“Gospel” is one of those biblical words that was never really translated all that well into English.  Having its roots in German and old English, it remains the word commonly used, though lacking the impact it should have.  The original Greek word, “evangelion”, means “good”, in the greatest sense, and “message”.  If we did a more adequate job at transferring it into today’s language, it would come across into something like “the greatest possible information” you could ever hear and receive.

And then there’s the word “grace”, the essence of the gospel, the “fantastic (extraordinarily good) message”.  Grace, too, has had its meaning, significance, and impact affected and lessened over time.  Grace comes from the Latin “gratia”, meaning favor or kindness.  But like “gospel”, the real word, too, means far more than that.  The original Greek word for grace, “charis”, means “gift”, and it means that in the strongest way possible, with all its implications.  It is the love of God in action, bringing us to himself, keeping us there, and empowering us.  Grace is God’s disposition toward us, because of his love.  It is a gift because he does it, we don’t, and we don’t pay a thing.  Nothing to contribute, no matter how hard we may try to help out, or add to it.  It’s grace.  It’s a gift.

Martin Luther once said something to the effect that when it comes to grace, we Christians never really “get it”.  So, for that reason, he said we need to continually teach it, repeat it, live it, and celebrate it.  The problem is that so many think they “get it” when they don’t.  Most of us get it, to a degree, but we shouldn’t be presumptuous.  After all, the scriptures tell us that the love of Christ is beyond comprehension (Ephesians 3:19). 

Robert Farrar Capon is an author who has done a brilliant job of describing the gospel of grace, in all its wonderfully absurd greatness.  Much of what I write that follows is laced with his sentiments.

The entire human race is profoundly and desperately religious. From the dim beginnings of our history right up to the present day, no one of us has ever been immune to the temptation to think that the relationship between God and humanity can be repaired from our side, by our own self efforts. We are deeply committed to those efforts, whatever form they may take.  We seem to think that God can be conned into being favorable to us by the merits of our own personal, particular doctrinal and moral code, and that, in that way, we’ll somehow sway the God of the Universe.

Against this, the Christian message, the gospel, the evangelion, the genuinely good message, the almost-too-good-to-be-true news, proclaims that you have arrived, you are home free, not because of anything you have done or are capable of doing, but because of what Christ has done for you, on your behalf.  In his life, death, and resurrection, he has rescued us, reconciled us, and imparted to us something called zoe, or “God life” - life immeasurable, without which, we’d be sunk.  And we are simply called to embrace this gift by faith; a simple reliance that looks upon what he has done, and says “thank you”.  

And because of what Christ has done, God has put up a “gone fishing” sign on the sweatshop of religion, or more accurately, “out of business”.  It’s closed up, boarded up, and forgotten.  Christianity is not a religion, and never has been; it is the announcement of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things the human race has ever thought it had to do to get right with God.  But the church is not in the religion business. Really.  It never has been and it never will be, in spite of all the churchhouse honchos who have acted as if religion was their stock in trade over the last two thousand years.  God has done the whole job in Jesus once and for all, and simply invites us to believe it—to trust the bizarre, unprovable proposition that in him, a person has arrived without a single religious exertion.  No religious gymnastics, no hoops to jump through, no nothing.  The entire show has been set to rights in the mystery of Christ—whether or not anybody can see a single improvement.  To the human mind, it seems crazy, wild, and outrageous.  

It’s this thing called grace.  It’s what God is all about, despite his countless mischaracterizations throughout the centuries, which he’s managed to survive.  It is a product of his love, the perfect love which defines who he is.  Grace is the message, the only message he offers.  And it doesn’t sell worth beans.  You can hardly even give it away (though it can only be given away), because it only works for losers, and no one wants to identify with them. The world of winners will dole out tons of moral advice, guilt-producing prohibitions, plenty of self-improvement techniques, and lots of spiritual sounding hot air. But it will never buy into the concept of grace, because that threatens to let the riffraff in.  People are more drawn to religion.  But grace is the only genuinely and permanently good news that there is.  And when you get down to it, and begin to grasp it (though none of us will ever completely grasp it), it is absolutely captivating.

The message of grace is the core, the heart and soul, of the New Testament – “testament” meaning covenant, or agreement.  The book of Hebrews calls it the “new and living way”.  We use the term New Testament to identify the collection of accounts and letters that describe the formation of the covenant itself.  And those who subscribe to these writings are called the New Testament “church” (a word poorly translated from a word meaning “called”, as in “summoned”.  Church is an old word which actually means “the Lord’s house”, creating confusion ever since).  Unfortunately, a large portion of the New Testament church doesn’t seem to understand why they’re called “new”, and remain more preoccupied with imitating the old way, the old covenant, with mere rule-keeping, imitation temples, and priests of various types and forms.  As one commentator has observed regarding the institutional church, “every major denomination holds fast to Moses”.  The great error of the institutional church seems to be "you've been saved by grace; now come on in - this is the way we do things."

All too often, instead of proclaiming the glories of the genuinely good message, the Sunday morning speaker spends his time chiding the crowd on where they fall short.  But any such gathering that spends all of its time focusing on what you ought to be doing, what you should be doing, and attempts to tell you what you’re not and what you lack, simply piling on the same old guilt message, with its anxiety, worry, and stress, is not, by identity, an assembly focused on the true message of the good news of God’s grace, despite what language it tries to use to describe itself.

And sadly, as a result of this kind of scene, many have left the institution, feeling that the true message isn’t being accurately proclaimed, and that they really don’t need someone up there merely telling them what to do.  This has given rise to a new demographic, described by some as “The Dones” – as in “that’s it, I’ve had it, I’m done”.  They’ve given up, not on God, but on the institution that is supposed to represent him.  They remain active.  Many meet in small groups of like-minded believers.  They interact with others.  But they don’t necessarily find their spiritual life enhanced by the typical Sunday morning go-to-church routine, for a speech, or an entertainment driven presentation.

Those opposed to the message of grace vary.  Some find it too simple, too vague, too hard to believe.  Others find it too abstract, or too mystical.  They respond with “you mean to say…”, or “you can’t just say…”, while others try to come part way with the ever popular “yes, but…”.  Some say, sure, we enter by grace, but the rules must follow.  It’s as if they don’t believe that God can carry out what he has ordained.  And they apparently don’t believe in the faith element, the simple reliance that God has put in place in order for us to connect with what he’s done in the death and resurrection of his son.  And though the scriptures say that the law, the rule-keeping, has nothing to do with faith, we always try to add something to it.   

Even the apostle Paul, a man personally commissioned by Christ to interpret to the world what he had done, was not exempt from those unable to accept the simple message of grace.  He anticipated their questions and their reservations, and he responded masterfully, particularly in his letters to the Romans and the Galatians.  

In more recent times, there has arisen an expression among the nay-sayers, that of “cheap grace”, a term originally appearing in the writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.  He meant well, but the phrase “cheap grace” is inevitably misleading.  It’s a playing field that doesn’t really exist.  Nobody can make God’s grace any cheaper than it already is; it’s free.  You can only monkey with a false notion of what it is.  It’s not as if there’s a level of performance to achieve to be worthy of grace, as if there’s a group of spiritual hotshots that have paid a lot for their grace, and a bunch of deadbeats who have cheated on the price.  This scenario just doesn’t exist.  Grace has no price – it’s free.     

God sent his son into the world on a rescue mission in order to get his life back into his creation.  In the cosmic economy of things, it had to be done in a certain way, beyond our understanding.  It was a mission of reconciliation and restoration.  When Jesus was dying on the cross, his final act was to cry out “tetelestai”, most often translated “It is finished”.  It was, in essence, the proclamation of the arrival of the New Testament, the covenant of the incredibly good news of grace.  And it not only meant finished, but completed, accomplished, and paid in full.  Nothing to add, nothing to pay, nothing to contribute.  It’s a done deal, believe it or not.   But of course, the best thing to do is to be a gracious recipient, and say thank you.  It is, after all, a gift.