By Michael A. Graham
After writing my last two pieces someone responded thoughtfully: “God’s grace is the answer. But many would ask, ‘What is grace?’”
If you haven’t read them, here they are:
- What’s So Amazing About Grace… Especially Right Now
- Repenting of Being Right: Why Grace Matters More Than Ever Right Now
That question made me realize how often Christians assume people already know what we mean by grace. We use the word constantly, but rarely define it carefully. And in moments like these—moments of moral collapse, outrage, hypocrisy, and even violence—vague undefined grace does no real powerful work. Only biblical grace does.
So I want to answer that question clearly, from a biblical, Reformed, and confessional perspective—the same stream that shaped the Protestant Reformers, the Westminster Standards, and, pastorally, Jack Miller.
Why “undeserving” grace doesn’t go far enough
Christians often describe grace as “unearned” or “undeserved.” That language is true as far as it goes. Grace is not earned. Grace is not merited.
But undeserving by itself doesn’t go far enough. It can still leave the impression that we stand before God as morally neutral people who simply failed to qualify for a reward. Scripture does not describe us that way.
The Bible’s diagnosis is far more severe:
- “None is righteous, no, not one” (Romans 3:10)
- “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
- “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23)
We do not merely lack merit. We stand guilty. We stand under judgment.
Grace, then, is not God giving us something we didn’t earn.
Grace is God giving us the opposite of what we deserve.
The biblical heart of grace: substitution and justification
From Scripture’s center, grace is this:
God treats guilty people as righteous by placing their judgment on Christ and giving them his righteousness as a gift.
Grace is not leniency.
Grace is not God lowering standards.
Grace is not God overlooking sin.
Grace is God satisfying justice and then justifying the guilty.
Paul states this with clarity that leaves no room for moral softening:
- “God put forward [Christ] as a propitiation by his blood… so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Romans 3:25–26)
- “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
What we deserved—condemnation—Christ bore.
What Christ deserved—righteousness and life—we receive.
That is grace.
The confessional clarity: Westminster on justification
This biblical teaching is preserved with precision in the Westminster Confession of Faith, especially chapter 11:
- “Those whom God effectually calleth, he also freely justifieth; not by infusing righteousness into them, but by pardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous; not for anything wrought in them, or done by them, but for Christ’s sake alone…” (WCF 11.1)
Several things are unmistakable:
- Justification is free.
- It is not based on anything done in us or by us.
- It rests entirely on Christ’s obedience and satisfaction, imputed to us.
- Faith does not earn righteousness; it receives it.
Grace is not moral improvement.
Grace is judicial and relational reversal.
The Reformers: righteous in Christ, sinners in ourselves
This was the heart of the Reformation.
Martin Luther captured it with simul iustus et peccator—the believer is at the same time righteous and sinner. In ourselves, we remain sinful; in Christ, we are fully righteous. Luther warned that even our best works become spiritually dangerous when trusted for acceptance before God, because they are always shot through with self-love.
John Calvin insisted that the only righteousness acknowledged in heaven is perfect righteousness, and that believers possess that righteousness only in Christ. For Calvin, justification by faith alone belongs not merely at the beginning of the Christian life but at its center, because the law always demands absolute righteousness.
The moment we trust our righteousness—even sanctified righteousness—grace disappears.
Jack Miller: continuing justification and repentance of motives
This is where Jack Miller becomes indispensable pastorally.
Miller did not soften the Reformed doctrine of justification; he extended it honestly into the Christian life. He was deeply concerned with what happens after conversion—especially among sincere, obedient, gospel-affirming Christians.
He observed that believers, and particularly Christian leaders, are constantly tempted to convert the fruits of the Spirit into a new basis for acceptance with God. Obedience, ministry success, repentance itself, and even gospel clarity can quietly become a record we present to the Father as warrant for continued favor.
That is why Miller repeatedly insisted that justification by faith alone continues for the entire Christian life. Faith and works must remain opposed with respect to justification, even as good works necessarily flow from faith.
In that context, Miller would say something I quoted in that second article—especially in connection with decency versus indecency—that sounds jarring until it’s understood properly:
Repenting of our bad deeds can get us up to being Pharisees.
It’s when we start repenting of why we do good deeds that we become Christians.
Miller was not attacking righteousness. He was attacking self-trust.
Repenting of sins can leave confidence in ourselves untouched. Repenting of the motives beneath our good deeds exposes the deeper problem: trusting obedience, ministry, or moral seriousness to secure our standing before God.
For Miller, grace was not merely the doorway into the Christian life; it was the ground beneath it, from first faith to final breath. God’s grace in the gospel, he believed, had to be preached again and again because the flesh returns first in its most convincing form—not in obvious rebellion, but in religious self-confidence and moral progress. That is exactly Paul’s warning in Galatians 3: believers who began by the Spirit quickly drift back to trusting themselves, their obedience, and their progress.
That’s why this kind of grace dismantles self-righteousness in a way vague grace never can.
If grace were simply kindness toward the undeserving, comparison might survive. But if grace is God giving me the opposite of what I deserve, boasting collapses.
I do not stand on my decency.
I do not stand on my convictions.
I do not stand on my causes.
I stand on Christ alone.
That is why justification by faith alone is not just the doorway into Christianity; it is the ground beneath the whole thing.
This also explains why grace disarms violence and hypocrisy.
Where grace thins out, self-righteousness grows bold. When judgment is externalized—when evil is always “out there”—people begin to believe their righteousness authorizes harm. Substitutionary grace cuts across that logic.
If I know that I deserved judgment and did not receive it, then I lose the authority to demand ultimate judgment for others. Moral distinctions remain; moral superiority dies.
This is also why hypocrisy is the charge non-Christians most often level against Christians—and why it lands. The answer to hypocrisy is not moral improvement toward perfection; it is honest repentance.
Repentance without grace leads to image management. Repentance grounded in grace leads to truth-telling.
Grace creates the only safe place where people can admit not only failure, but the pride and self-justification beneath their virtues. No other moral system does this. No other system repents of its reasons for doing good. This is where Christianity is most distinctive—and most credible.
So what is grace?
Grace is God giving guilty people the opposite of what they deserve.
God places their judgment on Christ and gives them his righteousness as a gift—received through faith alone in Christ alone, as revealed in Scripture alone, and for the glory of God alone.
Grace is not God overlooking sin.
Grace is God dealing with sin fully and then freely justifying the sinner.
That is biblical.
That is Reformed.
That is confessional Christianity.
And it is exactly what Jack Miller was getting at when I instinctively quoted him in that first article on grace, written in the context of Philip Yancey’s adultery:
Cheer up—you are far worse than you can ever imagine.
And cheer up—God’s grace is far greater than you could ever dare hope.
The first “cheer up” tells the truth about us.
The second “cheer up” tells the truth about God.
And that is why grace—and the God of all grace—matter now more than ever.
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