Two Simple Words PDF Print E-mail

 

 

Article: by Jim Alexander

I hope I can convey to you in this the essence of what I caught from two simple words and if I do, I believe it will help you in understanding how marvelous our God is with respect to grace and what you may need to know about God’s Grace in order to help bring others into the Kingdom of God with the gospel of grace.

I’ve learned from writing this that God’s Grace is simple, but not as simple as it sounds when you try to ‘pen it down”.

How would you define ‘God’s Grace’?

Think about it. Just two small, simple words, yet what massive building blocks they become in the foundation of our salvation. The more I’ve examined God’s Grace in writing this, the bigger the article has become and I realize how much more I will learn about the subject. What started out as one article has rapidly become three separate ones and that seems to epitomize grace; it expands slowly into our consciousness being resisted continually by our human point of view, and it is a much larger part of our salvation than it appears to be.

Online, I’ve read at many sites God’s Grace is defined in its short form by two words: unmerited, and favour.

Two very simple words that fit well with what struck, and stuck with me a few years ago about the definition of grace, but trying to keep the word count down in this article is not quite so simple.

This age we live in is called the ‘Age of Grace’... where God’s grace... his favour... is on everyone and they don’t have to do anything to ‘merit’ it. And most people, Christians like me included, don’t totally get it; God’s Grace is unmerited favour.

If you are uncomfortable with any part of this application of God’s Grace and find yourself disagreeing with this statement, you may be in for a rocky ride over the next few paragraphs. Can’t say this was any less bumpy for me, other than it took me a few years, but hitting bumps while travelling at a snail’s pace was easier on me, that’s for sure.
What an amazing thing God’s Grace is; amazing because it’s so contrary to our human form of grace. In most situations, human grace always comes at a price that we fully expect to pay. If it’s free, well, that’s just too good to be true. Chances are that’s how we comprehend God’s Grace, that it’s just too good to be true, so we reshape from a human perspective and call it grace when the form we’ve reshaped it into is actually religion.
But let’s say we accept as true that God’s Grace is totally free. What then? What good is God’s Grace when it comes to, say, obtaining eternal life? And as for getting to live forever in a wonderful place, what, pray tell, does one have to do for this if you can’t do anything to merit it according to Ephesians 2, verses 8 & 9?
I’ve asked myself this question many times and didn’t really know the answer even though I had acted on God’s Grace and received the assurance of eternal life at salvation 34 years ago! Even over a coffee with a friend a few weeks ago I found myself still getting analytical searching for what exactly it is you do for salvation without doing anything for it.
This is an age-old question of fundamental importance to evangelism. How far along the road to salvation does God’s Grace bring someone before they hear the gospel and will their spirit live on forever in heaven after the mortal death and decay of their physical body simply because they were born in the Age of Grace? Is salvation, in other words, automatic with God’s Grace?
Any evangelical will answer with an immediate “No!”, but I’ll leave that question for another article.
Perhaps we can get an up close look at grace in order to resolve some of this and avoid some common pitfalls of the subject.
Unknown to their own children, the vast majority of parents have a very natural grace for their kids, and that is perhaps the closest to God’s Grace. Lovers in love approach that grace for each other as well, as long as love is flowing uninterrupted.
This kind of human grace is useful for staying in a relationship we want to keep when we accidentally do something to mess it up. It enables us to stand before this special person with whom we want to maintain a relationship and ask for forgiveness, and, to be brutally honest we know we will be forgiven because of the grace we have from this person because there is some kind of merit mixed in.
Getting more to my point about merit, quite a few years ago I took notice in a particular way of the merit prizes that my children would earn in school if they could recite what they had learned or if they had behaved correctly; what they learned and could prove they learned by reciting or by examination, merited a reward. Also, how they behaved merited a reward of a tangible prize of some kind. My memory of it is vague now, however, it was defining for me for the word ‘merit’ in this application of grace.
Sometime later, by way of that merit prize system, I was able to see some of God’s Grace from a slightly different perspective. I’m not knocking the merit award system, as it was back then. I think it had value. However, my fresh new insight about God’s Grace that was gained by way of that old merit system was mainly what grace was not about: (get ready for that word again) merit.
Contrary to the merit prizes my children earned, God’s Grace, or unmerited favour is not a result of what I obediently learn nor is it as a result of good behavior.
If you are uncertain of the truth of what I just wrote, read in Ephesians 2:8, 9: “8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.”
Romans 5:8 also speaks to behavior that is unmerited: “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Still not certain that this good news could be so good? Try the New International Version of those two references.
Coupled with Ephesians 2, 8 & 9 above, which I had read countless times before, and my new understanding of ‘unmerited’, an invasion of my intellectual storage dump of facts began to take place: facts I would use to argue points for the flood, the age of the earth, evolution being erroneous. Fact after fact I thought was crucial to salvation was slowly being downgraded to trivia when it came to ‘unmerited favour’.
Eventually I lost the argument with God and my arsenal of salvation ‘trivia’ goodies was moved for more effective use elsewhere.
So often I had gotten myself into a difficult argument with an unsaved person I was trying to reach with the gospel yet I did not understand the key stone of God’s Grace, even though I had received it. It was mind-boggling to me that no merit points would be awarded for what any person believed or did not believe about, say, evolution, or the age of the earth, the age of the universe, the flood, the virgin birth, homosexuality, common law living, and even what they believed or did not believe about God. Astoundingly, if it was faith they possessed that was going to result in eternal life, it was a gift from God. It could not be theirs.
I was asked once when telling a person about the gospel “So does that mean I don’t even have to believe in God to go to heaven?”
I had said that the gospel is all about living forever in a wonderful place, and you don’t have to do anything, nor can you do anything to earn it. You just have to acquiesce, or go along with what God says about Jesus since even believing isn’t something we can take credit for.
I wondered at the heresy I was preaching that sparked that question, and my subsequent answer, “Well, technically speaking, no, you don’t have to believe in God, since you can’t take credit for the faith it takes to believe. It is not your own faith, it’s a gift, as it says in Ephesians 2, 8 & 9.”
It was a bit of a difficult situation, and the question could have been better answered. However, if there is no belief in God in the prospect for salvation, is the gift of faith of Ephesians 2 not in full operation, or is it being blocked by unbelief? I don’t know. Bottom line, though, no merit points added or subtracted for what you believe. Therefore, conversely, holding to any kind of knowledge, although it might block the working of the gift of faith, if that’s possible, would not result in any lack concerning God’s Grace. How could it without ending in some kind of merit? In other words, if salvation were conditional on you not believing in, say, evolution, then unbelieving it would ultimately be a form of merit.
On the upside of this ‘no merit for knowledge or lack of it’, you can avoid arguments on what the prospect of your evangelical attempts might get you into. If you’re tired of debating evolution, abortion, the age of the earth, and on and on, you should find relief with what I’ve detailed here. Since the gospel is not about what you believe, it’s about unmerited favour, you can tell that to your salvation prospect every time they bring up any of those subjects, perhaps hoping to bait you. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation, as it says in Romans, so just let ‘em have more of it! It’s all good!
I mean, really, when you are at the point where you’re about to assist someone through the salvation door, does it really help them or hinder them when you allow yourself to get into a side debate that does not relate to their acceptance by God through Grace? I like a good debate, but why argue about something if it doesn’t really matter anyway and when it impacts negatively on a salvation decision, especially when God will set you straight on all of that once you’re saved and desiring to serve the Lord and follow him? For now, help them over that hurdle with the simplicity and the good news of the gospel.
They will receive the gift of faith to believe what they need to believe at salvation, and if they respond to your gospel message with, “What about the biblical flood? Do I have to believe that?” you can use this as an opportunity to repeat to them the gospel, the good news about unmerited favour, and that trying to believe in the flood as a condition of salvation would be construed as merit. That should be good news to them. To an unsaved person who is searching, finding out they will live forever but not because they’re forced into believing something they just can’t accept for now is very good news.
Once the Lord is working on the inside, there will be far more changes in them than just believing what is impossible to believe; changes that will be even more impossible for you to make in them, so why would you try?
One of the very first changes that happened in me was to quit using the Lord’s name like I had been using it. I could swear like a trooper because I had learned the language of a trooper from a trooper. I would not have had time for anyone who told me I had to stop swearing on their account, let alone on Jesus’ account. So why do we think we can change people who have not even been through the salvation doors?
Back to grace, according to Ephesians 2, 8 & 9, the gift of faith which allows them to believe and thereby to take the step into the kingdom, does not necessarily give them the faith to believe everything you have come to believe. That kind of faith grows as you cultivate it just as a mustard seed, which starts out as a very tiny seed, but once it’s planted, grows into a giant tree, as Mark 4:32 says, able to provide shade and for a home for birds; it’s useful and practical, in other words.
My understanding of grace, as small as it is, helps me with the planting process avoiding salvation discussions that won’t help get the planting job done.
If you feel it’s time for a headache remedy because of the bumps you’ve taken, I’m with you on that.
If you’re still with me once you get back from the medicine chest, in another episode we’ll look at more of God’s Grace when it comes to finding a way of helping someone into salvation.

 

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Note:  You will see articles like this on a regular basis.  These articles are submitted by the congregation.  Hope you not only enjoy them but prayerfully consider what God is saying through them.