Appreciative of systemists like James Fowler, I offer here an artificial framework for thinking about grace. Recognizing that God and His workings are mysterious, this post in no way suggests that I have “figured out” how God sprinkles His grace into the events of human lives. When He does, though, this article suggests how we- you and I- grow as we learn to see and to cooperate with the grace He shows us through His Holy Spirit.

Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.
-Eugene O’Neill

I do a lot of thinking about grace.  After all, it is the fuel that makes my faith fly and my heart hope.  It also happens to be the unmerited love that God shows to his creation- and in particular, to you and I, people who think and choose and do.

Grace is God’s unwavering love for us, His created children, which does not turn on or off based on what we do.  God loves us and desires good for us, whether we accept that proposition or not.  If and when we do discover grace, we eventually discover a heavenly Father, a vital faith, forgiveness, and a clear orientation for our future.

I appreciate the point that U2’s frontman Bono makes in a recent biography, excerpts of which have appeared online at a number of sites.*  Bono recognizes that all of the world religions essentially run on a karma basis:  if you do good, good will come back to you; if you do bad, bad will find you and greet you as well. This is how the world works, he says, except when it comes to the Christian faith, in which grace works above and over karma:

“It’s clear to me that Karma is at the very heart of the universe. I’m absolutely sure of it. And yet, along comes this idea called Grace to upend all that “as you reap, so you will sow” stuff. Grace defies reason and logic. Love interrupts, if you like, the consequences of your actions… It doesn’t excuse my mistakes, but I’m holding out for Grace. I’m holding out that Jesus took my sins onto the Cross.”

Grace can only come from a living creator who participates in the events of this world, and from a loving creator whose perpetual mission is to relate to his creation.  Grace is interdictive: it is fortune conveyed when fault and failure are due.  And grace is affirmative, affirming the human heart  outside of coincidences and experiences.  Grace speaks to us of our value as beings, which requires that one above and beyond us meets us in these moments.

Unfortunately, most of have lost our ability to recognize grace when it is present. My sense is that when we were children, it was innate in us, but experiences in life deafened us (see Sin in the dictionary).  We lost our ability to know the creator, and as a consequence, we lost our ability to recognize grace.  In our matured thinking, karma came in as a nice relative system of justice for evaluating life when a Creator  who cared was no longer evident over things.  Heck, we even remember the Old Testament commendation from our Sunday School days where it was propounded: “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth (Exodus 21:24)”, a sentiment that justly stayed with us into our adult lives.

When Jesus came into the world, though, he pointed out this tit-for-tat karmic kind of thinking was wrong (Matthew 5:38).  And beyond that, he pointed out that evil existed, people were blind and cut off from the Creator, the loving God saw the evil, and knew the only way they could find him is if love triumphed over death.  So love died to swallow evil and death, and through his resurrection, love recovered the power to restore the relationships between creation and the Creator, and to renew the sight of human hearts to see God and his power (see Jesus’ Crucifixion and Resurrection).

Grace is the power of God’s restoration and affirmation in our lives, if we will see it. “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).”  It is God’s ever-present gift in our hearts and lives, when we recognize and accept what Jesus did for us on the Cross.

Once we begin to look at life through the eyes of God’s grace, we will realize that the Holy Spirit takes us through a number of stages or states as His grace grows in our lives.  We recognize these stages as states because as they are as experienced we gain new insights around them.  These stages or states may not happen consecutively for every person, but they are periods of awakening nevertheless, and as we dive deeper into each one of them, we discover insights related to the others.  These stages are less steps up a spiritual hill that one climbs, but rather are doors one goes through as one travels deeper in intimacy with God.  As we grow in our familiarity with the lessons of our current state, our new understanding also deepens our understanding and appreciation of the satges we have already passed through.  And this is how God’s love matures us in our spiritual walk- and is God and His active presence in our life that is maturing us.

The Scriptures seem clear, though, that encountering the first two stages are necessary for a grace awakening before one can understand the import of the other three (see Romans 2:4 below).

1. Favor Stage (State of Favor)
The Lesson: You are loved.
The Response: Gratitude.

“The LORD appeared to us in the past, saying: “I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with unfailing kindness.”
Jeremiah 31:3

“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
Hebrews 11:6

Grace first breaks through to us when we realize that despite the problems in our lives and the world, God loves us unflinchingly.  When we can recognize that God favors us simply because He made us, and place our trust in that truth and others about His nature provided to us by Scripture, our faith journey begins. God is always the first mover is love (I John 4:19), and likewise, His grace is ever-present in the world, even before we can recognize it.  It is in recognizing that He loves us and that He wants to know us that we are prepared for the next stage.

The natural response of a heart that recognizes grace is gratitude.

2. Forgiveness Stage (State of Forgiveness)
The Lesson: You are free.
The Response: Repentance.

“After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God. ‘The time has come,’ he said. ‘The kingdom of God has come near. Repent and believe the good news!'”
Mark 1:14-15

“Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?”
Romans 2:4

“So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed.”
John 8:36

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.”
Galatians 5:1

Part of the purpose of Gd’s grace is to invite us back onto the road of life that He originally had planned for us.  God always wishes for our best.  But for Him to give us His best for our lives, He asks us to make some changes.  He asks us to get off of the road of the self, and to step back onto the road of His will.  Such a change would not possible without elaborate instructions that a person could follow- unless some other solution was offered that would bring His will and our wills back together.  Jesus, in his crucifixion and resurrection, provided the radical work necessary for our hearts to again see and to seek out His.  Jesus’ solution on the cross was atonement for our self-willed rejections of His Father and His Kingdom.  Jesus’ atonement provided what we needed to see in God and His grace: at-one-ment.  And in that atonement, when our heart was rejoined with His, we realized our separation from His goodness, and asked for and received forgiveness for our failures and faults.

Because Jesus brought us back into His Kingdom, He forgave our failings and set us spiritually free from our spiritual maladies, and spiritually free for His work in our lives. He provided us a shift in direction in our lives, guided by His Spirit, and not simply by our interests.  This shift in direction is repentance, which is a product of God’s favor working in us.  We genuinely want to change the course of our lives because we realize His future for us is better than that we could make following our own interests and instincts.  The kingdom of God is about being free in His Spirit, living under His favor, and finding and following His will.

3. Fortune Stage (State of Fortune)
The Lesson: You are rich.
The Response: Reformation.

“But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
I Peter 2: 9

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”
2 Corinthians 5:17

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves,  in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.”
Colossians 1:13-14

See also Ephesians 1:3-14.

Once we have identified God’s favor for us and experienced His forgiveness for our falterings, God invites us to be changed completely into what He intended us to be.  We have been given a new spiritual addresses.  We have been airlifted from the domain of darkness and been given full citizenship in His kingdom of light and love. We have been given a new legacy, a new lineage, a new heart.  It is through our understanding of the great riches He has given us, shared with us by His Spirit and through Scripture, that we discover the completely new identity that He fashions for us when we trust in His truths.  The hallmark of this stage is our awareness that we have been given a new identity simply because of our proximity and relationship to Him.  Aware that He has adopted and called each one of us His children, spiritual siblings of His Son, and that we have been chosen into His family, members of a royal line, holy and empowered for priestly duties, and part of a community set apart for His plans and higher purposes, and that He as our Father is a father of great love, we allow Him to reform us- to reshape our thoughts and dreams, our hopes and our perspectives- so that they reflect what He intended for us.

In this stage, God’s grace transforms our mind so that we increasingly see life more as He does, and not simply as we used to.

4. Fellowship Stage (State of Fellowship)
The Lesson: You are connected.
The Response: Participation.

“The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.”
Mark 12:31

“[S]o in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
Romans 12:5

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
I John 1:7

“Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.”
James 5:16

Ultimately, God and His grace work in us so that we might reflect Him, and at the core of His nature is a celebration of relationships.  Just as He is not simply one, but three-in-one, God’s hope for us is that we become like Him most rigorously in our relationships with others.  God loves us, so that we might, like Him, love one another.

In this stage of grace, we realize that our value in life, in God’s community, and in God’s plan lies in our connections to others- and that these connections are meant to be intimate and rewarding.  God is interested in moving us along the path of “For-Otherness” where, in Him, we learn how to live well with and for those around us.  We are meant to realize that within His body, we are not alone, and we also find healing and help from those who walk with us before Him in honesty and authenticity.  In these connections, God teaches us about how to serve others, both as individuals, and collaboratively in teams.  It is here that we realize that the by product of loving is life, and giving grace is joy.

5. Fidelity Stage (State of Fidelity)
The Lesson: You are called.
The Response: Dedication

“For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Ephesians 2:10

“You, my brothers and sisters, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the flesh; rather, serve one another humbly in love.”
Galatians 5:13

In this final stage of grace maturity, we recognize that God’s work in us- the revelation of His pleasure in us through His favor, the granting of freedom from guilt and shame through His forgiveness, the giving of a new identity and purpose through His fortunes, the empowering to serve through His fellowship- has prepared us to be fully given over to the work He has created us for.   Because He has shown Himself persistently trustworthy, dependable and loving in our lives, we arrive at the destination He had in mind for each of us: our calling.  We fully realize we were created to love as He loves us, and that He made each of us to love others in a special way according to His unique design. I John 4:8 reminds us the fundamental truth about who God is: “God is love.”  As His children, servants, and reflections of His glory, grace brings us to seek to practice “For Otherness” full time in the particular means and places that He leads us to.  Often, insight need to identify this calling is a product of the fellowship He has nurtured us in.  It is most often those who know us the best and who seek Him who can help us to see where we best serve Him and practice living gracefully.

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It’s crucial to remember that the experience of grace, like any act of faith, is informationally-dependent, rather than situationally-dependent.  It is what we know and believe that helps us to see His hand at work in our world, and not simply what we experience that informs us.  God calls us to live in His grace simply by living in Him- by letting Him have permission day by day to lead us in our lives.  Our challenge is to simply say “yes” first to His kindness, and then to His daily care for us.  The more we let Him into our lives, the more He will show Himself to us (James 4:8), and reshape us to both see His kingdom for what it is, and our individual lives for what they can be, full of hope, richness and power.

“I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people,  and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”
Ephesians 1:18-19

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* Bono Interview: Grace Over Karma, The Poached Egg, September 27, 2010.