The Salvation Army is a movement of God’s grace birthed from God’s Triune life. God is a communion of divine inter-dependent Persons in mutual, reciprocal self-giving. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit live from eternity in self-offering, sacrificial, other-oriented love. This is why our motto is “Others.”

The nature of our Triune God is self-giving holy love. The nature of grace is this One desiring to give Himself to us and for us. The most accurate way to think about what God is like is shared life and shared love. God’s holiness is not only transcendence or “separateness” or even morality. Holiness is relationship. Within the Trinity, the divine Persons live by regarding one another as more important than self. Each Person is oriented toward the other’s best, never toward self-focus or self-serving (John 17:1-5). This is perfect love; this is the essence of grace. This forms the Army’s mission.

Therefore, when we speak of “grace,” we’re speaking of this being of God, this nature of self-giving, other-oriented love. Please, whenever you speak or think the word “grace”, realize that “grace” is the literal life of God being offered to us out of His love for us. 

Sometimes we hear that “grace” is God’s attitude of unmerited favor. It’s easy to reduce that idea into something impersonal and utilitarian. I’ve often heard grace referred to like it’s a kind of forcefield that allows for casual dismissal of our sinful behavior. But God is not like a permissive parent who gives no boundaries or consequences. That view of grace is not only cheap, it’s delusional. For our sin, Jesus has graciously offered His own flesh and blood to cleanse and sanctify us (Titus 2:14; 3:4-6). 

The way we speak of “grace” can sometimes make it sound like a kind of pagan “metadivine” that we appeal to for strength and protection. It’s the idea that we’re too removed from the Holy One — we can only petition His attributes. To approach grace as helpful “stuff” or a force to engage for our purposes, precludes our personal dependence upon and continuous relating with God the Holy Spirit.  

The splendor of the story of the Bible reveals that “grace” is primarily God Himself offering to share His divine life and love with us. We definitely do not deserve this magnificent gift, but in truth, God is pursuing everyone out of passionate love for us, so that we can intimately share in the life of God. The Holy One initiates relationship with us. He is always moving first toward every person so that He can share His personal presence with His creatures. 

Since the outpouring at Asbury University in February 2023, I’ve heard countless people say they want it to happen where they live. For me it’s odd to hear the outpouring referred to as an it, as an event to be replicated. While I sat in Hughes Auditorium, there was an overwhelming sense of the presence of Jesus Himself visiting His people in order to love them. He loved them by offering gifts of conviction, confession, repentance, restoration, deliverance, and belonging. He came to love people unto Himself, to share Himself with them. The outpouring was not an “it.” The outpouring was Jesus Himself pouring out His life into the desperate — which is what grace is.  

God doesn’t merely want to share a list of rules that will guide our morals. We are saved by Grace Himself through faith. He loves us and wants us to belong to Him to such an intimate degree that we are one with Him, then live like Him. He wants to put His life into us (John 14:18-23).

Will you respond in faith and receive His offer of Himself? Pray these beautiful words of Charles Wesley’s hymn, “Father of Everlasting Grace”:

Send us the Spirit of Thy Son

To make the depths of the 

Godhead known,

To make us share the Life divine:

Send Him the sprinkled 

blood to apply;

Send Him our souls to sanctify

And show and seal us ever Thine.

Questions

1. How does understanding God as Triune, self-giving love shape the way you understand grace in your own life?
2. In what ways are you currently living in relationship with God, rather than merely following rules or moral expectations?

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