How are we to have peace? The answer, Paul says, is by God’s grace. How do we repair our broken relationship with God? Is there something we can do to make it right? Are there works we can offer, is there money we can give? The Bible says no, for even the works that you would do are themselves tainted by sin. We come before a holy God as sinners. There is nothing we can do to remove either our past guilt, or our present corruption. We cannot save ourselves. We need God to save us, and he does that by grace. In Ephesians, Paul will set forth the true extent of sin as our great problem. But then he will direct us to the God who is rich in mercy, the God who saves us and gives us peace by his grace.
Let us work out what grace is.
Grace is an attribute of God. Grace is a description of God’s character, what he is like. God is gracious. Is that not wonderful news? God, before whom we have to stand at the end of the ages in judgment, the God who rules over all and who is holy, is also a God of grace. If you have been avoiding God, not wanting to deal with him, thinking that he is like the policeman in your rearview mirror, all he wants to do is hassle you and punish you and rule you—that God is a God of grace.
A. W. Tozer puts it this way:
Dr. Richard D. PhillipsGrace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits on the undeserving. Grace is a self-existing principle within the Divine Nature, a self-existing principle within God that appears as a self-caused propensity to pity the wretched.God pities the wretched to spare the guilty, to welcome the outcast, to bring into favour those under his just condemnation. Grace is an attribute of God, and we glorify him for his grace.1
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.