The Bible Study Podcast, episode 45. This is the fourth episode on the church, what it is and what it's called to be.

This episode will focus on grace and mercy.

Welcome to the Bible Study podcast. I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

I'm titling this episode, The Church is called to be Grace Full and Mercy Full.

I'm not sure that there will be new information in this episode for a lot of people. But I'm surprised how many Christians

hear the words grace and mercy and don't know how they relate. I'm surprised at how many people

think that grace is that prayer we say before meals, which is not how it's used in the Bible,

even though it's used fairly constantly.

Grace is something in particular that comes up quite a lot. Try going to Biblegateway.com,

which is what I use when I'm looking for online Bible, pick your favorite version, and then

search for the word grace. And you might be surprised just how many

times that phrase gets used. Sometimes it's used as a greeting, grace and peace to you from God,

our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Sometimes it's in verses that are fairly central

to a biblical-centered Christianity, which is things like,

for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by His grace

through the redemption that came by Jesus Christ.

But just what is grace?

Grace and mercy are related words, and mercy we usually define as being when we don't get

the punishment that we deserve. So when we don't get something bad that we deserve.

And grace is the opposite of that. It's when we do get something good that we don't deserve.

Some Christians use the phrase God's riches at Christ's expense

as a way of remembering what grace means. And certainly the Bible says in many different places

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