We get off on the wrong foot, and before we know it it has snow balled..
Grace is not mercy. Grace is not forgiveness.
Grace is the following according to Paul.
But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect.
No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
1 Cor 15:10
Grace is God's 'enabling' of the believer. God wants us to please Him. God by His Spirit wants to be making us able to be what we are too weak to be in ourselves to be.
But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.”
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest
on me." 1 Cor 12:9
Some call 'grace' unmerited favor. Ironically, what grace produces in the naturally weak believer? Is ultimately to make us become what does merit God's favor! God makes us to please Him if we submit to His will.
We were all born fallen and sinful. We could never merit God's favor in our natural state. So, God, by His power of grace, enables us to become in our actions and our behavior what does merit His favor! Grace makes us to become and able to merit God's favor!
Grace is not about forgiveness. Forgiveness is forgiveness. Yet, when He forgives? Its God's grace that does the enabling for us to comprehend and to believe God when He forgives.
God will someday have us in glorious resurrection bodies. Then we will all be righteous by nature. Right now, we can only be declared righteous by God. To discover that righteousness overtly we need His grace enabling us to live righteously by learning truth and believing.
God by His
'grace enabling power' makes us to become what merits His favor! And, that can only take place if we learn sound doctrine on a regular basis, and to be constantly filled with the Spirit who enables us to become transformed into what pleases God.
Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed
into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit."
2 Cor 3:17-18
Amen...