … in other words, Grace differs in its weight of equality.
This transcendent Grace commands the operation and administration of all the other facets, representing the singular master key to accessing the doors and platforms of the other variegates of God’s splendiferous benevolence.
This most amazing Grace is termed Saving Grace – that which was so poignantly experienced and poetically portrayed by the slave ship owner-turned clergyman, abolitionist, autobiographer, poet, and hymn writer John Newton, who evocatively captured and immortalized its depths and dynamism by that timeless hymn so many years ago. This gateway Grace is that by which we are saved through faith, gaining access to this (other dimension of) Grace (called favor) in which we stand; a Grace which teaches and empowers to deny old lifestyles of ungodliness and worldliness, instead living soberly, righteously, godly and worthily (Eph 2:8; Rom 5:2; Titus 2:11).
This is the superior Grace which must be the first encountered to allow access to any of the other facets. Short of this encounter, every other variate is inaccessible, inconsequential, or ephemeral at best, being existential in relevance but impotent/dormant in execution.
This Gateway Grace is mandatory and not discretionary – a must for anyone desiring to be in relationship, favor and blessings with the eternally benevolent God. There is no way around it and no option besides it. No religious, cultural, political or intellectual persuasion, dissension, rationalization or explanation can temper the immutability of its ascended position or the intractability of it’s proffered condition. The great paradox of its supposition lies in this seeming contradiction: it is utterly unreserved and beneficent in disposition, yet irrevocably constrained to its recipients’ capitulation, i.e., although non-meritorious in its benefaction, its beneficiaries gain merit by their reception, God’s wondrous world of manifold and ever-abounding Graces thereby opening up to them via this inception.
The activation of this glorious Grace is accomplished sequentially over several phases of human orientation:
Grace’s Saving Phases
- Cognition —> Matt 8:27; Acts 9:3-6; Luke 5:8.
- Connection—> John 3:16b; John 5:24; Eph 2:8.
- Concession —> Matthew 16:16; Matt 14:33; Matt 27:54.
- Confession —> Rom 10:9-10; 1 John 4:15; Acts 2:37.
- Communion —> 1 Cor 12:8; Rev 3:20; Acts 15:11; Jude 1:21; Phil 2:1.
- Collaboration —> John 15:4-11; John 14:21 & 23; John 20:21-23.
- Conformation (Transformation) —> Titus 3:5; Rom 12:1-2; Rom 8:29; 1 Cor 15:49; 2 Cor 3:18.
What IS so amazing about Grace? …… EVERYTHING!!