Articles
What It Takes to Be Saved (3): God’s Part - God’s Grace
What It Takes to Be Saved (3): God’s Part
God’s Grace
Mike Willis
The God who created the heavens and earth as a place for mankind to inhabit is a God of grace, giving to mankind what he has and never could earn. His blessings in creation impress us. Who has not stood before some awesome landscape and thought how beautiful this world is. It may be a sunrise or sunset scene, but we are amazed by its beauty. God gives us “seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night” (Gen. 8:22). God is a gracious Creator.
His grace has also given to mankind a revelation of who God is, what His nature is, and what His commandments are. Sometimes men look upon God’s commandments as a burdensome law, but the fact is that God’s commandments were given to mankind FOR HIS OWN GOOD. Moses wrote about God’s Law, “Therefore you shall keep his statutes and his commandments, which I command you today, THAT IT MAY GO WELL WITH YOU and with your children after you, and THAT YOU MAY PROLONG YOUR DAYS in the land that the LORD your God is giving you for all time” (Deut. 4:40). The gift of the Law was a gift of God’s grace. Thank God for His grace in revealing Himself to man.
God gave man His Law, but Law alone requires the punishment of those who are disobedient to God’s commandments. Unfortunately, all of us have been disobedient to God’s Law at one time or another. We have all sinned and fallen short of complete obedience (Rom. 3:23). Paul showed the sinfulness of both Jew and Gentile saying, “What then? Are we Jews any better off? No, not at all. For we have already charged that all, both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘NONE IS RIGHTEOUS, NO, NOT ONE; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one’ ” (Rom. 3:9-12). There is no possibility of man earning heaven through perfect obedience to the Law—the Mosaical Law or any other law.
God’s grace is His unmerited favor. GRACE is when God gives us what we do not deserve and MERCY is when He does not give us what we deserve. Without God’s grace and mercy mankind is doomed to eternal damnation. In an act of unmerited favor, God sent His only begotten Son to this world to save us from our sins. It was not a CHEAP GRACE—it cost God His Son and it cost Jesus dearly. Jesus graciously endured the torment of Calvary, including the suffering before the cross, for man’s salvation.
Paul emphasized man’s dependency upon God’s grace when he wrote, “And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. BUT GOD, BEING RICH IN MERCY, BECAUSE OF THE GREAT LOVE WITH WHICH HE LOVED US, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For BY GRACE YOU HAVE BEEN SAVED through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the GIFT OF GOD, not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Eph. 2:1-9).
Praise be to God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ for their grace toward mankind. Without it, no one could be saved.
