In modern Western thought, the ideal or perfect gift is often understood as one given without any expectation of reciprocity. A similar tendency appears in Protestant theology—especially within the Lutheran tradition—where divine grace is frequently interpreted as a unilateral "free gift." By contrast, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss argued that gift exchange in many societies entails an obligation to reciprocate, since the gift carries something of the giver and thus places the recipient in a relation of indebtedness. This paper explores how these contrasting understandings of gift relate to theological interpretations of grace and their ecological implications. I argue that construing grace as purely unilateral may reinforce a notion of humans (as well as nonhuman creatures) as passive receivers of divine generosity, without reciprocal responsibility toward the rest of creation. Reframing grace in terms of reciprocal gift relations, by contrast, can illuminate ecological responsibility as a form of "returning the gift" of creation, while maintaining the transcendence of the Creator.