For something so central to the Gospel, grace is still the hardest thing to accept. We know the verses and sing the songs, but many Christians live as though God’s favor were earned in increments — something you can gain or lose depending on performance. Grace is supposed to be freeing, but in practice it’s often treated like a probationary period.
Philip Yancey has spent most of his career trying to undo that misunderstanding. When he first published What’s So Amazing About Grace? in 1997, the book challenged a generation of churchgoers to rediscover the scandal of unearned love. Years later, Yancey revisited it for a new audience — one that’s older, more divided and perhaps more desperate for the same message.
“The world is a much more divided and dangerous place now than it was 25 years ago,” he said. “Back then, the big story was about Bill Clinton and a White House intern. Now we’ve got wars, political extremism and an election filled with anger. But what hasn’t changed is people’s hunger to feel loved and to find solutions beyond shouting and building walls. Grace still speaks into that.”
If the word “grace” has lost its edge, it’s because we’ve sanded down what makes it so unreasonable.
“Grace isn’t about fairness,” Yancey said. “It gives the opposite of what’s deserved.”
That’s the paradox at the heart of Christianity — and the reason many find it intolerable. We’re conditioned to equate justice with symmetry, to believe effort yields reward. But grace collapses the whole system.
Yancey likes to remind readers that Jesus’ parables rarely make sense to people who value order. The obedient son in the story of the prodigal doesn’t get a feast; the faithful laborer gets paid the same as the one who clocked in late.
“Grace turns the ladder upside down,” he said.
The people who seem closest to God often aren’t, and the ones who seem disqualified might be the ones who actually get it.
That reversal is easy to preach but hard to live. Modern Christianity, especially in the West, tends to default to moral bookkeeping — a quiet hierarchy of who’s doing faith “right.” Yancey has noticed how quickly the idea of grace evaporates when belief meets difference.
“It doesn’t take much grace to be around people who look like you, think like you, vote like you,” he said. “Real grace happens when you’re with people who challenge you.”
He’s learned that lesson firsthand. As a journalist traveling the world, Yancey found himself face to face with people whose values, politics and customs upended his assumptions. Grace, he discovered, is not an abstraction but a posture. It demands humility.
“When you start with difference, you can either lean into hostility or into curiosity,” he said. “If your goal is to understand, not to win, that’s when grace grows.”
That kind of generosity feels foreign in an age of ideological purity. One recent study Yancey cites found that one in six Americans has cut off a relationship because of politics.
“That’s not what we’re called to do,” he said. “Jesus didn’t say, ‘Love those who slightly disagree with you.’ He said, ‘Love your enemies.’”
In conversation, Yancey sounds less like a theologian and more like a careful observer of human frailty. He describes how, as a journalist, he learned to listen rather than debate.
“If I start an interview by saying, ‘You’re wrong,’ the person shuts down,” he said. “But if I ask, ‘Help me understand why this matters to you,’ they open up.”
The same principle applies to our own families, churches and online interactions. We don’t have to agree; we just have to listen long enough to recognize someone’s humanity.
The church, he argues, has largely forgotten that this is what grace looks like in motion.
“Everyone around Jesus was offensive to Him,” Yancey said. “And yet, who did He spend time with? The prostitutes, the tax collectors, the outcasts. People gossiped, saying, ‘Can you believe He’s partying with sinners?’ But people wanted to be around Him. They said, ‘He has what I want.’”
In Yancey’s view, grace was never meant to reinforce boundaries; it was meant to dissolve them.
“We weren’t commissioned by Jesus to convince everyone to think like us,” he said. “We were commissioned to serve the needy and love the least desirable. Somewhere along the way, we lost that message.”
Not every church has, he’s quick to add. Many are getting it right — through prison ministries, anti-trafficking work and care for the poor.
The challenge is translating that spirit of mercy into daily life, where the people hardest to love are often the ones sitting across our dinner tables or on the other side of a social feed.
“Grace means giving the benefit, not getting the credit,” Yancey said. “It’s about receiving what you couldn’t earn and offering it to others.”
In a culture obsessed with fairness, that feels almost impossible — which is precisely the point. Grace isn’t supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to save us from the logic that keeps score.
“Grace gives the opposite of what we deserve,” Yancey said. “That’s what makes it so hard — and so divine.”
