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Originally Posted by BigV
I'll open the question to all the dwellars, since I find your answer unhelpful. I'm pretty sure I know what Grace is; undeserved mercy. What I still don't get is how it is that God's mercy (grace) is sometimes bestowed (God picks me up) and sometimes withheld (God is stopped) (which I find...incomprehensible still). In the one case you say it is undeserved (grace is mercy that is undeserved) because I've fallen short and in the other case it is *also* undeserved because I've sinned.
I think we can both agree that I live in a continuous state of undeservedness. I am continuously falling short, indeed, continuously sinning. Any mercy I get will be the very definition of gracce--undeserved. But I am still mystified why I sometimes receive it and sometimes not, since I'm always undeserving.
Frankly, this doesn't feel good. It feels arbitrary. Less charitably, it feels tautological--this is not a compliment. I sin, I fall short, I am undeserving, all the time. Sometimes I get mercy sometimes not. And your explanation is that when I get mercy it is because I only fell short. And when I don't get mercy it is because I sinned. But there's no explanation of the differences! Where is the cause and where is the effect? For that matter, where is the personal responsibility?
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From a strictly apologetical standpoint--what I actually believe isn't really relevant to your question--you are misunderstanding the definition of grace. Grace is not God giving you nice things or making your troubles go away. Grace is that you get to go to heaven
after you die, even though you were undeserving
before you died. Mercy, grace, all of it refers to being saved after your death; i.e., not having to go to hell. The bad things that may or may not happen to you before you die is a whole different issue.