As Christians learn to live according the riches of God’s grace towards us in Christ, there will certainly come opportunities to share His grace with others through word and deed. God does not intend His grace towards us to terminate on us. Rather, God means for His grace to bless us and flow through us towards others. The Apostle Paul explains this in 2 Corinthians 9:8-11:

⁸ And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work. ⁹ As it is written, “He has distributed freely, he has given to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” ¹⁰ He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness. ¹¹ You will be enriched in every way to be generous in every way, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God.

God makes his grace abound to us so that we may abound in every good work. This is a theme throughout the Bible – God blesses his people so that they might be a blessing. God is generous towards us that we might be generous. God is gracious towards us that we might be gracious. As we learn to discipline ourselves to rely on God’s grace, we will increasingly experience God’s grace flowing out of us towards others. This grace is the motivation behind Christian mission.

But not only does God’s grace fuel and motivate our mission of loving others and making disciples. The mission of loving others and making disciples leads us back to relying on God’s grace! As we step out in faith to perform the good works God’s grace has motivated us to perform, we quickly find ourselves in need of more grace and dependent on Jesus once again. Mission is not only the result of God’s grace towards us, but mission is a discipline Christians practice that reminds us of and leads us back to our need for God’s grace! We cannot rightly love our neighbor and make disciples apart from the empowering grace of God in our lives. As the author of Hebrews wrote,

“Now may the God of peace who brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, equip you with everything good that you may do his will, working in us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Hebrews 13:20,21).”