Rethinking God With Tacosਨਮੂਨਾ

Day 5: Grace—The Path to Radical Belonging:

Today, we’re diving into the heart of the gospel—grace—and what it truly means when we say that everyone belongs.

Let’s start with this: Grace is the atmosphere of God’s love. It’s the very foundation we stand on—not something we fall back on. Grace doesn’t excuse sin. It awakens and empowers us to live as who we really are. Grace is the truth of our identity.

That’s what Paul was getting at in 2 Corinthians 5:21 (NIV): “God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Too often, we spend all our energy trying not to sin instead of waking up to the reality that we’ve already been made righteous. We’ve been made new, not just cleaned up. And when we live from that place—knowing we are fully loved and fully accepted—we begin to walk in confidence, not fear.

First John 4:17 (NIV) says, “This is how love is made complete among us . . . In this world we are like Jesus.”

Grace isn’t just God loving us from a distance—it’s God living in us. And it’s not meant to stop with us, either.

That’s where inclusion comes in.

The early Church didn’t grow because of flashy events or expository preaching. It grew because of love. After Paul’s conversion, Acts 9:31 (NIV) says, “Then the church . . . was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.” Why? Because people were being drawn into a community that looked like Jesus—welcoming, forgiving, radically grace-filled.

This is what grace does: It makes room. It knocks down the walls we build to separate ourselves from others. Galatians 3:28 (NIV) puts it like this: “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

There are no “insiders” and “outsiders” at the cross, nor in the Kingdom—just people who are waking up to the truth that we’ve always belonged.

That was Jesus’s prayer in John 17:21 (NIV): “That all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”

Oneness. Not sameness, not uniformity—but shared love. Shared life. Grace.

So today, what if we stopped trying so hard to “get it right,” and started resting in the grace that already made us whole? What if we extended that grace to others—not just the easy ones, but the complicated ones, the ones who don’t look or vote or believe like us?

Because grace doesn’t play favorites. And neither does God. We are all His beloved.