When Grace Becomes More Than a Word

Rediscovering God’s kindness in a world of scarcity and shame

We live in a culture where genuine kindness often feels scarce, transactional, and conditional.

Shame and insecurity thrive in what author Brené Brown calls a “culture of scarcity,” one fueled by constant comparison and the sense that we are “never enough.” In such an environment, grace can seem little more than a nice word or slogan - something sentimental to put on a greeting card, but detached from real life.

Grace, however, from a genuinely Christian outlook, is radical, undeserved kindness. Grace is not a flimsy or fickle sentiment; it is a force to be reckoned with. And when grace becomes more than a word, it has the power to transform even the most broken parts of our life stories.

In Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Misérables, an ex-convict named Jean Valjean, who is hardened by years of shame and rejection, is shown unexpected kindness by a humble, grace-filled priest. Valjean, who was desperate and alone in life, steals the priest’s silver and flees. When police capture him and drag him back to face the man he betrayed, the priest does the unthinkable: he tells the police that the silver that Valjean took with him was a gift - and then shoves several valuable silver candlesticks into Valjean’s bag as an additional gift.

After the police leave, the priest turns to the stunned Valjean and speaks words that change his life:

“Jean Valjean, my brother: you belong no longer to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I am buying for you. I withdraw it from dark thoughts and from the spirit of perdition, and I give it to God!”

Such unexpected lavish grace defies all our instincts about justice and payback. It makes no practical sense to forgive a thief… and then give him more. Yet Hugo understood that such undeserved mercy - so much more than scolding or shaming or correcting or “busting” an offender - can catalyze deep and even permanent change.

In the Les Miserables story, this single act of grace transforms Valjean from a career criminal into an honorable man who is, from that point forward, filled with compassion. The priest’s act of grace toward him had not been mere sentiment; it was a gesture of power - God’s power at work through practical mercy, grace, and kindness. Aligned with the famous “Prayer of St. Francis,” where there was hatred, the priest showed love; where there was injury, the priest showed pardon; where there was darkness, the priest showed light.

He did all of these things not only by believing in grace, but by expressing grace so wonderful that it didn’t expect anything in return.

Grace, in God’s economy, operates just like that: it doesn’t expect anything in return. In that sense, God’s grace toward us is unconditional. Scripture tells us that “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8), the ultimate act of granting unearned favor.

And this grace is not only God’s forgiving posture toward us - it is also meant to become His power working in us. The Bible is clear that grace does so much more than pardon us; it also empowers us.

The apostle Paul wrote, “By the grace of God I am what I am... and His grace toward me was not in vain” (1 Corinthians 15:10). In another passage Paul explains that God’s grace “trains us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives” (Titus 2:11-12).

Grace doesn’t just cover over the worst things from our past. It also redeems our past while promising to renovate our future.

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Our struggle to believe this is common. Instead, our most natural response is that we default to fear. We fear that free, unconditional pardon might enable wrongdoing on the one hand, or fail to deliver on its promise on the other. We are also afraid of what other people will do with grace if God or we grant grace too freely. They might “take our candlesticks” like Valjean did to the priest.

But because God’s grace is accompanied by God’s Spirit, real change can and often does happen over time. Just as Jean Valjean was transformed by receiving mercy instead of judgment, we too are transformed when we receive - and especially when we start to internalize - God’s grace specifically toward us.

When grace begins to sink in and our hearts begin to metabolize it, the shame and regret that once defined and consumed us begins to melt. The idea that love must be earned begins to crumble. In its place grows a new identity grounded not in our failures and “not enough-ness” but in what Christian children’s book writer, Sally Lloyd Jones, calls God’s “Never Stopping, Never Giving Up, Unbreaking, Always and Forever Love.”

Jesus embodied this grace and love in the Gospels. He scandalized smug, coldhearted, judgmental relfigious laders by eating with notorious sinners and declaring that their sins were forgiven. When a broken woman, likely a prostitute, wept at His feet, Jesus said her many sins were forgiven and that her expression of lavish love toward Him was the result of being shown great mercy (Luke 7:47).

In Jesus, grace becomes more than a remote theological idea; it took on flesh and blood and made its dwelling among us. Jesus was grace in action - touching lepers, welcoming outsiders, and restoring people who had blown up their own lives. And after these direct encounters with Him, people never remained the same.

If grace is just a word from the “Christianese” vocabulary, it loses its power. But when grace is both spoken and embodied, it changes lives - always for the better.

And? The story of Jean Valjean echoes the stories of countless real people who have been changed by God’s kindness. John Newton, a former slave trader, never forgot the “amazing grace” that saved a wretch like him and propelled him to not only write the hymn by the same name, but also to spend the rest of his life fighting to abolish the slave trade.

The Apostle Paul never lost his amazement that Jesus came into the world “to save sinners - of whom I am the worst” (1 Timothy 1:15). God’s grace turned this former persecutor of the church into its greatest champion and advocate.

These kinds of real-life stories testify that while being shaped by gentleness, kindness, and love, grace is not at all soft or weak. Grace is God’s “power made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:7-10) - a living force that invades the dark corners of shame and scarcity with God’s kindness and abundance.

In a world where so much of people’s declared worth is conditional and transactional, grace is jarringly countercultural. It tells us that in Christ, we are loved as we are, not as we should be. That level of acceptance and security has the power to break our cycles of shame that our “never enough” culture perpetuates.

When we know we are loved in this way, it frees us to extend grace to others, to risk vulnerability, and to retire from the exhausting game of striving to prove ourselves.

Grace becomes more than a word when it moves from our heads to our hearts, and out into our lives. Imagine if we believed, deeply in our hearts, that God’s kindness toward us will never run dry and has no expiration date before or after we die. We would no longer live in fear of failing or falling out of God’s favor. We could, as Scripture says, approach God’s throne of grace with confidence (Hebrews 4:16), knowing we’ll find mercy to help us in our times of need.

And having received mercy, we could also become merciful ourselves. The bishop in Les Misérables gave the gift of grace to an “undeserving” man, and it changed not only Valjean but a whole town was blessed by Valjean’s resulting years of generosity.

In the same way, God’s gift of grace to us can overflow through us to a world that is famished for kindness. Far from being a mere Christian cliché, grace can actually become a revolution as it has in many seasons of history and in different parts of the world.

Grace is so much more than just a word. It is God’s unexpected, undeserved, unlimited kindness that meets us in our worst and ugliest places and releases us into a life of healing and freedom and purpose.

May we rediscover this grace freshly - a grace that is more than a word and a doctrine, but a living force that reshapes everything it touches.

Amazing Grace! How sweet the sound…

How Can I Encourage You?

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