Grace

Grace is a single-word definition of the gospel.  The gospel is the good news of God's grace to sinful mankind.  The nature of grace is giving, and the Bible tells us much more about giving than getting, because God's nature is to give.  God is a God of grace because He is a God who freely gives.  It has nothing to do with anything we have done or have failed to do; it can only be received.

God is gracious because of who He is, not because of who and what we are.  His grace is therefore unmerited, unearned, undeserved.  It depends on entirely the One who gives it, and not on those who receive it.  Grace is God's self-motivated, self-generated, sovereign act of giving.

God's grace has another dimension that places it still further above every other kind of giving.  The greatest gift of grace is self.  Grace is therefore God's Self donation, His Self giving.  He not only gives blessings to men, He gives Himself.  The incomprehensible and staggering truth of the gospel is that the holy God of the universe has given Himself to sinful mankind.  God grants us His salvation, His kingdom, His inheritance, His Spirit, His wisdom, His love, His power, His peace, His glory, and every other spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.  But far more than all of those blessings, He blesses us with His personal presence.  God owes nothing to sinful man except judgment for our sin.  He does not owe men the smallest blessing or favor.  Yet in His grace He has given us the blessing of all blessings, the immeasurable blessing of intimate shared life.  

John MacArthur