Yes, and we'd say it louder than that. Grace is the only reason anybody stands forgiven, and no stretch of good behavior ever puts God in a person's debt (Ephesians 2:8-9). If somebody told you that a group like ours preaches obedience and quietly files grace away in a drawer, that's not what you'll hear here at Christians in Honesdale, and we'd rather walk you through the passages than argue about a reputation.
What Grace Means
Grace is God being kind to people who have no claim on Him. He went first. Paul lays our part and God’s part right next to each other: “For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). Read that last line again. Boasting gets shut off for everybody, and we’re standing inside that “everybody.”
Here’s a small detail from Paul’s Greek worth knowing, because it closes a loophole people sometimes look for. The word translated “this” (“this is not your own doing”) is a neuter pronoun, while both “faith” and “grace” earlier in the sentence are feminine nouns. Grammatically, “this” isn’t reaching back to grab just one of those words as the “gift” being singled out — it’s pointing at the whole preceding event, the entire saved-by-grace-through-faith transaction. Even the faith that reaches out empty hands gets swept up into the gift. It isn’t a separate contribution that earns a seat at the table.
Grace isn’t an abstract policy, either. In everyday first-century Greek, charis described a favor granted by someone with the standing to grant it — patron to client, benefactor to beneficiary — the kind of gift that could never be repaid, only received and lived out in gratitude. (The same root even gives us the word for “thank you,” eucharisteo — gratitude is built into the word itself.) Paul takes that ordinary word and hangs the whole gospel on it. Christ died for us while we were still sinners (Romans 5:8). Nothing in anyone’s file started this.
Grace also isn’t a concept floating somewhere. It walked into history as a person: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation for all people, training us to renounce ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright, and godly lives in the present age” (Titus 2:11-12).
So Why Do People Assume Otherwise?
It nearly always traces back to baptism. We teach that a believer is immersed in order to receive forgiveness, because that's exactly how Peter answered a crowd asking what to do about their sins (Acts 2:38; 1 Peter 3:21).
We should say plainly that not every believer reads Peter’s Greek the same way here. The preposition translated “for” (eis) can carry a backward-looking sense (“because of,” pointing at forgiveness already granted) in a few other New Testament contexts, and sincere Christians land in different places on it. We simply teach it the way it reads most naturally as an answer to the question actually being asked — “what shall we do?” — a purpose, not a comment on something already finished. To some ears, though, any command attached to salvation starts sounding like a price tag.
Think about how a gift works, though. Opening your hands isn't the same thing as paying. Baptism is the moment a believer stops trusting himself and asks God to wash him clean (Acts 22:16). The blood belongs to Christ. The mercy belongs to God. Our part is a trust that gets up and moves.
Does Grace Only Pardon Us, or Does It Train Us?
Both, and that same sentence in Titus says so out loud. Even the verb carries a hint: “appeared” (epephanē) shares its root with the word Paul uses two verses later for the appearing of “the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ” (Titus 2:13). Grace and Christ show up in the same paragraph wearing the same family of word, because in Paul’s mind, grace was never a policy God adopted — it’s a Person God sent.
And that Person didn’t only forgive Titus’s readers and move on. The word translated “training” (paideuousa) is the word for raising a child — not a drill sergeant barking orders, but a parent shaping character patiently, over years. Grace isn’t a pardon signed once and dropped in a filing cabinet, which is why we’ve never treated a holy life as extra credit for advanced Christians. Grace is what enrolls a forgiven person in school.
That's the piece the stereotype keeps dropping. Grace and obedience aren't rivals in this Bible. One is the gift. The other is what a grateful person does with it.
Isn't Grace a Free Pass, Then?
“What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it?” (Romans 6:1-2). Paul got that question in the first century and closed the door on it hard. Grace forgives sin. It never sponsors it.
What Kind of Faith Receives Grace?
“So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead” (James 2:17). A living faith is what receives grace. James isn’t handing anybody an invoice — he’s describing the gap between believing a fact and trusting a Person. A faith that never once changes a Monday is really just an opinion.
Scripture also warns that grace can be walked away from. Paul told the Galatians, in the bluntest terms he had, that anyone trying to get right with God by keeping the law instead of trusting Christ has “fallen away from grace” (Galatians 5:4) — not because they had sinned too much, but because they’d stopped trusting the gift and started trying to earn it instead. Hebrews warns of something related but broader: a heart hardened by “the deceitfulness of sin” until it drifts from the living God altogether (Hebrews 3:12-13). We take both warnings at face value. That isn’t anxiety, and it isn’t a scorecard on the wall. It’s what you do with a warning from Someone who loves you.
Grace on a Bad Week
Here’s the part people rarely expect to hear from us. Grace isn’t only the door we walked through years ago. It’s where we go on the weeks we’ve failed again: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16). With confidence. Not with a clean record in hand.
Read It for Yourself
Sit down with Ephesians 2 and Titus 2, then turn to James 2, and see whether grace and obedience sound like competitors in the same book. Worth knowing while you do: we're an independent congregation with no denomination or headquarters standing behind us, so we can only speak for ourselves, and what's above is simply what we've come to from the New Testament. Nobody appointed us to answer for anyone else. Take your time with it. It's a good question, and Scripture answers it without flinching.
Open a Bible With Us
If grace is what you’ve been chewing on, we’d love to go straight at it with you, at your pace, letting your questions set the order. Nothing gets sold here, and nobody keeps score. Ask us for a free Bible study, get to know who we are, or send us a note before you stop in.
Our schedule:
Our address is 416 Main Street, Suite D, Honesdale, PA 18431. Both the parking and the door you want are around at the rear of the building.