Perhaps the most well-known Bible verse is John 3:16. There we hear about how much God loves the whole world. This verse also shows us that there are multiple layers of God's grace. The first one I want to talk about today is God's general grace.
As I talk about the word grace, I'm going by the meaning of undeserved love and favor. There is a general sense in which this grace from God applies to everyone in the world. God loves the world. It isn't that the world is filled with a bunch of lovable people, but that God looks beyond our sinfulness and shows His love to us. This general grace comes out in several ways.
Martin Luther explained the first part of the Apostles' Creed (a brief explanation of what Christians believe from the Bible) in this way. "I believe God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have." This describes a general sense of grace, in which God gives all people everything that they need for life in this world.
This grace is shown to the world because God truly loves everything that He has made. He sends rain down, and it falls upon the wicked and the righteous. He makes His sun to shine, and it covers the whole earth, regardless of the faith and belief of each person upon whom it falls. In this way, we see that God has a general sense of grace which He shows to the people of the world.
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