Barry L. Callen has given Fleming Services written permission to publish this book in digital formats.God’s gracious love for us humans is our only hope of salvation. The sheer wonder of this biblically revealed truth of who God is and what God has and is doing on our behalf moves us to poetry, parable, praise, and song.Two of Jesus’ parables are especially dramatic in teaching us about the character of God. One, the story of the laborers in the vineyard (Matt. 20:1-16), is clear about the Jewish view of God as loving grace. Is God like an employer who pays a wage? Is he like someone who holds a gun to a person’s head demanding certain actions or else? The parable beautifully portrays the grace of God, “a concept so integral to Jewish thought during the time of Jesus and yet very difficult to grasp.” The other parable is about the compassionate Father and his two lost sons (Lk. 15:11-32). The Father allows his sons to take premature advantage of their inheritance, victimizing the father who allows freedom of choice to the sons despite the related vulnerability to the father, the rightful owner of all. Jesus is drawing a vivid story-picture of God. God also loves, risks, suffers, sacrifices, and finally welcomes home with a loving grace wholly undeserved.Thinking biblically, divine grace is known through the history of its disclosure. We know God as loving grace because of the graceful way God has demonstrated love along the troubled road of our human history. The reality of grace “precedes and conditions every discrete Christian inquiry into the meanings of creation, redemption, and consummation. Grace is presupposed in every serious call to repentance, faith, new birth, and holy living.” Grace is the rich soil in which we are enabled to participate in any redeemed future. It makes possible a proper understanding of God. The pattern of loving initiatives taken by God inspires our realization that such love, such grace, is central to the very being of God.(From the Preface)