Grace
Grace, or love, is greater than all the mercies granted by the Lord to men, and is to be guarded most of all. The Lord created man out of love, and so, despite the fall into sin, the race of Adam has never been left without His mercy.
The grace of the Lord came down especially upon the people chosen by God, upon Israel. Clothed in grace were Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, the givers of the law and the prophets. But here it must be noted too that, according to the books of the Old Testament, grace did not bring about a renewal of man's being, but rather prepared the ground for it to act in full power in the books of the New Testament.
The mercy of God that came upon Joseph did not go unnoticed even by his master, a pagan Egyptian. “And Joseph found grace in the presence of his lord, and was well-pleasing to him” (Gen. 39:4), and for this reason Pharaoh's courtier set the Hebrew slave over his household as overseer and showed him full trust.
When on Mount Horeb the Creator Himself appeared to Moses in the form of a burning bush and made known to him His will concerning Israel's exodus from Egypt, He promised him that He would give grace to His beloved people and would not lead them out of the yoke of foreign oppression empty-handed: “And I will give grace to this people before the Egyptians, and when ye go out, ye shall not go out empty” (Exod. 3:21). And indeed, by the working of divine power the Egyptians were disposed to generosity and willingly gave up to the Israelites all the precious things they had.
As the examples adduced prove, grace in the Old Testament truly prepares the ground for its power to be shown in full in the books of the New Testament.
According to John the Theologian, for mankind “the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ” (1:17).
Among the mercies of God, grace and truth truly surpass them all. The greatest man of the Old Testament, Moses, gave his people only the law dictated by God, which set moral demands but gave no strength to fulfil them, since it did not destroy the inherited inclination to sin that is proper to men. Moreover, Moses was only a servant, a passive instrument in God's hand, whereas of the New Testament it is said that it came directly from Christ.
The incarnate Word of God, Jesus Christ, was full of grace, that is, of divine love and compassion toward the race of Adam:
and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
Not only Christ's immediate disciples, the apostles, but all the faithful received grace from the fulness of His divine goodness: “for of his fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (John 1:15).
As is thought, here there must be an indication of the replacing of one kind of mercy by another, ever higher and higher, which continues until a person receives the highest grace, the Holy Spirit, the consequence of which is their deification.
Of all those born mortal, the Virgin Mary was counted worthy of the Lord's special mercy most of all. “Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee,” the Archangel Gabriel says to the Mother of God; and truly the tongue is powerless to express the greatness of the grace granted to her from heaven (Luke 1:28). “The Lord is with thee,” the archangel says to Mary, and this is not merely a wish but the witness of a true fact, for the Lord is indeed with Mary.
“Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God” — these words of the archangel (Luke 1:30) make plain that the Virgin, through her special virtues, through her spiritual qualities — faith, obedience and purity — became the chosen one of the Creator and obtained the highest grace.
By the power of the grace that proceeds from God the apostles preached the teaching of Christ. The chief of the apostles, Paul, says in his first epistle to the Corinthians: “But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (1 Cor. 15:10). Filled with Christian humility, Paul considers himself the least among the apostles, but at the same time he does not forget that in the doing of God's works the grace of the Lord always helped him — the grace with which he was filled on the day when he turned to Christ, from Whom “we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name” (Rom. 1:5).
In the epistle to the Romans the Apostle Paul teaches us that justification from sins was given to men as a gift, freely, without any personal merit: “being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24). That is, God bestowed on us His grace, that is, His love, which became the source of justification for mankind, tormented by the yoke of sin. Christ, the prototype of Adam, delivered us by His own blood from the captivity of sin. The mercy granted by Him covers and blots out the moral fall of Adam and of his race, for grace is stronger than sin; Adam's sin will be blotted out, but the power of the sacrifice offered by Christ of His own will shall abide for ever:
“But not as the offence, so also is the free gift. For if through the offence of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many” (Rom. 5:15).
The grace of the Lord is given to people through the Holy Spirit (Rom. 5:5). Whoever partakes of the Holy Spirit partakes at the same time of grace. It may be said that grace is the power of the Holy Spirit which dwells and works in a person. By the power of the Holy Spirit, through His mercies, those who seek the truth rise higher and higher on the ladder of perfection. He eternally gives out grace, yet in such a way that He Himself is never diminished and, eternally perfect, has no need of the renewal of His powers. As Basil the Great writes, like the rays of the sun the grace of the Holy Spirit is poured out on all alike, but not all are alike able to receive it. To receive grace means not a physical drawing near of the Holy Spirit to a person, but the driving out of those passions which entered the soul as a result of its being clothed in a material body. The Holy Spirit makes radiant those who are washed clean of vices and, by communion with Himself, makes them spiritual. And those enlightened with spirituality can themselves share the grace they have received with others, just as a shining and transparent body, by reflecting the ray that falls upon it, gives rise to a new ray (Basil the Great, “On the Holy Spirit”).
By the grace granted by the Holy Spirit the prophets foresaw the future, and the givers of the law attained to the understanding of God's mysteries. On the Holy Spirit directly depend the distributing of gifts, the entering into the Kingdom, the becoming like God, and finally the goal most desired by men, deification.
According to the Apostle Paul, God the Father is the distributor of operations, the Son of ministries, and the Holy Spirit of grace. “Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit” (1 Cor. 12:4).
In the distribution of grace, from the Holy Spirit one is given the gift of wise speech, another of knowledge, another firm faith and the power of healing, another the gift of prophecy and the ability to work wonders, and yet another the knowledge of tongues and the possibility of interpreting them. The apostles, filled with the Holy Spirit, began to speak in different tongues (Acts 11:2).
“But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will” (Cor. 12:11).
By the power of the grace received from the Holy Spirit the God-bearing fathers composed glorious hymns to the Creator. It was not by chance that Ephrem the Syrian, foremost among hymnographers, and Paul, distinguished among the apostles by the power of the word, were called the harp of the Holy Spirit. By the power of the grace received from the Holy Spirit the equal-to-the-apostles St Nino preached Christianity in Georgia, and that is why in the troparion of praise we address the enlightener of the Georgians: “Harp of the Holy Spirit, Nino.”
Not only the books of the New Testament but the writings of the teachers of the Universal Church too are inspired by the Holy Spirit. Ephrem the Syrian, who entered the church of Caesarea at God's command, saw the archbishop standing on the step of the sanctuary and preaching. On his shoulder, as though whispering in his ear, sat a dove white as snow, which shows us that the homilies of Basil the Great were composed at the prompting of the Holy Spirit. In the words of Ephrem the Syrian, at that time the whole church was lit up with the divine radiance of grace.
From what has been said above, despite the many kinds of mercies, there is one common source of their origin, the Holy Spirit. In distributing grace He acts “as he will” (Cor. 12:11), that is, according to His fundamental properties, which are wisdom, goodness and justice. Often a man gifted by nature does not become worthy to receive spiritual mercy, and so his deed or his word is without grace, wholly unfit for the service of God, and often even the opposite of it; whereas the believing publican, by the grace granted by the Holy Spirit, became an evangelist (Matt. 9:9), a fisherman became a theologian (Matt. 6:6), and a persecutor of Christ became an apostle (Acts 9:15).
The Holy Spirit will distribute grace at the judgement held at the second coming of Jesus Christ as well: to the righteous, as a sign of mercy, crowns will be given.
On the day of deliverance those sealed by the Holy Spirit, who used the grace received from Him for the service of their neighbour, will hear: “Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things” (Matt. 25:21); but from the one who did not share the mercy granted them with their brethren, and thus did not multiply it, even what they received will be taken away and given to another. As the apostle says, such as these will be cut off entirely (Luke 12:46). Cutting off means the final estrangement of a person from the Holy Spirit. The soul is cut off because it made sinful wisdom its own and became the body's partner in the doing of evil. That is why there is no “remembrance in death, nor confession in hades” (Ps. 6:5): because souls that are cut off will no longer have help from the Holy Spirit. Every true Christian should strive to imitate Christ by their life, so as to deserve the mercy of God, for, as Gregory the Theologian teaches us: “Grace is given not to the one who speaks, but to the one who lives in goodness” (23, 24).
