I had a conversation with a young woman last week who was unsettled by a sermon she had recently heard. The preacher recounted his cancer journey and made several statements that led the listeners to believe that he was cured because he was a preacher, and that if you pray hard enough, God will heal you. Thus, if you weren’t healed, it is because you didn’t pray hard enough. This rankled the woman, also a cancer survivor, because she doesn’t think God works that way. She does not believe that God arbitrarily chooses to heal one and condemn another to die. She does not believe her healing came from any action on her part. Many prayers were offered during her treatment, but that is not why she was healed. She believes God healed her through grace and good medicine. She believes that things just happen as they happen.

What do you think?

Understanding the concept of grace is fundamental to understanding the concept of God. Many faith practices emphasize righteousness by following a long set of rules, complying with the Law, or performing enough good deeds to “get in.” But we know that it is only by grace that we are saved.

Let’s take a look at Paul’s thoughts on righteousness, following the law, earning things on your own, and grace. This passage does not answer the question of how healing happens but helps us understand the basic issue of grace.

Romans 4 (Common English Bible)

4 So what are we going to say? Are we going to find that Abraham is our ancestor on the basis of genealogy? ² Because if Abraham was made righteous because of his actions, he would have had a reason to brag, but not in front of God. ³ What does the scripture say? Abraham had faith in God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.  ⁴ Workers’ salaries aren’t credited to them on the basis of an employer’s grace but rather on the basis of what they deserve. ⁵ But faith is credited as righteousness to those who don’t work, because they have faith in God who makes the ungodly righteous.

Paul was clearly in the camp of those who believe that one can’t claim to be able to work for their righteousness. No, he contended, faith is the result of the righteousness credited to us by the gift of God. Read how Eugene Peterson described it in the Message:

Romans 4 (The Message)

^4-5 If you’re a hard worker and do a good job, you deserve your pay; we don’t call your wages a gift. But if you see that the job is too big for you, that it’s something only God can do, and you trust him to do it—you could never do it for yourself no matter how hard and long you worked—well, that trusting-him-to-do-it is what gets you set right with God, by God. Sheer gift.

“Sheer gift.” In other words, you can’t earn it, you can’t work hard of it, you can’t be entitled to it based on your status or profession, you just have to be willing to receive it as a sheer gift. No strings attached, nothing to do on your part, money back guarantee with no questions asked gift. Our salvation and our inheritance as children of God are grace-based offerings that are freely given to all.

Romans 4 (Common English Bible) continued

¹³ The promise to Abraham and to his descendants, that he would inherit the world, didn’t come through the Law but through the righteousness that comes from faith. ¹⁴ If they inherit because of the Law, then faith has no effect and the promise has been canceled. ¹⁵ The Law brings about wrath. But when there isn’t any law, there isn’t any violation of the law. 

¹⁶ That’s why the inheritance comes through faith, so that it will be on the basis of God’s grace. In that way, the promise is secure for all of Abraham’s descendants, not just for those who are related by Law but also for those who are related by the faith of Abraham, who is the father of all of us. ¹⁷ As it is written: I have appointed you to be the father of many nations. So Abraham is our father in the eyes of God in whom he had faith, the God who gives life to the dead and calls things that don’t exist into existence.

You see, the preacher was wrong. He was the blessed recipient of something he couldn’t earn and didn’t deserve just because he is faithful to his calling. He is a walking example of the sheer gift of God’s unmerited favor and love.

May we all embrace this wonderful gift.

Sunrise Gift by Dustin Daniels