It’s the most famous line ever written about grace by an author not recorded in God’s Word: “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me.”

Every week, around the globe, it’s sung and said uncounted times, bringing joy and certainty to billions of believers. Whole lives are built on this.

But the lived reality of grace requires that we move beyond the first person voice, and grasp our role within the choir. For while grace operates for each of us as individuals, we learn it by and through and with—and for—believers Christ in grace puts near us. “And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18).

We gather grace from gracious people. We forgive as we’re forgiven. We speak kindly when we listen to kind words. We risk embracing others when we’ve found the deep security of being gripped in love.

A solo Christian is theoretically possible but practically unheard of. God has ordained that all our growth in grace comes through the community of others. We’re taught; we stretch; we struggle; we discover among the others who are also on the journey. From them we gain what no one wretch might ever know:

“Amazing grace, no sweeter words

Were ever sung by choir;

From them we learn the lovely song,

The passion, and the fire.”

Now stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Savoring the creamy richness of delectable milk chocolate.

Settling into the plush leather of a luxury car.

Dangling your feet in the stunningly blue water of a South Pacific lagoon.

What do these very different life experiences have in common? Each is richly imaged for us by adroit advertisers who correctly sense how desperately we seek relief from everyday hecticity.

We need something to break the cycle: we need a respite from the crushing stress.

But the Word of God reminds us that we manufacture most of all that pains us. “For everyone has sinned; we all fall short of God’s glorious standard” (Rom 3:23). Our essential uneasiness results from years of choosing the fleeting pleasures of this moment over the joys of God’s eternal friendship.

Is there a better answer than smooth chocolate, deep leather and Tahitian sunsets? “God, in His grace, freely makes us right in His sight. He did this through Christ Jesus when He freed us from the penalty for our sins” (Rom 3:24). “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:6).

Grace is an enduring delight because the Lord is risen. The pleasure of His freedom lasts forever.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

What is it in our restless hearts that cannot graciously receive a gift?

A friend invites us to a grand, delightful meal, and even before dessert is served, we’re busy evening the score. We fail to taste the kindly moment because we’re painfully obsessed with making certain our account with one we call a friend is “balanced”—even though it is a dinner spread and not a spreadsheet gleaming in the candlelight.

And so we say to God when He so kindly offers us eternity through what His Son has sacrificed: “That’s truly nice—and in exchange I’ll do 10,000 good, obedient things that makes it seem I’m less in Your debt, and somehow more deserving.”

Grace wounds our pride by disallowing all our offers of equivalence. There is no service we can offer God that even starts to mitigate His gift. Our prayers, our gifts, our sweat, our pain do not begin to make us anything but debtors to the kindness we’ve been given. “In this is love, not that we loved God but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 4:10).

Grace teaches us the habit of receiving what we never can repay—of reveling in it, and telling strangers just how blessed we are.

A heartfelt “thank you” is the best response when offered joy, and peace, and freedom.

Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

What makes the light of Easter last long past the hymns and lilies?

The ground beneath our feet has moved. The grim, unshaken certainties of loss and grief and toil and death have finally succumbed—and to such stunningly good news: “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive” (1 Cor.15.22).

Our muddied tale of violence and pain has yielded in a burst of light that stubbornly rejects a fade: “Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and He was raised from the dead on the third day” (1 Cor 15:3-4).

Now dawns the interrupted life—the days when joy reclaims its missing hours. The resurrected Christ insists there’ll be a better, brighter finish to our story. We dare to laugh, to stretch, to love: not all things stay just as they were.

We reach for strangers, suddenly so confident that love will win when all is done. We dance with children in the puddles: the rain we used to curse now waters our new life. The sinews of our hope grow strong, resilient—able now to bear what yesterday we feared.

The Great Disrupter has arisen, and He is making all things new.

So rise and walk—and stay in grace. -Bill Knott

In the blackness of Sunday morning, the prodigal opened His eyes and murmured softly, “I will arise and go to my Father, and will say to Him, ‘Father, I have borne the sins of every human who has ever lived. I am worthy to be called your Son.’”

And a reunion postponed for 33 years split the midnight of our world. Out of wretchedness came joy. Out of brokenness came healing. Love triumphed over death. Grace reclaimed what sin had stolen. The Liberator came back to life.

Then the voices of a billion angels shook the galaxies and stars: “Worthy is the Lamb who was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honor and glory and blessing!” (Rev 5:12).

That’s why we sing the story of the resurrection every time we can. This is the truth that underlines our certainty: “He was handed over to die because of our sins, and He was raised to life to make us right with God” (Rom 4:25).

This stone-cold planet, rife with death, smothered in pain and gasping for life, is not our destination: “’For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future’”(Jer 29:11).

Your future began with the resurrection of Jesus. Grace declares His victory can be yours.

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Left to ourselves, what we know of forgiveness would soon disappear. Left to ourselves, acts of mercy would soon drown in the ocean of self-centeredness. Left to ourselves, what light and warmth still shines in our communities would soon go dark. Why help a neighbor, when he is just one more competitor for dwindling resources?

But the good news is that we are never left to ourselves. Into this dark, unforgiving environment, where greed ran rampant and trust had disappeared, God shared His best—His Son. “And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).

He forgave, and so we slowly learned to forgive. He lifted up broken, wounded people, and in His name, millions of suffering people every day receive care. In the midnight of our anger and self-interest, His grace radiates clarity and power. “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:5).

Grace is the counterweight to the mass of ruin we have brought upon ourselves. One life of love outweighs the world. And the story of His sacrifice to save us and restore the light sings louder than the raging headlines of the day. “For God was in Christ, reconciling the world to Himself, no longer counting people’s sins against them. And He gave us this wonderful message of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19).

Invite the light of grace into your world.

And stay in it. -Bill Knott

A gospel song from long ago gathered the hope of millions into a yearning vision of peace: 

“Someday, a bright new wave

Will break upon the shore; 

And there'll be no sickness

No more sorrow, no more war;

And little children

Never will go hungry any more . . .”

That bright new world hasn’t yet arrived. The headlines rage. The nations totter. Famished children in refugee camps wait for promised bread and water. 

But for believers in Jesus, our reality has already begun to change, even as we long for the day when God will make all things new. The greatest shift in history has already happened: “For He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of His dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins” (Col 1:13-14). 

That bright new world arrives as, one by one, we accept the grace of Jesus, and then pick up His work in this world—healing; comforting; peacemaking; embracing displaced, frightened kids. 

“So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day” (2 Cor 4:16).

The greatest change is a change of heart. Yours can begin today. 

Then stay in grace. -Bill Knott

It never was a straight-line thing, this love we call the grace of God. It circles and surrounds, embraces and includes, until the throngs that praise God’s name are far too vast to count. 

In grace, Jesus forgives me. With gratitude, I offer you forgiveness. Because you have been liberated, you pass that grace to one who has offended you. And he in turn, when I offend him, offers me forgiveness. “Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you” (Eph 4:32). 

So grace begins with us as individuals, but never rests until communities are built that flourish with forgiveness. Have you been freed? Then free another. Has God in kindness humbled you? Then serve your neighbors with humility. Have you learned to sing “Amazing Grace”? Then teach it—all four parts for harmony—until a chorus of redemption rises from this broken, fragile world. 

Grace isn’t grace if it stops moving, turning, changing lives. When it is blocked; when mercy slows; when forgiveness is extended only to the ones we deem as worthy, the Spirit cannot heal the world, and we sink back into that pinched and parched existence we once knew. 

But when we offer what’s been offered us, the river flows; the fields yield; and resurrected life will blossom everywhere. 

Keep passing it along. 

And stay in grace. -Bill Knott

Those the world calls saints weren’t typically the brittle, stained-glass figures of our pious imagination. The reason their stories are still told is that they trusted God more fully, accepted His freely-offered love, and opened their lives profoundly to His grace. 

Their story can be yours as well, for the Bible calls every believer in Christ a “saint.” The apostle Paul interceded for every man or woman who has ever trusted the grace of Jesus: “I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge” (Eph 3:18-19).

Your behavior may be far from perfect. Your faith may waver in the tough moments. Your heart may tell you that God is far away and usually unhappy with you, but “God is greater than our hearts, and He knows everything” (1 John 3:20). 

The best news is that grace changes everyone who trusts in Jesus into a saint. You are defined, not by how well you love God, but how deeply He loves you. Your value is determined, not by what you give or how heroically you serve, but by the price heaven paid to rescue you, and make you a saint. 

So stay in grace. -Bill Knott

We can’t make ourselves more loveable to God by years of good behavior. And yet, because of grace, we seek to do what pleases Him.

We can’t earn even half an hour in heaven by acts of sympathy or kindness. And yet, because of grace, we spend unnumbered hours caring for the least of all His little ones.

Those shining moments when we sometimes rise to our potential don’t make us even one bit more beloved by God. His love for us cannot be amplified, expanded, or improved.

Grace cancels everything we think we’ve earned, and makes us utterly rely on everything God gives us. It is the end of all our goodness, and the place where faith begins.

Abandon hope in all you’ve done, but deeply trust what God has done.

And stay in grace. Bill Knott