Among all the great themes of the Christian faith, few words are more frequently used than grace. We sing it in our songs, hear it in sermons, and it saturates conversations about salvation. Protestants love to quote Ephesians 2: “We are saved by grace.”
The Reformation’s doctrine of Sola Gratia, “grace alone,” was a corrective to centuries of theology that had entangled God’s mercy with human merit. The Reformers insisted that salvation begins and ends with the grace of God, not with the effort of the sinner. Grace is not a reward for righteousness; it’s a gift given freely to the undeserving. Yet, as with the other Solas, the way this idea has been interpreted and applied over time varies greatly.
Some use “grace alone” to suggest that human response is unnecessary or that salvation is unconditional and automatic. Others swing the opposite direction, tethering grace so tightly to religious ritual or institutional authority that it becomes something dispensed by the church rather than freely given by God. Others equate grace with divine leniency, a permission slip to keep sinning while claiming spiritual safety.
To truly understand how grace works, we have to ask what kind of gift it is and what God expects us to do with it.
Understanding Sola Gratia
The Reformers did not invent the idea of salvation by grace. Scripture clearly teaches that we have been saved by grace, and the early church affirmed that no one is saved apart from God’s mercy. Over the centuries, grace became increasingly intertwined with ritual, merit, and institutional control. By the time of the Reformation, grace was often treated as a currency earned through sacramental obedience or bestowed through the church’s mediation.
The groundwork for the later debate was laid by Augustine in the fifth century. In his battles against Pelagianism, Augustine rightly insisted that salvation begins with God and not with human initiative. Pelagius had taught that humans could achieve righteousness without divine help. Augustine countered with the idea that the fallen will must be touched by grace before it can choose rightly. But in his attempt to defend divine sovereignty, Augustine also introduced strong determinist ideas, suggesting that God’s grace is given only to the elect and is ultimately irresistible.
These ideas would later be developed more fully by Calvin, but Augustine planted the seeds. For Augustine, grace was not just God’s favor; it was an internal act of transformation given to some but not all. This marked a shift away from the earlier patristic emphasis on cooperation with grace and introduced a strong note of unilateral divine action.
By the time of the high Middle Ages, the Catholic Church had formalized a system of grace mediated through the sacraments; baptism, penance, confirmation, the Eucharist, and other rites were seen as means by which God’s grace was infused into the soul. In theory, grace was still unmerited. In practice, however, it became something distributed through the priesthood and sustained by religious duty.
The concept of meritum de congruo (merit based on cooperation with grace) and merit of condignity (merit due to the intrinsic value of good works) led many to believe that salvation involved a kind of spiritual accounting. Grace may have come first, but human participation was emphasized so heavily that the gift of grace began to resemble a reward for good behavior.
Martin Luther and the early Reformers stood against this system. They read Paul’s letters and saw a radically different picture. They insisted that grace is not something earned or dispensed through the church; it is the free favor of God given to the undeserving. For Luther, Sola Gratia was about liberation. The sinner, helpless under the weight of guilt and the burden of works-based righteousness, is lifted up by God’s kindness alone.
John Calvin took this even further, framing grace in terms of God’s sovereign will. Grace is not only unearned; it is irresistible. Those whom God has chosen to save will receive grace and cannot ultimately resist it. This became the foundation of the doctrine of monergism: the belief that God alone acts in salvation and that human beings contribute nothing, not even cooperation or response.
The Catholic Church responded to the Reformers at the Council of Trent (1545–1563). Trent affirmed that salvation begins with grace, not works, and denied that humans can earn salvation apart from God’s help. But it also insisted that grace could be increased, preserved, or lost through human action. Faith alone was rejected, and grace was viewed as a power infused through the sacraments, resulting in a lifelong process of justification that depended on one’s cooperation.
Both Catholics and Reformers affirmed the necessity of grace. But their definitions differed sharply. The Reformers emphasized the sufficiency of grace, especially in Calvin’s framework of sovereign election and irresistible grace. Catholic doctrine emphasized the mediation and maintenance of grace through sacramental participation and moral effort.
What Scripture Says About Grace
The New Testament speaks of grace in rich and varied ways. Far from being a narrow doctrinal term, grace encompasses the full scope of God’s redemptive initiative; His love extended to the undeserving, His power at work in the weak, and His invitation to live as transformed people in covenant with Him. To understand Sola Gratia rightly, we must return to the biblical witness.
Paul’s letters are filled with declarations that grace is unearned and unmerited. In Romans 3:24, he writes that believers are “now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.” Ephesians 2:8–9 echoes this: “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God—not the result of works, so that no one may boast.”
Grace, in its very definition, cannot be earned. It is God’s initiative, not a reward for effort. Titus 3:5–7 reinforces this: “He saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy.” Any system that requires human performance to earn God’s grace fails to reckon with the biblical portrait of a God who rescues sinners while they are still powerless (Romans 5:6).
But grace is not merely pardon; it’s power. Paul speaks of grace not just as the cause of salvation but as the energy that sustains and shapes the Christian life. In 1 Corinthians 15:10, he writes, “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me has not been in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them—though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.”
Titus 2:11–12 makes it plain: “For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly.” Grace does not excuse sin; it empowers Christians to live holy lives.
Philippians 2:12–13 holds both truths in tension: “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who is at work in you.” Grace is God’s active presence, enabling believers to do what they could never do on their own. A theology of grace that lacks transformation is not biblical grace.
Some theological systems suggest that grace is irresistible and that those who are chosen by God cannot ultimately reject His call. But Scripture tells us otherwise. In Acts 7:51, Stephen rebukes the religious leaders by saying, “You are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do.” The context is clear: God had offered grace through the prophets and ultimately through Christ, but the elders hardened their hearts.
Paul warns in 2 Corinthians 6:1, “As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain.” Grace can be resisted, and it can be received without effect. It can be set aside, as Paul feared for those who returned to the law in Galatians.
The idea that grace overrides human will may have been meant to defend God’s sovereignty, but it does so at the cost of the relational nature of salvation. God calls, but He does not force or coerce.
Grace is universal in its offer. But Jesus Himself taught that not all will enter the kingdom. In Matthew 7:13–14, He describes the narrow gate and the difficult road that leads to life, warning that few find it.
This tension—grace freely offered but not universally received—is consistent across the New Testament. God desires all to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), but not all will respond. The biblical pattern is not one of deterministic grace but of covenantal invitation. God acts first and makes a way, but He calls people to respond in faith, repentance, and obedience.
Where Modern Theology Goes Wrong
The Reformers rightly emphasized grace as the foundation of salvation. But in the centuries since, many traditions have distorted that message in different ways. Some have emptied grace of its power. Others have turned it into a deterministic force. Still, others have buried it under rituals and hierarchy. These errors continue to shape the way people think about salvation, and all of them must be measured against the standard of Scripture.
Evangelicalism and the Problem of Cheap Grace
In many modern Evangelical circles, grace has been reduced to a free pass. The language of “grace alone” is everywhere but often disconnected from the biblical call to holiness, repentance, and faithful obedience. Salvation is presented as a one-time decision—pray a prayer and accept Jesus into your heart and you’re saved for life. Transformation becomes optional, and discipleship becomes secondary.
This is what Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously called cheap grace—grace without the cross, forgiveness without repentance, and salvation without submission. When grace is reduced to leniency, the gospel loses its transformative power.
Reformed Theology and Irresistible Grace
On the other side, some Reformed traditions have gone too far in their effort to help God protect His sovereignty. In Calvinist systems, grace is described as irresistible. God unilaterally regenerates the elect, and those He chooses are powerless to stop Him. This doctrine of monergism removes the need for human cooperation altogether.
While this view seeks to glorify God’s initiative, it distorts the nature of divine love. Scripture consistently portrays God as inviting, calling, and even grieving when people reject Him (e.g., Luke 13:34, Acts 7:51). Irresistible grace destroys the biblical tension between God’s power and human responsibility, doing so at the cost of human dignity and genuine relationship.
Catholic Sacramentalism and the Institutionalization of Grace
In Catholic theology, grace is not denied but is often over-institutionalized. It becomes something infused to adherents through the sacraments, mediated by the Church, and sustained through continual participation in rituals. Grace is present, but it is entangled with ecclesial authority.
The danger here is that grace becomes transactional. Instead of trusting in God’s personal and transforming initiative, many are taught to depend on the Church’s system for spiritual maintenance. This can foster a mindset of spiritual insecurity or works-based assurance: Have I confessed enough? Attended Mass enough? Done enough penance?
This view of grace misses the simplicity and immediacy of the gospel. In Scripture, grace is not dispensed through a system but extended directly through Christ. It is not maintained by checking religious boxes but by walking faithfully in response to what God has already done. While the sacraments were intended as a means of spiritual nourishment, they were never meant to replace the living relationship between God and His people.
Distortions on Every Side
In different ways, each of these traditions misrepresents the concept of grace. Evangelicalism often removes its moral demands. Calvinism removes human response. Catholicism embeds it in a hierarchical system. All of them risk losing sight of what grace really is: God’s loving initiative that invites us into covenant, transforms our lives, and calls us to walk in faithfulness.
This is why we must return to the biblical witness, not just to defend grace from legalism but also to defend it from being emptied of its purpose.
A Restorationist Perspective
The Churches of Christ always held a high view of Scripture and, with that, a strong affirmation that salvation begins with the grace of God. While Restorationist teaching is sometimes misunderstood or misrepresented as legalistic, the core conviction has always been that no one is saved by perfect obedience. We are saved because God, in His mercy, acted first. That truth must remain central in any faithful gospel presentation.
The Restoration Movement emerged as a call to return to apostolic Christianity, including the desire to recover the original message of grace. This requires rejecting both the sacramentalism of Catholicism and the confessional systems of denominational Protestantism, which often overshadow the plain teaching of Scripture. Grace is not earned by human effort, nor is it exclusively accessed through priesthood or denominational hierarchy. It is God’s free initiative offered to all who will receive it.
That means grace does not eliminate human responsibility. The gospel calls for a response. Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 is a clear example: “What shall we do?” the crowd asks. Peter replies, “Repent and be baptized… for the forgiveness of your sins” (Acts 2:38). That command is not a contradiction of grace; God’s grace is the very thing that makes the invitation to obey the gospel possible.
The Spirit of God never forces obedience; He enables it. But it still requires the willing cooperation of the one who hears. As Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 6:1, “Do not receive the grace of God in vain.” That warning makes no sense if grace is irresistible. God does not override the will; He calls people to respond with their own will, and He gives them the grace to do so.
The biblical picture is simple yet profound: God initiates through the cross, the conviction of the Holy Spirit, and the truth of His Word. Humanity responds in repentance, through baptism, and by living a life of covenant faithfulness. Grace comes first, but it calls forth a life that reflects the gift received.