Wednesday, September 16, 2026 from Center for Action and Contemplation.
Theologian Richard Beck considers how the apostle Paul challenged the ancient world’s understanding of gift and grace as something one had to earn and repay:
Over the last two thousand years our definition of grace has flip-flopped and undergone a 180-degree reversal. Grace was once merited; today it is unmerited. Back then, grace was deserved, now it is undeserved. So what happened? How did grace get flipped inside out? Answer: The apostle Paul…. Paul’s great accomplishment was starting the revolution of grace….
It was Paul’s ferocious contention that grace was given to those who did not deserve or merit the gift…. This view of grace flew in the face of all that was reasonable and sane. Gifts must not be wasted! But here was Paul suggesting that the unmerited nature of grace was precisely what made God’s gift so perfect. This was an audacious and unprecedented reversal, a complete inversion of the ancient imagination. This paradigm shift concerning our understanding of grace was Paul’s great legacy….
As Paul would provocatively announce, grace was given to us while we were enemies of God….
God had, in sharp contrast to the Roman elite, showered gifts upon the undeserving, ignoring our merit, worth, and desert. And it was precisely this incongruity between gift and recipient that made the gift so gracious and magnanimous. So perfect. That was the revolutionary heart of Paul’s message. And what was perverse and shocking for Paul’s audiences has become definitional for us. The entire modern world has been converted to Paul’s gospel of grace. Everyone has adopted Paul’s upside down definition of grace…. Grace is grace because we don’t deserve it.
Beck explains how the small churches or ekklesia that Paul founded were able to exist only because of this radically new understanding of grace: Gathered around the message of grace, Paul’s churches were diverse collections of people from every conceivable walk of life and social strata. Rich and poor, Jew and gentile…. In a world divided by class conflict, religious prejudice, and ethnic animus, Christian communities tore down the wall of hostility that existed between social groups so that the single family of God — pluralistic, multicultural, and diverse — could emerge….
Grace, declared Paul, ignores hierarchies of worth. Grace destroys social rankings based upon value. In the eyes of God there are no inferior versus superior people.
Paul’s preaching about the incongruity of grace was social dynamite, blowing to smithereens every attempt to rank human persons on a scale of value and worth. In the hands of Paul, grace became a tool of social leveling, creating capacities for egalitarian and democratic forms of social life….
Since Christ had welcomed the early Christians, unconditionally and irrespective of worth, they were called upon to extend that same unconditional welcome to each other. As Paul would ask of them, “Welcome each other, as Christ has welcomed you.” Despite their differences, grace had made them a family. No one would be honored or elevated over another. God had loved them all, fully and equally.
References:
Richard Beck, The Book of Love: A Better Way to Read the Bible (Broadleaf Books, 2026), 210, 211–212, 213, 214–216.
Submitted by Bob Young
