Traditional teaching on grace often highlights our unworthiness, God’s amazing unconditional love and mercy, and Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. While central, this view can leave grace abstract, focused on our sinfulness and unworthiness, with a subtle implication that we must change before truly experiencing it. Yet Scripture reveals another side of grace besides being God’s undeserving favor towards us. He wanted us to grasp the important truth that we can be lovable, desired, enjoyed, and valued even when we are broken, imperfect, rebellious, or sinful. As Paul writes, “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). Jesus embodied this when he sought out sinners, welcomed them into a relationship as they were not as they should be. He taught this in the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where the father embraced and celebrated his son before any confession was made. Grace is not simply pardon—it is God demonstrating, unconditional love involves loving people when they are imperfect or broken. ’
Grace Heals Shame
In human relationships, we often learn the opposite lesson: we are desired and enjoyed only if we succeed, behave, or hide our flaws. Families, workplaces, and even churches may withdraw affection when we are mediocre, make a mistake, fail, show weakness, or sin. This creates and fuels shame—the haunting sense that we are unworthy of connection. Grace shatters this cycle. When experienced relationally, not just intellectually, grace replaces alienation with belonging, criticism with delight, and judgment with intimacy. Forgiveness is not only canceling debt; it is restoring closeness where shame once expected rejection. Teaching you how to love a person deeply with their flaws.
Biblical Examples
Jesus rarely offered grace as an abstract doctrine. He offered grace through his presence and relational experiences more than through pronouncements or exposing their sin to demonstrate why they needed to change. In his interaction with the Woman at the Well (John 4), Jesus named her brokenness not to condemn but to show he knew her fully and still desired closeness, enjoyed her company, and valued her deeply. S Paul captured the same movement of grace: from “wretched man” (Rom 7:24) to “no condemnation” (Rom 8:1). Grace is never merely about cleaning up our past; it is God’s loving embrace in the present, even with sin and imperfection still in view.
The Neurological Foundation of Grace
Breakthroughs in neuroscience deepen this picture. Neuroscientists discovered in the late 1990s what has always been there in Scripture: our brains are shaped most powerfully by relational experiences saturated with emotion. This was a paradigm shift from the traditional view that our brains are guided by reason and changed by new insights or behaviors.
Moreover, the most significant discovery was that emotional memory is not fixed (i.e., neuroplasticity) but malleable through memory reconsolidation—a God-designed process allowing entrenched emotional learnings to be erased or rewritten when paired with a new, disconfirming relational experience. In other words, when painful memories are reactivated in the presence of love and acceptance, the brain literally rewires. Old shame-based neural pathways dissolve, replaced with the feelings of safety and worth that flow from the new relational experience. March (2024, p. 1) states, “When the conditions for memory reconsolidation are met, existing emotional learnings can be either erased or edited. Memories of what happened don’t change, but the emotional meaning of what happened does change. When existing emotional responses are erased or edited, they can no longer be triggered, leading to effortless and sustained transformation.” Ecker et al. (2012, 14) point out that “There is no other process or type of neuroplasticity known to neuroscience that eliminates emotional learning down to the neural roots.
This new relational experience is known as a corrective relational experience, which is the most effective way to leverage memory reconsolidation and facilitate it in others. It is the practical embodiment of grace in our relationships. We offer a relational experience that diverges significantly from past experiences, which were often judgmental, distancing, or marked by sinful and demeaning acts.
Theologically, Jesus’ death and resurrection embody the ultimate corrective relational experience: in the moment of our deepest sin and alienation, God did not withdraw but drew near and redeemed us with warmth, love, very different than what we expected or were given by past relationships. Neurologically, the Spirit continues this corrective relational experience, confirming we are God’s beloved children as we experience Him as “Abba, Father” (Romans 8:15-17). Grace, then, is not only a theological doctrine but a neurological reality—hardwired into the very fabric of our brains—neurological grace!
This is the “other side of grace.” Instead of experiencing Christ’s death and resurrection as confirmation that we were bad, unworthy, and lucky that God was so loving, we experience that we are lovable, enjoyed, and valued even in the midst of brokenness and sin. We can then allow this principle to pervade the rest of our relationships, which would reduce and eliminate the shame we experience. We would also strive to love others in this grace-filled way. Loving them when they are imperfect.
Neurological Grace in the Family of God
N. T. Wright reminds us that salvation is not only personal but communal: through the cross, we are “vindicated as members of God’s true covenant family” (2016, p. 384). Grace, then, must be embodied not only in our relationship with God but also with others. John states it plainly: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us” (1 John 4:12).
The church is meant to be this family of grace—a community where forgiveness is lived out as people draw near in one another’s failure, weakness, or rebellion. Each act of acceptance becomes a living CRE, echoing the father’s embrace of the prodigal. These relational encounters do more than soothe; they rewire shame into belonging, renewing the mind (Rom 12:2) not just cognitively but neurologically. In this way, the church is not primarily a lecture hall or performance venue but a relational body where grace is practiced and made tangible.
The Church as a Relational Family of Grace
But there is still another very important aspect to grace. N. T. Wright (2016) expands our understanding of Jesus’ death and resurrection, bringing in the communal and covenantal piece. Salvation “is about being declared to be in the right—marked out, vindicated—as a member of God’s true covenant family” (p. 384). We are reconciled not just to him but to human relationships and now belong to an intimate, grace-filled family. This deepens our experience of God’s grace because he designed our brains to be relational. We need to experience grace not just from him but from relationships. John states it plainly: “No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete (mature) in us” (I John 4:12). In other words, because we don’t see God, we need to experience how much he loves us through the love of others (much like the underlying principle behind Incarnation). When we experience love from others, that experience of being loved allows us to more fully experience God’s love inside of us. We can only experience God’s love toward us to the depth we have experienced love from another person. This then opens us up to more of God’s love, which increases our love for others. Here is a paraphrase of John’s further explanation of how this cycle works later in the chapter. “This is how love is made complete among us as the body of Christ… There is no fear or shame as you love each other this way. Mature love drives out fear and shame, because they have to do with punishment and a drawing away from the relationship. It is difficult to be mature in love with shame and fear. We love because we experience God’s love through others, which in turn makes us love others more deeply. Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister” (I John 4:17-20).
This is why God created the church. The church is meant to be this family of grace—a community where forgiveness is lived out as people draw near in one another’s failure, weakness, or rebellion. Each act of acceptance becomes a living corrective relational experience, echoing the father’s embrace of the prodigal son (Luke 15). These relational encounters do more than soothe; they rewire shame into belonging, renewing the mind (Rom 12:2) not just spiritually but neurologically. This is why Paul can call us a “new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17). Our brains are changed not only spiritually but physically, and with corrective relational experiences from the church, we are emotionally changed in ways that last.
In this way, the church is not primarily a lecture hall focused on learning Scriptural principles or a worship event focused mainly on God’s character. The primary reason we were “called out” (ekklesia) of the world and into a relational community. Sunday mornings should be filled with opportunities for relational experiences with each other, where grace is practiced and made tangible. Of course, it will also involve Bible study, worship, and prayer. But these grace-filled relationships will change those shameful experiences we all have. This in turn strengthens us so we can be the “light and salt” (Matthew 5:13-16) of the earth in redeeming his creation as we establish “on earth as it is in heaven” (Jesus’ prayer, Matthew 6:9-13), one relationship at a time.
Conclusion
The true emphasis of grace and forgiveness is not on our unworthiness but on God’s unwavering nearness in the midst of it. Grace declares that we are lovable while still imperfect. Forgiveness restores intimacy where shame anticipated rejection. Theologically, this is reconciliation into God’s covenant family. Neurologically, it is memory reconsolidation—God’s wiring of neurological grace into the brain so that love replaces shame at its roots.
Grace is more than pardon; it is transformation. It rewires our brains, reshapes our stories, and anchors our identity in the unshakable love of God and his people. To live in grace is to know—not just cognitively but experientially—that we are embraced, delighted in, and desired, even while broken. That is the other side of grace.
References
Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating symptoms at their roots using memory reconsolidation. Routledge.
March, S. A. (2021). The neuroscience of enduring transformation: Integrating memory reconsolidation in developmental coaching as illustrated in Aletheia Coaching. The Future of Coaching, (26), 1–32.
Wright, N. T. (2016). The day the revolution began: Reconsidering the meaning of Jesus’s crucifixion. HarperOne.
