Grace and peace are mentioned together multiple times in the Bible.

The writers of the Scriptures, writing under the direct influence of the Holy Spirit of God, would often open their writings with the greeting, “Grace and peace to you,” or close a book of scripture with the same statement.

We are more familiar with the thought of peace than the thought of grace. The desire for peace dwells in all of us. We define it differently and at times will go to great measures to obtain what we think might be peace. Even wars have been fought with great loss on every side in the pursuit of peace. Peace can be distorted if it is not coupled with grace.

Grace means unmerited favor. It seems many of us know little of what it means to receive grace, and know far less how to give grace. We are doers. We expect to do and get. The more we do, the more we get.

We overlay our relationships with the same thought. We want others to do for us so we can bestow on them whatever we think they might have earned. All of that is the way of the world.

God turns it all upside down. He tells us that in and of ourselves we have no merit. The prophet Isaiah recognizes this as he declares to God in a prayer, in Isaiah 64:6, “all our righteous acts are like filthy rags.” The very best we can do will be nothing more than refuse to God.

The same thought is conveyed in the book of Romans, 3:23: “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

We are in a dilemma. No matter what we call it, we want affirmation from somebody. Most have discovered that people cannot meet that need in us because they are seeking the same thing themselves. That hole in our lives can only be filled by God.

So, we go to God and find out that He is not impressed with us either. The only thing that impresses God is his son, Jesus Christ. But, God offers us family status in his family based on what Christ has done, not anything we can do. That is where grace comes in. Everything we receive from God comes through his grace.

That is humiliating. We must accept something we did not and cannot earn. The path to grace is humility. We recognize our deficits, own them, and cry out to God for grace.
When the grace of God comes to us in our brokenness, we have peace with God and peace in ourselves. Real peace comes no other way.

Transfer all that to the horizontal relationships with people. It does not matter how great a person might be, they will never fully meet our expectations. We can reject people based on their failure to measure up to us, or we can grant grace to them and have peace or friendship with them.

That is exactly what God did for us. We do not measure up. He gives us grace, and we have friendship or peace with him.

Grace is the foundation of peace. We must receive grace to have peace; we must give grace to have peace.

The Rev. Dan Puckett is a minister with Life Action Ministries.