Grace is hard to define for us 2,000 years removed from this letter. The word translated grace comes from the greek word and concept charis. The word charis was used to describe a critical social arrangement in Greco-Roman society called the patron-client relationship.

A patron is what you called someone who protected society’s preferred way of life and citizens. So if you were not wealthy, it was important to attach yourself to a wealthy “patron” so you could be networked in to success or supported. The patron had your back and spoke up for you so you could have social standing and financial security. You are now the ‘client and in return for the well-being that the patron would provide, you would serve your patron and show them public honor whenever the opportunity arose.

Charis, what we call grace, refers to the favorable attitude that the patron would show you, the “client,” and refers to the gifts and other provisions the patron would give. Charis could also refer to the gratitude the you would give the patron in return. A term for what the client owed the patron was the greek word pistis, which is the Bible word for “faith" or “faithfulness,” “trust,” or “loyalty" or “allegiance.” So it worked like this: you would receive charis, grace, and respond with pistis, faith/faithfulness.

When Paul uses this term in writing this greek metropolitan city called Ephesus, this is what he is saying.

God has shown us favor by giving us what we cannot deserve or earn, and has our back 100%—this is grace. We are now to live in the fullness of this grace with gratitude and allegiance because of what God has done—faith. It’s why Paul immediately says in verse 10, so you should walk in good works.

We do good works not so we can receive God’s grace, but because we have received God’s grace and live by faith.

Grace reminds us that our faith never begins with what we do for God, but what God does for us. It is grace. Simple, wreck-less, untamable, unexplainable, relentless, scandalous grace.

This means all we have is gift. All that is good is ours, not by right or reward, but by grace.

Deuteronomy 8:17-18
17 You may say to yourself, ‘My power and my own ability have gained this wealth for me,’ 18 but remember that the Lord your God gives you the power to gain wealth, in order to confirm His covenant He swore to your fathers, as it is today.

Grace says it is all gift. All we have is gift. All we are is gift. All we will ever become is gift.

Luke 14:1-14
One Sabbath, when He went to eat at the house of one of the leading Pharisees, they were watching Him closely….

Note the context of this entire text. It is a context of power. When Luke says he is a "leading pharisee” he wants us to understand that this man is among the most powerful of the powerful. So when Jesus offers this parable (and the one we will look at next week) he does so in a context of power and wealth. That, beloved, is the subversion and scandal of this text.

7 He told a parable to those who were invited, when He noticed how they would choose the best places for themselves: 8 “When you are invited by someone to a wedding banquet, don’t recline at the best place, because a more distinguished person than you may have been invited by your host. 9 The one who invited both of you may come and say to you, ‘Give your place to this man,’ and then in humiliation, you will proceed to take the lowest place.
10 “But when you are invited, go and recline in the lowest place, so that when the one who invited you comes, he will say to you, ‘Friend, move up higher.’ You will then be honored in the presence of all the other guests. 11 For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and the one who humbles himself will be exalted.”
12 He also said to the one who had invited Him, “When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid. 13 On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, crippled, lame, or blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

This WITH—Ness of grace makes us witnesses of grace.

The WITH—Ness of grace makes us witnesses of grace.

Jesus says to us in Luke 12-14:

“When you give a lunch or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers, your relatives, or your rich neighbors, because they might invite you back, and you would be repaid. 13 On the contrary, when you host a banquet, invite those who are poor, crippled, lame, or blind. 14 And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you; for you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous.”

In other words, Being “repaid” means we’ve already been paid—we’ve been given grace and now we are to give it. “You have already been paid and it’s coming to you, so deal out what you already have.”

The WITH—Ness of grace that makes us witnesses of grace should make us more gracious.