heaven was formed within them. They received the Lord’s grace, His influence,
and expressed their gratitude in the many songs of praise found in Revelation.
Although the word “grace” is used sparingly in the Gospels and Revelation,
it appears frequently in the Epistles, and so the idea of grace is central
to Christian theology. If grace is the activity of God in a person’s life, then
the object of life should be to prepare oneself to receive it. But herein lies a
challenge: how do we prepare?
Over the centuries the Christian Church grappled with what to do with
the original sin of Adam, so inimical to grace. With such a corrupt and
fallen nature, how could people prepare to receive grace? Gradually the idea
developed that people could do nothing. Grace came to be seen as a free gift
from God, given to whomever He wills, and withheld from those who He
judges to be unworthy.
In the early church the idea developed that the vehicle for grace was
baptism, so that when an infant was baptized, original sin was neutralized,
restoring a person to a state of spiritual freedom to choose between good
and evil. In time questions arose about human freedom and the concept of
predestination rose up to snuff out the active human response to the Lord. By
the time of reform ers, people came to believe that they could no nothing to
influence their salvation. It lay completely in the hands of God to decide who
would be given the grace of salvation and who would not.
These doctrines greatly influenced the Christian Church, leading to some
damaging ideas about God, for, if on the one hand He could grant grace to
those whomever He will, He could also withhold it from others. God came to
be seen as arbitrary, angry and implacable – a far cry from the God who stoops
down to the lives of people in kindness and becomes active in their lives.
In the New Church “grace” plays a different doctrinal role than it does
in other churches. Aside from the familiar blessing at the end of services, we
hardly hear about grace in preaching and teaching the New Church. Probably
a lot of this has to do with the careful avoidance of Christian doctrine. But the
doctrine of grace is there and needs to be examined if we are to know what it
is to live a life of gratitude.
The word for grace in Latin has different nuances from both the Hebrew
and Greek. “Grace” in Latin is the word gratia, and the Oxford Latin Dictionary
gives nine definitions, showing a spread of concepts that are really variations
on a theme. In its most basic form, gratia means favor shown to another, or
goodwill or kindness to someone else out of the goodness of one’s own heart.
This idea is developed in further definitions to include a level of friendship
with another. As in Hebrew and Greek, the idea of grace involves not only the
giving of the favor, but also the reason for it, that the recipient deserves the
grace. So the dictionary describes gratia as “favor shown by word or deed for
575