NOTES for Rom 11:2-12

That grace is a gift from God seems clear enough to everyone. And that grace is a good thing is also a fact. But how we receive it and what it is given for are much less clear. We can regard grace as a reward granted to us for our merits and efforts. And start storing up as many good deeds as possible—for example, helping little old ladies across the street—so that our lives will brim over with happiness. Why not? Isn't that logical?

Quite logical. Only it doesn't work that way.

In reality, it doesn't work that way because grace is something God gives. And He does not merely give it: He gives it as a gift. A gift is freely given; it can neither be deserved nor worked for. And if we remember that, for God, our deeds—what is outward—matter less than our faith and our relationship with Him—what is within us—it becomes clear that we simply cannot earn grace. As one of the prayers of the Divine Liturgy says, ‘For You alone are without sin; Your righteousness is righteousness for ever, and Your word is truth.’ There is nothing we could do to become like God. Only He Himself, by His grace—a gift given to us ‘not of works, but of Him who calls’ (Rom 9:11)—can bring us into the fullness of life. It is in Christ that we receive happiness: ‘The grace of God and the gift by the grace of the one Man, Jesus Christ, abound for many’ (Rom 5:15).