GRACE
It may seem that an emphasis on abandoning our own passions, desires and goals in order to serve the true God is a way of earning salvation by our own effort. This is not true at all. Repentance means that we quit trying to save ourselves. We realize that we are unable to free ourselves from sin. Romans 7:14-19 says, “We know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . . For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. . . . but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”
Paul in Ephesians 2:1-10 explains who it is that saves us. As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath. But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved. And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast. For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.”
Salvation is not dependent upon our own meritorious work, but on what Jesus has done for us. Jesus did and does for us what we cannot do for ourselves. “All of our righteous acts are like filthy rags,” Isaiah says (64:6). “There is no one who does good, not even one” (Psalm 14:3; Romans 3:10). “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). We are unable to adequately obey God, and we are unable to atone for our sins. In fact, all of our efforts to pay for the damage that we have inflicted does not restore the situation to what it was before our sin. Suppose that we swindled a large amount of money, got caught and then promised to pay it all back. Even if we could pay the money back, how can we pay for the effort of investigation that led to our apprehension? How can we restore that trust that once existed? We’ve failed and we fail in our payment.
I like to quickly summarize the work of Christ in saving us. He obeyed for us, he died for us, he rose from death and earned eternal life for us, he ascended to heaven where he intercedes for us, and he will return to raise from death and take us to himself.
First, he obeyed God perfectly. Adam, the father of mankind, sinned and as a consequence brought death into the world. We also inherited from him a sinful nature (Romans 5:12). However, it is through the obedience of Christ that we are made right with God through faith in Christ, this all by the grace of God (Romans 5:17-19). Jesus said, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he and that I do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me” (John 8:28). He also said, “Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father” (John 37-38). And in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus prayed, “Abba, Father, . . . everything is possible for you. Take this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will” (Mark 14:36).
Second, Jesus by his death is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the whole world (1 John 2:2). God made him who was perfectly sinless, to be accounted as a sin offering (2 Corinthians 5:21) so that God might be reconciled with us, not charging our sins against us (2 Corinthians 5:19). Or, as Isaiah prophesied, “Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering, yet we considered him punished by God, stricken by him, and afflicted. But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed. . . . The Lord laid on him the iniquity of us all.” (53:4-6).
Thirdly, Jesus rose from death to earn eternal life for us. “By his power God raised the Lord from the dead, and he will raise us also” (1 Corinthians 6:14). “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him” (I Corinthians 15:22-23). “Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body” (Philippians 3:20,21). And as John writes in his First Epistle, “But we know that when Christ appears, we shall be like him for we shall see him as he is” (3:2).
Fourthly, in heaven Jesus intercedes for us. At God’s right hand He prays for us so that the condemnation of Satan and our sin is null and void (Romans 8:34), just as he prayed for Peter while on earth, “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers” (Luke 22:31,32), he also prays for us in heaven.
Lastly, Jesus will return from heaven, and raise us up from death to be with him forever. “For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. After that, we who are still alive and are left, will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And so we will be with the Lord forever” (1 Thessalonians 4:16, 17). See also 1 Corinthians 15:50-57. And it will be at this time that he will judge the living and the dead (2 Timothy 4:1; Revelation 20:12) ourselves included (2 Corinthians 5:16), and cast out Satan (Revelation 20:10) and all of his followers (Matthew 25:31-46; Revelation 20:15).
If we think of repentance as a work of merit, we have missed the point of grace. Repentance, the change of heart and mind, does not earn salvation. If we are honest, even our repentance is often partial, tentative and limited to our cloudy thinking. Repentance means that we have come to a place where we understand that we cannot save ourselves and that Jesus accomplished for us everything that was necessary to be accepted by God. Paul wrote that “confidence in the flesh,” the rite of circumcision, membership in the family of Israel, and righteousness based upon the law is nothing. He wrote, “I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ” (Philippians 3:8-9). He wrote that exercising the gift of tongues, prophesying, and giving all of one’s possession to the poor earn us nothing (1 Corinthians 13:1-3). By living in the love of God and letting his loving be revealed in the way we think and act is to live by grace. Our salvation is completely earned for us by Christ and is received by the grace of God through faith in Christ.
Even our evangelizing, telling others about the love of God and the judgment to come is not a meritorious deed that earns eternal life. We are not to boast that “even the demons submit to us” in Jesus’ name (Luke 10:17), but that our “names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20), something that is a gift of God earned for us by Christ.
To waken the soul to hear and understand is a supernatural act of the Holy Spirit. God may use our words, but they are only one of the things that he uses to touch the consciousness of sin, and quicken the sense of helplessness that calls out for help. We speak to the dead. They cannot hear. It is God who gives them life in order to hear and to act. Ezekiel wrote God’s message, “I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. 26 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. 27 And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws” (Ezekiel 36:25-27). The Apostle Paul wrote, “The Spirit searches all things, even the deep things of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except their own spirit within them? In the same way no one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. What we have received is not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may understand what God has freely given us. This is what we speak, not in words taught us by human wisdom but in words taught by the Spirit, explaining spiritual realities with Spirit-taught words. The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:10-14).
We cannot change the heart. It is our task to bear witness to the truth, and then allow the Spirit of God to apply that truth to our listener how and when he wills. I’ve noticed that God works in such a way that He gets the credit and not us. New converts don’t like it if we boast about them as the fruit of our labor. They know that it wasn’t us, but God. If we boast, it hinders rather than helps the conversion process.
It is well to remind ourselves of the words of Jesus, “So you also, when you have done everything you were told to do, should say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done our duty’” (Luke 17:10).