Original Grace

The initial and profound experience of grace we receive is universal. It is a gift to everyone. This is the grace which initiates, is inherent within, and supports our very human existence.

The expression of God’s creative love is the original grace that brings us into being, and not into an arbitrary or meaningless existence, but into one which has the destiny of growing up into full communion with God. The end is sharing in the glory, that is, the immensity and radiant goodness of God through Christ.

The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one. John 17:22

Clearly, as infants we are not born already in the fullness of this union with God, for God is love and at first we have no capacity to love. But our life is nonetheless a grace through and through. We have no awareness of receiving this grace because it brought us into being and we have never known anything but it.

We have been formed in the image of God, and thus, by created nature, have been set on the path to knowing God through the love of Christ. Through this love, given, received, and reflected, we abide in God and God in us. The dynamics of God’s love makes the glorious divine life ours, which we call life eternal.

Obviously, none of us asked to be born, which speaks to why we can say our existence is by grace. Our life itself is an expression of God’s love and mercy. The nature of every expression of grace is that it is given before we ask anything, or often before we are even aware of our need.

Though this grace is given to all, we are unaware of the gift or the divine potential within until the meaning of our life is revealed to us. We must discover the import of our lives in Jesus who shows us who we are. We are the children of God, with all that means.

The gifts he gave were . . . until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ. Ephesians 4:11-13

Though I have called this original or first grace, I could perhaps more accurately say that there is only one full and divine grace which we experience in many ways and at different times. This singular and infinite grace of God is hidden to us, but present in our existence, and continues to unfold and be revealed to us throughout our lives. In its embrace we are raised up into the fullness of the stature of Christ.