 
## Grace  
Is There a Limit to God's Mercy?

###### Copyright 2015 Grace Communion International

###### Scripture quotations, unless noted, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®. Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com The "NIV" and "New International Version" are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.™

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Table of Contents

Grace

Grace and Truth

God's Grace

Grace From First to Last

The Best Story of All: The Gospel

East From West

Is Grace Too Good to Be True?

Responding to God's Grace in Our Relationships

Do Grace and Law Conflict?

Embrace the Grace

Grace Is Not a Supplement

Grace Rules!

The Logic of Grace

Mulholland and the Grace of God

Growing in Grace and Truth

Peanuts and Grace

What Grace Teaches

Salvation by Grace

From Guilt to Grace: Romans 3

Grace and Peace: Ephesians 2

Making Grace Look Good: Titus 2

Grace and Discipline

Grace and Obedience

Too Much Grace?

Afraid of God?

Lopsided Grace

Grace to Be Who You Are

Grace: A License to Sin?

Grace to the Gluttons

Grace: An E-Ticket Ride

The Divine Grace in Christ: Ephesians 2:1-10

Grace: An Interview With Robert Capon

Grace Leads to Godly Living: An Interview With Alan Torrance

The Grace of the Finished Work of Christ: An Interview With David Torrance

John McLeod Campbell and Grace: An Interview With Daniel Thimell

The Grace Walk: An Interview With Steve McVey

We Will Never Overestimate God's Grace: An Interview With Steve McVey

About the Authors...

About the Publisher...

Grace Communion Seminary

Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

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## Grace

"If righteousness could be gained through the law," Paul wrote, "Christ died for nothing!" (Galatians 2:21). The only alternative, he says in this same verse, is "the grace of God." We are saved by grace, not by keeping the law.

These are alternatives that cannot be combined. We are not saved by grace plus works, but by grace alone. Paul makes it clear that we must choose either one or another. "Both" is not an option (Romans 11:6). "If the inheritance depends on the law, then it no longer depends on a promise; but God in his grace gave it to Abraham through a promise" (Galatians 3:18). Salvation does not depend on the law, but on God's grace.

"If a law had been given that could impart life, then righteousness would certainly have come by the law" (verse 21). If there could be any way that rule-keeping could lead to eternal life, then God would have saved us with the law. But it wasn't possible. The law cannot save anyone.

God wants us to have good behavior. He wants us to love others and by doing that, to fulfill the law. But he does not want us to ever think that our works are a reason for our salvation. His provision of grace implies that he has always known that we would never be "good enough" despite our best efforts. If our works contributed to our salvation, then we would have something to boast about. But God designed his plan of salvation in such a way that we cannot take any credit for saving ourselves (Ephesians 2:8-9). We can never claim to deserve anything; we can never claim that God owes us anything.

This goes to the heart of the Christian faith, and it makes Christianity unique. Other religions say that people can be good enough if they try hard enough. Christianity says that we cannot be good enough; we need grace.

On our own, we will never be good enough, and because of that, other religions are not good enough. The only way we can be saved is through the grace of God. We can never deserve to live forever, so the only way we can be given eternal life is for God to give us something that we don't deserve. This is what Paul is driving at when he uses the word _grace._ Salvation is a gift of God, something that we could never earn with even a thousand years of the law.

### Jesus and mercy

"The law was given through Moses," John writes. "Grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17). John saw a contrast between the law and grace, between what we do and what we are given.

Nevertheless, Jesus didn't use the word _grace._ But his entire life was an example of grace, and his parables illustrated grace. He sometimes used the word _mercy_ to describe what God gives us. "Blessed are the merciful," he said, "for they will be shown mercy" (Matthew 5:7). In this, he implied that we all need mercy. He noted here that we should be like God in this respect. If we value God's grace to us, we will give grace to others.

Later, when Jesus was asked why he associated with notorious sinners, he told people, "Go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'" (Matthew 9:13, quoting Hosea 6:6). In other words, God wants us to show mercy more than he wants us to be perfectionists in law-keeping.

We do not want people to sin. But since we inevitably make mistakes, we need mercy. That is true of our relationships with one another, and true of our relationships with God, too. God wants us to know our need for mercy, and for us to have mercy toward others. Jesus gave us an example of this by the way he lived, when he ate with tax collectors and talked with sinners—he was showing by his behavior that God wants fellowship with us all, and he has taken all our sins upon himself and forgiven us so we can have fellowship with him.

Jesus told a parable of two debtors, one who owed an enormous amount, and the other who owed a lot less. The master forgave the servant who owed much, but that servant failed to forgive the servant who owed less. The master was angry and said, "Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?" (Matthew 18:33).

Each of us should see ourselves as the first servant, who was forgiven an enormous debt. We have all fallen far short of what God wants us to be, so God shows us mercy—and he wants us to show mercy as well. We fall short in showing mercy, too, so we must continue to rely on God's mercy.

The parable of the good Samaritan concludes with a command for mercy (Luke 10:37). The tax collector who pleaded for mercy was the one who was set right with God (Luke 18:13-14). The wasteful son who came home was accepted without having to do anything to "deserve" it (Luke 15:20). Neither the widow of Nain nor her son did anything to deserve a resurrection; Jesus did it simply out of compassion (Luke 7:11-15).

### The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ

The miracles of Jesus served temporary needs. The people who ate loaves and fishes became hungry again. The son who was raised eventually died again. But the grace of Jesus Christ continues to be extended to all of us through the supreme act of grace: his sacrificial death on the cross. This is how Jesus gave himself up for us, with eternal consequences rather than temporary ones.

Peter said, "It is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved" (Acts 15:11). The gospel was a message about God's grace (Acts 14:3; 20:24, 32). We are justified by grace "through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:24). God's grace is linked with the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross (verse 25). Jesus died for us, for our sins, and we are saved because of what he did on the cross. We have redemption through his blood (Ephesians 1:7).

But God's grace goes further than forgiveness. Luke tells us that God's grace was on the disciples as they preached the gospel (Acts 4:33). God showed them favor, giving them help they did not deserve. Don't human fathers do the same? We not only give our children life when they had done nothing to earn it, we also give them food and clothing that they could not earn. That's part of love, and that is the way that God is. Grace is generosity.

When church members in Antioch sent Paul and Barnabas out on missionary trips, they commended them to the grace of God (Acts 14:26; 15:40). In other words, they put the missionaries into God's care, trusting God to take care of the travelers, trusting him to give them what they might need. That is included in his grace.

Spiritual gifts are a work of grace, too. "We have different gifts," Paul says, "according to the grace given us" (Romans 12:6). "To each one of us grace has been given as Christ apportioned it" (Ephesians 4:7). "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms" (1 Peter 4:10).

God graced the believers with spiritual gifts (1 Corinthians 1:4-5). Paul was confident that God's grace would abound toward them as he enabled them to do even more work (2 Corinthians 9:8).

Every good thing is a gift of God, a result of grace rather than something we have earned. That is why we are to be thankful even for the simplest of blessings, for the singing of birds and the smells of flowers and the laughter of little children. Life itself is a luxury, not a necessity.

Paul's own ministry was given to him through grace (Romans 1:5; 15:15; 1 Corinthians 3:10; Galatians 2:9; Ephesians 3:7). Everything he did, he wanted to be according to God's grace (2 Corinthians 1:12). His strength and skills were a gift of grace (2 Corinthians 12:9). If God can save and use the biggest sinner of all (that's how Paul described himself), he can certainly forgive and use any of us. Nothing can separate us from his love, from his desire to give to us.

### Response of grace

How should we respond to the grace of God? With grace, of course. We should be merciful, even as God is full of mercy (Luke 6:36). We are to forgive others, just as we have been forgiven. We are to serve others, just as we have been served. We are to be gracious toward others, giving them favor and kindness.

Our words are to be full of grace (Colossians 4:6). We are to be gracious (forgiving and giving) in marriage, in business, in church, with friends and family and strangers. It's supposed to make a difference in our lives and in our priorities.

Paul spoke of financial generosity as a work of grace, too: "We want you to know about the grace that God has given the Macedonian churches. Out of the most severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity. For I testify that they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability" (2 Corinthians 8:1-3). They had been given much, and they in turn were willing to give much.

Giving is an act of grace (verse 6), and generosity—whether in finances, in time, in respect, or in other ways—is an appropriate way for us to respond to the grace of Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us so that we might be richly blessed (verse 9).

Joseph Tkach

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## Grace and Truth

"The law was given through Moses," John tells us, but "grace and truth came through Jesus Christ" (John 1:17).

God has always been gracious and true. The law was an expression of his grace and truth. But in Jesus Christ, God's graciousness and his truth are given their full and complete expression. The law, by which every human is condemned, is not the final word. But in Jesus Christ we have been given God's final word—the greatest and most complete revelation of God's grace and truth for humanity.

### Salvation

Grace triumphs over justice (James 2:13). Justice is real, and justice demands our condemnation, because all humans have broken the law of God, sinned and fallen short of God's glory (Romans 3:23). But there is a word that follows justice, and that word is Jesus Christ, who not only was the author of the law, but is also the author of grace and truth, which brings redemption and salvation. The law brought condemnation, so we may see our sinfulness and our need for mercy (Romans 3:20). But grace and truth brought salvation, moving us by the kindness of God to turn to him for the mercy we need so badly (Romans 2:4; Titus 3:4-5).

Mercy triumphs over judgment, James says. Grace overpowers legal requirements. Through Jesus Christ, we are given something much better than we deserve. The last word, given at the last judgment, will be the triumph of grace and mercy.

### Truth brings freedom

Jesus said, "The truth will set you free" (John 8:32). When we trust Jesus, when we believe the truth of his word of salvation for us, we are set free from the sin and death that imprisons us. We are no longer slaves of sin.

Those who sin become "slaves of sin" (verse 34). They become enmeshed in its power. But grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. When we trust him to be our salvation, we are freed from the condemnation of the law. We become one with him, at perfect peace with our Father in heaven. Even though we still wrestle with sin in this life and often fail, for the sake of Jesus we are not condemned (Romans 8:1).

Jesus teaches us that true righteousness involves much more than the law. It involves not just our behavior, but also our minds—our thoughts, our attitudes, our whole being. In Jesus, we can see that we fall short all the time. But in Jesus, we trust in God's love and mercy for us.

Knowing that God will never forsake us nor leave us, we continue to fight against our sinful nature, trusting Christ to stand with us and strengthen us. In the confidence of his grace, we forgive one another, just as for Christ's sake God has forgiven us (Ephesians 4:32).

### No way out

The law also offers freedom. The law forbids socially destructive behavior, and when people keep it, they are freed from all sorts of bad consequences. It is in every person's own best interest that they seek to live by good and right behavioral guidelines.

But there is a problem: even though the law promised life, it became death, because it stirred up sin, and then it condemned the sinner (Romans 7:8-11). So we learn about our sinfulness from the law, which is holy, just and good, but the law offers no way to be delivered from its condemnation. Because we are sinners, the law rightly condemns and kills us and leaves us dead (verses 10-13).

### New creation

Even though our condemnation under the law is just and right, God is not a prisoner of his own law or his own justice. God operates in perfect divine freedom according to his own will, and his own will is first and foremost a will of grace and redemption.

The law serves his purpose, not its own purpose, and God's purpose, as Creator and Redeemer, is redemption. Redemption results in nothing less than a new creation. That is why James says that mercy triumphs over justice. God's justice serves his redemptive purpose, and that is the only kind of divine justice there is.

In Jesus Christ, God does for us what we could never do for ourselves. Just as we could never create ourselves, so we could never redeem ourselves. There is no escape from the condemnation under which we all fall, unless God himself, the Creator and Redeemer, provides that escape. That is exactly what he has done.

Jesus declared, "God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him" (John 3:17). The law condemns. But by grace and truth, which came by Jesus Christ, the world is redeemed. Mercy triumphs over judgment.

Everything (even the law, justice and condemnation) serves God's unchanging redemptive purpose. God's covenant faithfulness, his word of redemption, is the word of grace and truth, which was revealed fully and finally in Jesus Christ.

Paul wrote, "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross" (Colossians 1:19-20).

No matter how bad we are, there is good news: God loves us and forgives us for the sake of Jesus who redeems us. In Christ we are set free from sin, both from its condemnation of us, and from its power over us. The Holy Spirit reminds us and reassures us of God's love for us and strengthens us to stay in the battle to turn away from sin.

Jesus, who is the perfect revelation of God's grace and truth, set people free. He forgave them, taught them and gave them the sure hope of God's love and salvation!

Joseph Tkach

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## God's Grace

Ask 20 ministers from multiple denominations to define grace and you'll likely get many different definitions, along with some lively discussion! Ask several GCI ministers and you'll likely get some variety, but there will be a common core of understanding. One thing is for sure, in GCI we've stopped trying to force-fit grace into a framework of legalism!

Grace defies simplistic, one-size-fits-all definitions. It's too profound for that, which is why the Bible reminds us that God's grace is an inexhaustible topic—one worthy of a lifetime of study. That's why Peter admonished Christians to "Grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ" (2 Peter 3:18). The more I read, study, think and write about grace, the more I find my understanding expanding.

Google grace on your computer and you'll uncover multiple definitions. Probably the best-known is this one: "Grace is God's unmerited favor or pardon." A. W. Tozer defined it this way: "Grace is the good pleasure of God that inclines him to bestow benefits on the undeserving." Dutch-Reformed theologian Louis Berkhof defined grace as, "The unmerited operation of God in the heart of man, effected through the agency of the Holy Spirit." I find the following definition from Karl Barth to be particularly profound (though as often is the case with Barth, it must be carefully read to get the full impact):

#### Who really knows what grace is until he has seen it at work here: as the grace which is for man when, because man is wholly and utterly a sinner before God, it can only be against him, and when in fact, even while it is for him, it is also a plaintiff and judge against him, showing him to be incapable of satisfying either God or himself? ....What takes place in this work of inconceivable mercy is, therefore, the free over-ruling of God. It is not an arbitrary overlooking and ignoring, not an artificial bridging, covering-over or hiding. It is a real closing of the breach, gulf, and abyss between God and us, for which we are responsible. At the very point where we refuse and fail, offending and provoking God, making ourselves impossible before him and in that way missing our destiny, treading under foot our dignity, forfeiting our right, losing our salvation and hopelessly compromising our creaturely being—at that very point God himself intervenes as man ( _Church Dogmatics,_ Vol. 4.1: The Doctrine of Reconciliation).

I like Barth's expression, "inconceivable mercy." It refers to what God, in Christ, through the Spirit, has done and is doing to write within us a new law that emancipates us from sin as well as death. Paul put it this way: "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of sin and of death" (Romans 8:2).

The Greek word _charis,_ usually translated "grace" in the New Testament, has multiple shades of meaning, referring to something that affords joy, pleasure, delight, sweetness, charm, loveliness, goodwill, loving-kindness, favor or gratitude. Scripture tells us that grace is ours by God's initiative alone. In Christ, through the Spirit, the Father's will for us is perfectly fulfilled. God's grace takes us by surprise because nothing that we can do and nothing that we are earns grace. We are predestined and elected in Christ, the Lord and Savior of the whole world. The story of our lives begins and ends with God's unfathomable, amazing grace.

When I hear or read world news, I wonder why God bothers with us at all. Our brutality, cruelty, bigotry, hypocrisy and greed boggles the mind. But God knows there is another way to live, and his purpose is to share that life with us. He loves us far too much to allow the final result of life—any life—to be determined by our own behavior. In the sovereignty of God's grace, evil has no future. Christ is making all things new. The new heavens and earth will be established!

God's plan is to remake us into the image of his Son as we receive his grace by our repentance and faith in him. God even enables that response—one that, by the Spirit, grows deeper throughout our lives, as Paul noted:

#### For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. (Romans 8:29-30)

After observing what God is doing in our lives by grace, Paul proclaimed confidently that, "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 1:6). God is not finished with any of us—he alone is the author and finisher of our salvation and he knows how to complete the story that he has begun writing in our lives.

In Ephesians 2:10, Paul proclaimed that, "We are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." The Greek word here for "handiwork" is _pōiema_ , from which we get the word "poem." By his grace, God is writing the story of our lives—we're a divinely written ballad, sonnet (or in some cases, a haiku!), full of ups and downs and twisting plot turns. Because of God's grace, we look forward with hope and confidence to how the story will end.

Joseph Tkach

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## Grace From First to Last

_Grace_ is the first word in the name of our denomination. We chose it, but not because it sounds "religious." Each word in our name identifies our experience as a fellowship, and grace is an integral part of our identity — especially our identity in Christ.

As a denomination, we have always understood grace to be God's unconditional and unmerited pardon. But we tended to think of it as a component of salvation that needed to be "stirred into the mix" because of our inability to keep the law. We now see God's grace as much more than that.

Grace is not some sort of passive concept of forgiveness. It is not a principle, a proposition, or a product. Grace is the love and freedom-producing action of God to reconstitute humanity into what the apostles, Peter and Paul, refer to as being made into God's own people (2 Corinthians 5:17–20; Galatians 6:15; 1 Peter 2:9–10). It is not just a spiritual supplement that God provides because we can't keep his law, like a whiff of oxygen to help a sick person breathe a bit easier.

Grace is an entirely new atmosphere that transforms us and gives us a new kind of life — life that no amount of law keeping could sustain. Note Paul's explanation: "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:19-20 KJV). Grace is the environment that allows us, God's new creation, to not just survive, but to grow and flourish.

At the risk of over-simplification (a danger inherent in all analogies) we might think of grace as God's "operating system." The Father, Son and Holy Spirit have been giving, receiving and sharing love for all eternity. When they extend that sharing of love to us, it is their gift of grace. This grace of God is not the exception to a rule—his rule is a gracious one, all the time, to give us life and to bless us, even if obstacles to our receiving it have to be removed at his own cost.

We see God's grace most clearly in the person of Jesus, who as Paul said, loved us and gave himself for us. As the early church leader Irenaeus taught, the Son and the Spirit are the "two arms" of the Father lovingly embracing us back to himself. The Gospel of John gives us Jesus' own encouraging words: "The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:22-23 NRSV).

As recipients of the grace of God in Christ, we not only share in the love and life of the Father through his Son in the Spirit, but we also share in the mission of God to the world. That mission is the complete restoration and renewal of all creation in Christ Jesus, through the Spirit, into a state of perfect glory.

God's grace in the person of Jesus Christ is for all humanity without distinction to race, status or gender. And that is why the vision of Grace Communion International is for "all kinds of churches for all kinds of people in all kinds of places."

Joseph Tkach

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## The Best Story of All: The Gospel

I enjoy reading a book or watching a movie in which a good story unfolds. I especially enjoy it when I know how the story ends, yet still I am compelled to read or watch to the end to see how it unfolds. The old American television series _Columbo_ , starring the late Peter Falk, is a great example.

Each episode of _Columbo_ revolved around the perpetrator of the crime, whose identity is already known to the audience. He would eventually be caught and exposed. The intrigue was generated by seeing how Lieutenant Columbo would go about solving the crime. The series was not so much a traditional "whodunit?" as a "how to catch them." The gospel of God's grace is rather like that. Jesus has completed the work of saving us, although not all understand that. There is great joy when the proverbial "light bulb" turns on and someone does get it!

Christians often say that the gospel is good news, but then add a great big "IF." I'm sure they are sincere, but this addition turns the gospel into a proposition or a possibility of what _could_ be true if certain works are first performed. For them, the gospel is good news, but only for those who qualify. For everyone else, it is not good news at all.

The wonderful truth is that the actual gospel is not a contract, which tells us what God will do "IF" we first do our part. Rather, it is the announcement concerning what God has _already_ done—what he has _already_ established in and through his Son, Jesus Christ. It is vital to understand the difference. It is an announcement of fact.

### Just the facts

The actual gospel speaks of the _fact_ of our forgiveness in Jesus and gives us something real to believe in. The gospel with an "IF" appended speaks of the _possibility_ of our forgiveness, but then proclaims that we must also believe in something else, such as our faith, or our repentance or our performance, before that possibility becomes reality. One is the truth of God's grace; the other is legalism.

This legalism projects a false reality that Jesus' forgiveness does not exist unless you first measure up. However, no one can measure up to the perfection of God. Even when we become believers, we still have our times of failing to do what is right. And the blessing of the grace of God is that we are forgiven in Jesus Christ. He stands in for us as our great high priest and takes our weak and imperfect repentance and faith and then by the Holy Spirit shares with us his perfect faith and repentance on our behalf. And God gets all the glory.

Sadly, some reject this, objecting that it means that you can just sit back and do nothing. But that is not where a correct understanding of grace leads you. Presuming upon God's grace is not receiving God's grace. It is not responding to grace as grace. Grace is not an impersonal abstract fact or principle, like gravity. Grace is not an exception to the rule of law. It is God's gift of a restored, reconciled relationship of fellowship and communion with him in faith, hope and love.

### A call for response

Grace calls for a particular response. The apostle Paul tells us that God has reconciled the cosmos to himself. He then goes on to implore us to be reconciled, to live in line with the reality of that reconciliation (see 2 Corinthians 5:18, 20)—to wake up and smell the coffee! Such an ordered or disciplined response is not the enemy of grace but how we receive and benefit from it, or rather, benefit from our restored relationship to God through Jesus Christ!

In Colossians 1:29, Paul explained how he proclaimed Christ: "To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me" (NIV, 1984). The gospel of grace in Jesus Christ energizes and moves us just as it did Paul. It brings about "the obedience of faith," which was the aim and goal of his entire ministry (see Romans 1:5; 16:26 RSV).

Accepting God's grace is not a license for laziness. We should remind ourselves every day what Christ has done and is doing for us. Our motivation is the fact that he has accepted us, not the fear that he might reject us. Paul tells us: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" (Titus 2:11-12 NIV, 1984).

Before I began to really understand grace, I regarded the Bible largely as a rule-book that God gave to tell us what to do and not do. In doing so, I missed the point of many of the narratives in the Bible. I saw God as detaching and not attaching, disconnecting and not connecting with us. Do the right thing and you belonged to his "in" crowd. Disobey and you were "out." The more I focused on obeying the law, the more I also seemed to miss God's purpose to develop a loving relationship with each of his children. My view became one of seeing God as ruling people out, breaking them with "rods of iron." Thankfully, I did not totally lose sight of God's mercy, but I really did see him as a cosmic sheriff and myself as his deputy!

Our experience was not as unusual as we may have thought. As I have gotten to know Christians in other denominations, I find that this is common, even among many who have been Christians for many years. That is why we need to understand and be reminded daily that it is his grace—not law—that disciplines us. God has caught us, like Columbo caught those criminals. He is the author and the finisher of our faith. It is the best "whodunit" and "how did he catch 'em" story of all.

Joseph Tkach

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## East From West

Each spring, we celebrate the great sacrifice of Jesus Christ, by which our sins are forgiven and our eternal future is assured. It was the greatest act of love we can imagine—although we can't fully grasp the depth of that love. As Paul wrote to the Romans, "Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous person, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us" (Romans 5:7-8).

What the Lord God did in Jesus goes far beyond any human standards of love and sacrifice. That is why we find it so hard to accept, without any reservations, the richness of God's grace. We read that our sins are forgiven, but we feel the need to add an "if." We understand that God's love for us is unconditional, and yet we still think there is a "but." Unconditional love and forgiveness seem too good to be true.

People in Old Testament times didn't have this problem. The Temple animal sacrifices left no doubt that the removal of sin was a bloody and messy business. But even then, some were able to glimpse that there was more to the forgiveness of sin than slaughtering an animal. David, when confronted with his multi-faceted sin with Bathsheba, pleaded,

#### Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.  
Create in me a pure heart, O God,  
and renew a steadfast spirit within me.  
Do not cast me from your presence  
or take your Holy Spirit from me. (Psalm 51:9-11)

David realized that his outrageous behavior had damaged his relationship with God. He wanted desperately to make it right. However, a visit to the Temple with a sin offering was not enough.

#### You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it;  
you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.  
My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit;  
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.  
(Psalm 51:16-17, NIV footnote reading)

David was ahead of his time in glimpsing God's grace, realizing there was nothing he could do except admit his guilt and ask for forgiveness. He was forgiven and later, in happier times, he could sing confidently:

#### For as high as the heavens are above the earth,  
so great is his love for those who fear him;  
as far as the east is from the west,  
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.  
(Psalm 103:11-12)

The world of David's day was not technologically advanced. Most people thought of the heavens as a vast inverted bowl in which the sun, moon and stars moved. In Psalm 103, David used that view of the cosmos as an analogy for the vastness of God's forgiveness and mercy, which separates our sins from us by an unimaginable distance.

That sense of vastness is sometimes blunted in our modern age. I often fly long distances "through the heavens" from east to west and back again. Thus, David's analogy might seem less impressive. But it shouldn't. In 1977, an unmanned spacecraft named Voyager 1 was launched from Florida. Its mission was to travel along a trajectory that would take it through our solar system, sending back photographs as it traveled.

Voyager 1 fulfilled its mission brilliantly. After traveling for 18 months, it sent back stunning pictures of Jupiter. Three years into its mission it gave us the first close-up pictures of the ringed planet Saturn. Now, over 35 years later, Voyager 1 has traveled farther "from east to west" than any other man-made object. It is now over 11 billion miles from earth. Its signals, traveling at the speed of light, take about 18 hours to reach us. It is heading out of our solar system at about 38,000 miles an hour. Its power plant may be able to send us signals for a few more years. But then Voyager will be on its own, hurtling through interstellar space until it comes under the influence of another star in about—wait for it—40,000 years!

The journey of Voyager 1 puts David's analogy of "east from west'" and "above the heavens" into perspective, doesn't it? Although the spacecraft has traveled through only a tiny fraction of our cosmos, the distance, even with our modern scientific understanding, is beyond our ability to grasp. Perhaps if David was writing Psalm 103 today, he might put it this way:

#### For as far as interstellar space reaches away from earth,  
so great is his love for those who fear him;  
as far as Voyager has traveled from east to west,  
so far has he removed from us our transgressions.

God's commitment to remove from his memory the guilt and stain of our sins is still greater than anything we humans can imagine. That's how great God's love for us is. And always will be. Let's be thankful for that.

Joseph Tkach

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## Is Grace Too Good to Be True?

Non-believers and even some believers see God's grace as something too good to be true. How about you?

I think most of us understand grace intellectually. But has the astonishing truth of God's grace sunk in? It is one thing to accept grace as a doctrinal argument, but another for grace to be the truth that defines and thus transforms our lives.

For some, there remains a tension between grace and obedience. This is not new—we see it in the New Testament. "Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" challenged Paul in Romans 6:15. "By no means," he answered, though we can sympathize with these early Christians for having this question.

We too find grace a difficult idea to internalize. Our experience with "special offers" and TV bargains has taught us that if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

We all know that there is no such thing as a free lunch. So when we read that God has done all that is required to save even the worst sinner, we are suspicious. Our "Yes but...." program clicks in, and we ask "What's the catch?" There must be more to it than just "accepting Jesus." We know we can't earn salvation, but surely we have to do something! Pastors have told me that by emphasizing grace over legalism they worry that they may be encouraging their people to disobey God.

I love the way Peter's second epistle opens:

#### Grace and peace be yours in abundance through the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord. His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature, having escaped the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. (2 Peter 1:2-4)

God has already offered to himself what we could not offer. The grace in which we participate is the life of faithfulness that Jesus lived towards the Father. As Thomas F. Torrance wrote: "In this God-Man we partake in grace, as members of his body, reconciled to God through him and in him, and even it is said, are incomprehensibly partakers of Divine nature!"

Torrance is right. There is something incomprehensible about it. God's grace towards us shows a level of love that seems unnatural to us. Charles Wesley expressed it beautifully in his hymn _Amazing Love_ :

#### And can it be that I should gain  
An interest in the Savior's blood?  
Died He for me, who caused His pain?  
For me, who Him to death pursued?  
Amazing love! how can it be  
That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me?

It does sound too good to be true. But it is true. We can delight to be alive in Jesus and united in his life. We should rightly be dumbfounded by his grace. When we recognize how and why Jesus takes away the sin of the world, we are immediately brought to a point of disconnection from our own false center and nourished by the true vine of life, which is the fullest purpose of God. Worrying about how we and others are falling short is to maintain a focus that stems from legalism.

We never need worry that we are over-emphasizing God's grace when we point people to Jesus and a living, loving relationship with him. Grace and obedience are not at odds—rather, they are integrated in the source of both—the person of Jesus Christ.

In the next article, Dr. Gary Deddo explores this topic in depth. I think you will find it helpful and encouraging. Though it's long, I believe that the time taken to read it, then share it with others, will be time well invested.

Joseph Tkach

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## Responding to God's Grace in Our Relationships

How do we respond to God's grace? One way that we respond is by extending grace to others, in our families, neighborhoods, and workplaces. If we are going to live with God forever, we will also be living with each other forever. We were designed not for eternal isolation, but for living together and interacting with one another. Life's greatest joys come in our relationships with other people.

Life's greatest hurts come from other people, too. So if eternal life is going to be happy, we need to learn to get along with people without hurting them. The essential ingredient we need here is love. The most important commandment, Jesus said, is to love God, and the second-most-important command is, "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mark 12:31).

If we are going to be like Jesus, we need to love people—even people who are hard to love. Jesus set the example for us, coming to die even for the people who hated him. As good parents know, love means a willingness to be inconvenienced, a willingness to set aside our own concerns to attend to the needs of someone else. Love is a lot more than good feelings—it must also include good actions.

### Willing to serve

God is good not because he is powerful, but because he is good. He always uses his power to help other people, not to serve himself. We praise people who risk their lives to save others; we do not praise people who had the power but refused to use it. We admire self-sacrifice, not selfishness.

Jesus came to serve, not to lord it over people (Matthew 20:28). He told his disciples they should not be like power-hungry rulers, but should set an example by helping people. "Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant" (verse 26). Jesus shows us what the Father is like (John 14:9)—not just what he was like 2,000 years ago, but what he is like all the time.

True greatness is not in power, but in service. God sets the example; as does Jesus. The meaning of life is not in having authority, but in helping other people. That is the only way that eternal life is going to be enjoyable for everyone.

Jesus set many examples of service. A special one happened the evening before his crucifixion. He got down and washed the 12 disciples' feet as a lesson in humility and service. "I have set you an example," he said, "that you should do as I have done for you" (John 13:15). Don't consider yourself too important to kneel down and help somebody. Leaders in the church should be servants.

Paul said we should "serve one another in love" (Galatians 5:13). "Carry each other's burdens," he wrote, "and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). "Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves" (Philippians 2:3).

If we are selfish, we will never be satisfied, but if we serve, we will find it self-rewarding. We are more satisfied when we help than when we take. Jesus told us this because it is so unlike the assumptions that most people make.

"This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:10-11). If we want to be like Jesus, if we want to have a meaningful life, then we need to serve others.

### Serving in the church

One way that we serve others is by being active participants in a community of believers—a church. No church is perfect, just like no person is perfect, but the church is something that God designed to help us on our journey with Jesus. The church teaches us about Jesus, reminds us of his grace and promises, and gives us opportunities to worship together. The church helps us keep our purpose in focus.

The church also gives us opportunities to exercise patience and forgiveness. We may not like these "opportunities," but they still help us learn to be more like Jesus. Paul reminds us of the example we follow: "Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you" (Colossians 3:13). "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you" (Ephesians 4:32).

Educators know that we learn by listening, but we learn much more when we participate. Jesus taught his disciples not just in words, and not just in his example, but also by giving them work to do. "He sent them out to preach the kingdom of God and to heal the sick" (Luke 9:2). After his resurrection, he again assigned them work: "You will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" (Acts 1:8). They learned as they went.

If you want to be like Jesus, get involved in his work. He left it to us, not because we could do a better job than anyone else, but because it is for our good. We will learn more, and be changed more, by getting involved.

### Different talents

Have you ever noticed that different people have different strengths? Believing in Jesus does not eliminate our differences. Being like Christ does not mean that we all look alike, dress alike and act alike. God purposely gives different strengths to different people (1 Corinthians 12:11). We are not to brag about our abilities, nor to wish we had someone else's (verses 14-26). Rather, we are to use our skills "for the common good" (verse 7).

Some people are very talented, but no one has all the talents that society needs. God makes sure that everybody is lacking something, so that we learn to work together. "Each one should use whatever gift he has received to serve others, faithfully administering God's grace in its various forms" (1 Peter 4:10). The church is a great place to learn to be like Jesus by serving other people.

We are to serve people's physical needs, and also their spiritual needs. One of the biggest spiritual needs that this world has is the message of salvation in Jesus Christ. The church is called to take this message to the world; each believer has a message that can encourage and help many others, and we will become more like Jesus if we become less self-conscious and more willing to share the message.

Why do we share the gospel? It is not a means of getting brownie points with God. It is not a way for us to brag about how good we are. Rather, it is a way to serve others, to help them with one of their most serious needs in life.

People need to know that God loves them, that their lives have meaning and purpose, that there is hope even when physical life seems pointless. God has good news for them, and we share it because people need it.

It is deeply satisfying to be used by God to help someone else. Sharing the gospel gives us a tremendous sense of significance, because we are taking part in a work of eternal worth, sharing in the work of God himself. That's part of what it means to be like God, to be like Jesus. God made us in such a way that we would find our deepest satisfactions in doing the work that he himself does. We were made for this!

### Relationships of grace

We are saved by grace, not by our works. God sent Jesus to die for us, and he forgives us, not on the basis of our works, but because of his mercy. Now, if God is like that, and we were born to be like God, what does this say about our relationships with one another? It transforms them!

If we follow Jesus, grace should fill our families, our friendships and our workplaces. Being like Jesus means that we are not always demanding to get our own way. We are not bragging about ourselves or insulting others. Paul describes the results of God at work in our lives: "The fruit of [God's] Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" (Galatians 5:22-23).

"Honor one another above yourselves," Paul writes (Romans 12:10). "Live in harmony with one another" (verse 16). "Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love" (Ephesians 4:2).

"Encourage one another and build each other up.... Always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else" (1 Thessalonians 5:11, 15).

Husbands, how would it make a difference in the way you treat your wife? (See Ephesians 5:25.) Wives, how would it affect you? (See verse 22.) Those who are employed, how would it affect your work? (See Ephesians 6:5-8.)

We all start out unlike Jesus. We start as sinners, as enemies of God, as selfish, self-seeking people. But that is precisely what we need to be saved from, to be rescued from. There's a lot of changing that needs to happen.

If we are to be like Jesus, our relationships may have to change a lot. It won't be easy, and it won't happen overnight. It takes time, so we need patience with the process, both in ourselves and in others. We need faith that God will finish the work he has started in us.

God has the most fulfilled, most satisfying life possible—and he wants us to enjoy eternal life, too. He wants us to be like he is. God is "compassionate and gracious ... slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin" (Exodus 34:6-7).

Joseph Tkach

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## Do Grace and Law Conflict?

God has provided a wonderful plan of salvation, based not on human merit but on his grace (Ephesians 2:8-9). This word "grace" has become shorthand for Christians. Some understand its meaning well, while others seem to view it as being in conflict with the idea of law. "Now that we are under grace, do we have to keep the law?" is a question Christians have asked for nearly 2,000 years. Paul addressed this question in his letter to the churches in Rome:

#### So what do we do? Keep on sinning so God can keep on forgiving? I should hope not! If we've left the country where sin is sovereign, how can we still live in our old house there? Or didn't you realize we packed up and left there for good? That is what happened in baptism. When we went under the water, we left the old country of sin behind; when we came up out of the water, we entered into the new country of grace—a new life in a new land! (Romans 6:1-3, _The Message_ ).

According to Paul, this "new life" in a "new land" is not lawless. It is not "law" or "grace" as though the two are opposed. Instead, the word "grace" should be understood as representing the many parts or aspects of God's whole plan of redemption. God's grace has always included within it a call for the response of an obedience that trusts in (has faith in) God's grace.

It is often stated that the old covenant is "law" while the new covenant is "grace." Though this shorthand way of thinking is not totally inaccurate, it can lead to the unfortunate idea that law and grace are totally at odds. But what we see in Scripture is that the old covenant was not graceless and the new covenant is certainly not lawless. Instead, what we find are two forms of God's one gracious covenant with the Old Testament presenting the promise and the New Testament presenting its fulfillment in Christ. Each of these has its particular form of obedience corresponding to its particular form of covenantal grace.

Under the new covenant form of grace, we live by the law of Christ that is written on our hearts. Paul refers to that law as "the law of the Spirit" (Romans 8:2) and "the law of Christ" (Galatians 6:2). These new covenant references equate the law with the will and heart of God, which is shared with us as his children by the Spirit of Christ. As we submit to God's will and are moved by his heart, we experience the freedom that we have been given from the condemning effect of sin. Note this related comment from Trinitarian theologian Andrew Purves concerning the covenanted way of response to God's grace found in both the old and new covenants:

#### God knew that Israel would not be able to be faithful as God required. Thus, God, within the [old] covenant established and maintained unilaterally by God, freely and graciously gave a covenanted way of responding so that the covenant might be fulfilled on their behalf.

#### Israel was given ordinances of worship designed to testify that God alone can expiate guilt, forgive sin and establish communion. This was not just a formal rite to guarantee propitiation between God and Israel, however. By its very nature, the covenanted way of response was to be worked into the flesh and blood of Israel's existence in such a way that Israel was called to pattern her whole life after it.

#### Later, in the prophecies of the Isaiah tradition especially, the notions of guilt-bearer and sacrifice for sin were conflated to give the interpretative clue for the vicarious role of the servant of the Lord. It would take the incarnation actually to bring that to pass, however, for Jesus Christ was recognized and presented in the New Testament both as the Servant of the Lord and as the divine Redeemer, not now only of Israel, but of all people. Jesus Christ has fulfilled the covenant from both sides, from God's side, and from our side (from the paper "I yet not I but Christ: Galatians 2:20 and the Christian Life in the Theology of T. F. Torrance").

Purves' insights help us appreciate the age-old Christian axiom: "Jesus did it all," while also answering Francis Schaeffer's famous question: "How should we then live? _"_ Unfortunately, some think grace means living any way we want. Some, objecting to that conclusion, insist that we obey all 613 laws of the Torah. But neither of these responses to grace is God's will for us as followers of Jesus. As Paul explained, we are called to die daily, letting Christ live in us through the Holy Spirit. As we yield to Christ, we experience his kingdom reign and share in his obedience to the Father's will including what he is doing to fulfill the Father's mission to the world. As noted by Thomas F. Torrance, we live out the obedience of faith in Christ's fulfillment of the heart and good will of God for us:

#### It is only through union with Christ that we partake of the blessings of Christ, that is through union with him in his holy and obedient life... Through union with him we share in his faith, in his obedience, in his trust and his appropriation of the Father's blessing ( _Theology in Reconstruction_ , 158-9).

To help us understand the important relationship between law and grace, Dr. Gary Deddo has written an article in which he discusses this topic from an Incarnational, Trinitarian perspective. I think you will find his essay both challenging and informative; it follows this article.

Joseph Tkach

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## Embrace the Grace

A few years ago, the Princeton Religion Research Center publication _Emerging Trends_ reported that 56 percent of Americans, "with most describing themselves as Christians, say that when they think about their death, they worry 'a great deal' or 'somewhat' that they will 'not be forgiven by God.'"

The touchstone of the Protestant Reformation was salvation by grace. Yet, the prevailing view among Christians today still seems to be that salvation depends on what we have done or not done. It is as though a great divine scale will weigh all our good deeds on one side and all our bad deeds on the other side, and our salvation will be determined by which side is heaviest. No wonder people are afraid!

But if we are indeed saved by grace, and the Bible says we are, then we can stop worrying and instead begin to trust in the heavenly Father whom Jesus Christ revealed to us, who loves us so passionately that he will never let us go. We don't have to worry about whether he will forgive us; he has already forgiven us. "While we were still sinners, Christ died for us," the Bible tells us in Romans 5:8.

We are judged righteous only because Jesus died for us and rose again. It doesn't depend on the quality of our obedience. It doesn't even depend on the quality of our faith. He has enough faith for all of us. All we have to do is believe him, to come to his banquet, to the place at his table that has already been set for us.

Jesus said: "For my Father's will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day."

That is God's will for you. You don't have to fear. You don't have to worry. You can accept the gift of God.

The apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast."

And Jesus said in John 3:16-17, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him."

Grace, by definition, is undeserved. It is unearned. It is God's free gift of love. It is given to every person who will accept it. God is our Redeemer, not our condemner. He is our Savior, not our destroyer. He is our Friend, not our enemy. God is on our side.

That's the message of the Bible. It's the message of God's grace. The Judge is on our side. He loves us. He is not out to get us. He is out to save us and bring us home. In fact, he has already done everything that needs to be done to make our salvation secure.

Why not ask God to give you the deep peace that comes from knowing you are eternally safe and forgiven in his almighty hands? He's anxious to hear from you.

Joseph Tkach

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## Grace Is Not a Supplement

Grace is the first word of our denominational name— _Grace Communion International_. We did not choose that name because it sounds "religious." Each word identifies our experience as a Christian denomination.

Grace is an integral part of that identity – especially our identity in Christ. We have always understood grace to be unconditional, an unmerited pardon of our sins. But we tended to think of it as one of the components of salvation that needed to be "stirred into the mix" because we can't keep the law. We need to see that God's grace is much more than that.

Grace is not just a spiritual supplement that God provides because we can't keep his law, like a whiff of oxygen to help a sick person breathe a bit easier. Grace is the love and freedom-producing action of God that reconstitutes humanity into an entirely new creation. It transforms us and gives us a new kind of life – life that no amount of law-keeping could sustain. Grace is the environment that allows us, God's new creation, to not just survive, but to grow and flourish.

As Paul explained in his epistle to the Galatians, "For I through the law am dead to the law, that I might live unto God. I am crucified with Christ: nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me: and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:19-20, KJV).

The Father, Son, and Spirit have been giving, receiving, and sharing love for all eternity, and love is their gift of grace to us. God's grace is not the exception to a rule – his rule is a gracious one, all the time, to give us life and to bless us, even if obstacles to our receiving it have to be removed at his own cost.

We see God's grace clearly in the person of Jesus, who, as Paul said, loved us and gave himself for us. The Gospel of John gives us Jesus' own encouraging words: "The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one. I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me" (John 17:23, NRSV).

As recipients of the grace of God, in Christ, we not only share in the life of God through Christ, in the Spirit, but we also share in the mission of Christ, through his Spirit. That mission is the complete restoration and renewal of all creation through Christ Jesus, into a state of perfect glory. God's grace in the person of Christ is for all humanity without distinction to race, status, or gender.

That is why the vision of Grace Communion International is "all kinds of churches for all kinds of people in all kinds of places."

Joseph Tkach

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## Grace Rules!

By the time we finish kindergarten, we have a pretty good notion that life is not fair. Even so, we want life to be fair, and we even expect it to be fair. When it isn't, some of us can get pretty upset.

Jesus gave us a parable about fairness in Matthew 20:1-16. He said:

#### For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard.

#### About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, "You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right." So they went.

#### He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, "Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?"

#### "Because no one has hired us," they answered.  
He said to them, "You also go and work in my vineyard."

#### When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his supervisor, "Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first."

#### The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. "These men who were hired last worked only one hour," they said, "and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day."

#### But he answered one of them, "Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn't you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don't I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?"

#### So the last will be first, and the first will be last.

A denarius was pretty good money for a day's work, about the same as the pay of a Roman soldier. Being a Roman soldier was not the most prestigious job, but it was higher up the social ladder than the common vineyard worker. So the workers eagerly accepted the job. But they were not happy that others got the same pay for far less work.

Jesus wasn't giving us a civics lesson. He was telling us about how grace works in the kingdom of God. It doesn't matter how good we've been, compared to how good someone else has been. It doesn't matter how sinful we've been, compared to how sinful someone else has been. Salvation simply isn't tied to anything but the riches of God's love and grace.

Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:8-9: "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."

Regardless of the relative pain or ease of our life's journey, salvation comes only by grace and not by what we do. Like any gift, the only thing we can do with grace is have a little faith. In other words, trust the Giver and accept and embrace the gift.

With God, we don't get what we deserve. We get everything we don't deserve—his unfailing love and a new life in Jesus Christ.

Joseph Tkach

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## The Logic of Grace

As rational beings, we humans don't trust things that don't make sense. When we come across something that doesn't seem to add up, we don't like it. We look for alternative explanations and possibilities. If we are going to believe something, we want it to be logical and rational.

Maybe that's why so many have a hard time with the gospel. When we take the gospel for what the Bible says it is, it doesn't make sense. It doesn't add up. The gospel declares that our sins have been forgiven and we have been made new in Christ without our lifting a finger to make it happen.

That isn't logical, so we look for other explanations. We tell ourselves that our sins will be forgiven only if we commit ourselves not to sin any more. We imagine a set of guidelines or rules that we must keep in order for God to apply his forgiveness to us. We try to make sense out of something that doesn't make sense to us.

In Romans 5, verses 8 and 10, we read that God loves us so much that Jesus died for us while we were still sinners. But that doesn't add up. Why would God forgive us before we even repent? So we look for other explanations. Romans 5, verse 6 says that Christ died for the ungodly. But that doesn't make sense. Why would God want to forgive ungodly people before they even promise to stop being ungodly? So we look for other explanations. We want to see repentance come before forgiveness.

Ephesians 2, verses 1-10 says that God forgave us while we were still dead in our sins. It even says he made us alive with Christ and seated us with Christ in heavenly places while we were still dead in our sins. Verses 8 and 9 say, "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—not by works, so that no one can boast."

That makes no sense at all to us. But we can begin to see a pattern emerge. When it comes to God's grace, there is a new kind of logic. The logic of grace goes against the grain of everything that makes sense to us. But it makes sense to God. To God, love is everything, and only his grace generates love in human beings. Only his unconditional forgiveness and healing can raise the dead to life.

But that doesn't make sense. We just cannot imagine how unconditional love, unconditional forgiveness, and unconditional healing, can result in anything but more sin. Why should a person trust and follow Jesus if they've already been forgiven anyway?

Because that's how the logic of grace works. Titus 2:11-14 tells us that it is the grace of God that teaches us to say no to ungodliness. Not punishment. Not force or persuasion. But grace. Who would have guessed such a thing?

So we can simply believe the good news in faith that God loves us unconditionally and that he knows what he is doing, even if it doesn't make sense to us.

Joseph Tkach

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## Mulholland and the Grace of God

If you've ever seen a picture of Los Angeles before 1913, then you know just how dry this city really is. It was a desert, a place where nothing really grew. And until William Mulholland came along, that's all it was ever going to be. But on the morning of November 5, 1913, something happened that changed Los Angeles forever.

By eleven o'clock, 40,000 people had gathered at the base of the newly finished Los Angeles Aqueduct. They had journeyed almost two hours along dusty roads to witness a miracle. A marching band played, a cannon fired, and finally the floodgates opened, unleashing a torrent of crystal-clear water down the channel built into the hillside. As it flowed past the crowd, Mulholland shouted – "There it is! Take it!"

But for me, that same phrase so perfectly represents how I feel about the grace and mercy of our Triune God. You see, for the longest time I lived under a very rigid code of legalism. I tried to hit all the right marks, make sure I ate the right food and showed up to the right holidays. But then, my eyes were opened to the miracle of grace.

#### 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 on can boast. (Ephesians 2:8-9)

You see – God's grace is readily available to us. Through Jesus, we have been brought back into communion with God, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The floodgates are open! God's mercy is overwhelming in the best possible way! And just like Mulholland said, "There it is! Take it!" – That's the exact way God's grace is made available to us. It's always new, always flowing – a new source of life that changes us from the ground up forever. All we need to do is turn around and take it!

I know we've had a few draughts over the years here in Los Angeles, but I am so thankful that in Christ, God's mercy is made new every day. There it is. All we need to do is take it!

Joseph Tkach

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## Growing in Grace and Truth

Jesus Christ is not merely a great role model or a great moral teacher who pointed us down the right road. He's our all in all, our everything, the beginning and the end – the goal of our faith and our lives.

It's interesting to take note of the admonition the apostle Peter gives in the conclusion of his second letter. He didn't tell us to stop sinning. There wouldn't be much point to that, since we don't have it in us to stop sinning. Yes, that might be hard to admit, but if we're really honest with ourselves, we know it's true.

Certainly, the more we walk with Jesus, the more we come to love what is good and lose our fascination with what is not. But we never reach the perfection of Christ in this life. In fact, the closer we are to Jesus, it seems the more we realize what a sinner we are.

No, Peter didn't tell us to stop sinning – he told us to "make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with Christ." And then he told us how. Not by our willpower or by our efforts to be righteous, but by growing.

In 2 Peter 3:13-18 he tells us to grow in two specific things: the grace of Christ and the knowledge of Christ.

#### In keeping with his promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him... be on your guard so that you may not be carried away by the error of lawless men and fall from your secure position. But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

We grow in grace by trusting God to be who he says he is for us. He's our advocate who testifies on our behalf. He's our defense attorney who believes in our value and worth. He's our Judge who pronounces us not guilty. He's our therapist, our trainer and our coach who helps us learn to live rightly. He's our substitute, who takes all the negative consequences of our broken lives onto himself. And he's our representative, who gives us his reputation as though it were our own. All this he does knowing fully well that we're as guilty as sin.

In Christ, we are and always will be the beloved children of our Father in heaven. All he asks is that we grow in grace and get to know him better. We grow in grace as we learn to trust him to be our all in all, and we grow in knowledge of him as we follow him and spend time with him.

And there's more. God not only forgives us, he transforms us. He makes us new, cleaning us from the inside out. As we learn to rest in his grace, we come to know him better. And the better we know him, the more we sense the freedom to rest in his grace.

It's not about what _we_ do; it's about what Jesus has already done – and continues to do – for us, in us and through us.

Joseph Tkach

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## Peanuts and Grace

Anyone who has been on a domestic airline flight in recent years knows that our cash-strapped airlines rarely serve meals. These days, all you are likely to get is a small bag of peanuts. The peanuts come in small plastic packets, which can be really hard to open. You can't tear them, and since you aren't allowed to carry knives on board, you can't cut them either. Sometimes these bags have a little nick in the edge, which allows you to get a start.

But until you find that nick, it's as if those peanuts are locked up in Fort Knox...or for a biblical reference, as if they were behind the curtain that separated the Holy of Holies from the rest of the Jerusalem Temple in Jesus' day.

The Temple was designed to remind people that their sins had cut them off from God. The part of the Temple called the Holy of Holies was a forbidden inner sanctum, which contained the Ark of the Covenant and the Mercy Seat, representing the throne of God. The Holy of Holies was veiled from public view by a thick curtain that stretched from floor to ceiling.

Only once a year was anyone allowed behind that veil. Even then, only the high priest was allowed to enter, in order to perform a set of prescribed rituals. If the high priest, or anyone else, went in for any other reason or at any other time, they were struck dead. It sounds harsh, but God was making a point in those old covenant days – sinners were _personae non grata_ in the presence of the Holy One.

But the Gospels tell us that at the precise moment Jesus died, the veil in the Temple was miraculously torn apart, from top to bottom. The Holy of Holies then lay exposed with the Mercy Seat in full view. I'm sure horrified priests rushed to repair the veil, but the point had been made – Jesus Christ, the Son of God and great High Priest of our salvation, had sacrificed himself for humanity and thereby cleared the way for all to have access to the Mercy Seat of God.

We know that, but somehow we have a lot of trouble believing it. We still think we must try to be good enough, or must do something to earn God's grace. It is as if Jesus, through his death and resurrection, only put a nick in the edge of the curtain, to get us started, but we still have to go to the effort of pulling it apart. So we go through all sorts of spiritual calisthenics, hoping to build up the strength to rip open the curtain the rest of the way.

But we can't. Nothing we can do will break down the spiritual barrier. Even the most noble among us are not good enough. But the good news is that there is nothing we have to do. When Jesus gave himself for us, everything that needed to be done – everything that could possibly be done – was done, was finished, to open up the throne of grace, mercy, and forgiveness. The curtain that separated the Mercy Seat from the people was not just nicked, or a corner lifted; it was ripped violently apart from top to bottom.

The priests of Jesus' day, blind to the meaning behind what had happened, sealed off the Holy of Holies again. But they could not close off the permanent access given to the real throne of God. That's why the epistle to the Hebrews reminds us in chapter 4, verse 16, "Let us come boldly to the throne of our gracious God. There we will receive his mercy, and we will find grace to help us when we need it."

Any other approach gets us precisely what a battle with a tough, little tear-resistant bag gets us: nothing but peanuts.

Joseph Tkach

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## What Grace Teaches

The greatest difference between the Christian faith and all the other religions of the world can be summed up in a single word: grace. Christ died for us while we were still sinners, the apostle Paul tells us in Romans 5, verse 8. God did not wait for us to become good or righteous before he acted to save us from our sins. God loves us, and his forgiveness, his grace, comes before our ever believing the gospel.

Our faith is in something that was already true before we even knew about it – before we ever believed. That's what grace is: forgiveness that is undeserved, unearned.

When I was a boy, I learned a lesson about grace that I've never forgotten. I was about 11 years old, and I was playing with a baseball behind our house in Chicago. One thing led to another, and before long the baseball found its way through one of our windows.

Now my dad was the kind of old country disciplinarian who believed firmly in the proverb, "spare the rod and spoil the child." I'm sure I was pale with fear when he called me into the house to face the consequences of my carelessness.

But then something amazing happened. When I walked in and looked up at him, towering over me as he did at that time, I saw something different in his face. He didn't look furious – as I fully expected him to look. Instead, he looked deep in thought, like he was studying me. After what seemed like forever, he finally said, "You deserve a spanking, but I'm going to give you grace instead. You know what that means? It means don't be so careless next time."

I like to call that "the spanking I didn't get." I remember it more clearly, and it had a greater impact on me than any punishment I ever got. It not only taught me to be more careful where I threw balls around, it taught me the joy of extending grace to others. And in time it also made it plain to me what the apostle Paul meant when he wrote in Titus 2:11-14,

#### For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good.

No, God didn't wait for us to become righteous before he acted in love, mercy and grace to save us. Experience is indeed a great teacher, but grace is an even better one.

Joseph Tkach

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## Salvation by Grace

1. Does everyone fall short of what God commands? Romans 3:9-10, 23. What is the penalty of sin? Romans 6:23; 5:12. Did Jesus pay the penalty for us? 2 Corinthians 5:14-15; 1 Peter 2:24. Therefore, can we be confident that our sins have been forgiven through what he did? Acts 2:38; 10:43; 13:38-39; Romans 3:24.

God is perfect, but human beings are not. God is holy, humans are not. We do not deserve to live forever with God. No one can claim such an eternal blessing as a right. No one can claim to have earned the right to be with God forever. On judgment day, no one can say: "You have to let me in. I've been good enough." No one is ever "good enough" to obligate God to do anything for them. What we deserve is death.

However, God wants us to live with him forever. That is why he created us. He loves us and wants us, so he paid the penalty for us, as a gift. God loves us so much that he sent his only Son to die for our sins. Through his payment on our behalf, our sins are forgiven and we are given eternal life with God (John 3:16). This is wonderful news: God wants to live with us!

2. Does God live in each believer? John 14:23. Does Jesus Christ live in us? Galatians 2:20. Does the Holy Spirit live in each Christian? Romans 8:11; 1 Corinthians 3:16.

3. However, does sin also continue to live in us? Romans 7:17-23. Do Christians continue to struggle with sin? Romans 6:11-13; Ephesians 4:22-32. Is there anyone who does not sin? 1 John 1:8, 10. What must Christians therefore continue to do? Verse 9; Matthew 6:12.

No one is able to live up to the perfection that God commands. We are unable to be perfect and holy in the way God is perfect and holy (Matthew 5:48; 1 Peter 1:15-16).

Therefore, we have a continuing need for God's mercy and forgiveness. No one can say, "I've been so good that I deserve to live with God forever." When judgment day comes, everyone will need mercy. Because all Christians sin, we continue to need God's grace — and the good news is that we continue to be forgiven and made clean through the atoning work of our Savior. Salvation is a gift from start to finish.

Paul talks about forgiveness by using the term _justification,_ which means not only forgiveness but also giving us the status of being righteous. Christians are not just declared neutral, but are declared good and righteous, acceptable to God. How can this be? Let's take a closer look at what Paul wrote about justification.

4. Can a person be justified by obeying God's law? Romans 3:28; Galatians 2:16; 3:11; Titus 3:5. How then can we be justified — declared righteous and acceptable to God? Acts 13:38-39; Romans 3:24, 28; 5:1; Galatians 3:24; Titus 3:7.

We are incapable of earning our salvation. We can never perform enough good deeds to make up for the fact that we are sinners. We can never be saved on the basis of righteous things we have done. Salvation is always by God's mercy and his grace.

"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" (Ephesians 2:8-9). This gift was made possible by the death of Jesus on the cross. He paid the penalty of our sins, and through faith in him — by accepting what he has done for us — we experience forgiveness.

God's grace does not mean we are given permission to sin (Romans 3:31; 6:1). God created us to do good works (Ephesians 2:10), and grace teaches us to quit sinning (Titus 2:11-12). Throughout the New Testament, we are exhorted to obey God, and we are warned about sin. But regardless of how obedient we might be, salvation does not come from our good works, but through the grace of God.

Of all humans, Paul had an excellent claim to his own righteousness, both in the Old Testament law and in zeal for Jesus Christ. But he did not trust in his own works.

#### If someone else thinks they have reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more: ...in regard to the law, a Pharisee...as for righteousness based on the law, faultless. But whatever were gains to me I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. 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 — the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith. (Philippians 3:4-9)

The righteousness that we need for salvation cannot come from ourselves. It can come only from Jesus Christ. The good news of the gospel is that his righteousness is given to us, and we receive this by faith, not by works of the law. It is in Christ that "we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21).

"Christ Jesus has become...our righteousness, holiness and redemption" (1 Corinthians 1:30). He becomes our righteousness, and in him we become the righteousness of God. We are justified — counted among the righteous.

Many Christians haven't fully understood the gospel of salvation by the grace of Jesus Christ. Many people still think that salvation is by faith plus works. The truth is that works can't save us, since even at their best they fall short of what God has commanded.

As an illustration, let's suppose that people are at the gates of paradise, and the gatekeeper asks, "Why should I let you in?" Many Christians would respond: "Because I've been good. I went to church every week, I always gave a generous offering, I read the Bible every day, I never took anything that wasn't mine, I never looked at pornography, etc." Alcohol abstainers would mention what they did, and Sabbath keepers would mention what they did.

But the gatekeeper would reply: "So what? For one thing, you never did those things perfectly. For another, even if you did them perfectly, those things wouldn't erase your sins and corruption. If that's what God wanted, he could make machines to do those things."

The correct reply, in contrast, is that we rely on the sacrifice and righteousness of Jesus Christ, knowing we have nothing to offer God. Salvation is given to us because of God's grace revealed in Jesus Christ, nothing else. The faith and love God has granted us lead us into obedience and wholehearted devotion to him, but salvation does not depend on our success in obedience, or we wouldn't be saved. Since our obedience is never perfect, it can never count for salvation.

Even so, obedience is important. If we have faith in our Lord, we will obey him. We live for our King who died for us and now lives for us and in us (2 Corinthians 5:15). Our deepest allegiance is with him forever.

The Bible sometimes describes salvation with the word _redemption._ This word comes from the ancient slave market. People who could not pay their debts were sold into slavery. If their friends and relatives were able to get enough money to pay the debt, then they could _redeem_ or buy the person back from slavery.

To use this figure of speech for salvation, we see that we have a debt to sin that we cannot pay, and we find ourselves in the slavery of sin. We cannot work our way out of slavery, but Christ is able to pay our debt for us. His death on the cross redeemed us out of sin and debt. He purchased us, and we belong to him. We are now obligated to our new Master, and we owe him our obedience and loyalty.

God values us much more than slaves. We are his children and heirs; we are his friends and family, members of his household. And through our Savior Jesus Christ, even our broken personal relationship with God is restored! We were once enemies of God, working against him. But through Christ, we are reconciled to him, made friends again. Once we were rebels; now we are allies. We have given our allegiance to God because of what he has done for us. Let's see how Paul develops this concept.

5. How were we reconciled to God? Romans 5:8-11; 2 Corinthians 5:18. Did one person — Jesus — die for all of us? Verse 14. How then should we live? Verse 15. Do we have new life in Jesus Christ? Verse 17. What work does God then assign us? Verses 18-20.

Because Jesus died for us, we now live for him. We obey him. We have a new life. This is described in other places as being "born again" (John 3:3; 1 Peter 1:23). Our purpose and orientation in life is changed by our new relationship with God. Our new identity as God's children has practical implications for the way we live. As he is living in us, he is also changing our hearts and minds toward his purposes. The Holy Spirit leads us to continue to put off old ways and to put on Christ-like ways. Because Jesus loved us, we love him, and we love the people he loves.

As part of our love for God and neighbor, we support the "message of reconciliation" — the good news that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ — the good news that forgiveness is given through him. As Christians, we are Christ's representatives, and God is making his appeal to humanity through us. Just as Paul did, we implore people to be reconciled to God through our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

#### Once you were alienated from God and were enemies in your minds because of your evil behavior. But now he has reconciled you by Christ's physical body through death to present you holy in his sight, without blemish and free from accusation — if you continue in your faith, established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel. This is the gospel. (Colossians 1:21-23)

Peter says that Christians are "a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's special possession." And why have we been chosen? "That you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light" (1 Peter 2:9). Once we were not God's people — although he loved us, we were alienated from him. Now, through the reconciliation given to us through Christ, through the mercy of God, we are now his people, his children (verse 10).

How then should we live? Peter continues: "Dear friends, I urge you, as foreigners and exiles, to abstain from sinful desires, which wage war against your soul. Live such good lives among the pagans that, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us" (verses 11-12).

6. What does the Holy Spirit put believers into? Romans 12:5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13. What is that body? 1 Corinthians 12:27; Ephesians 1:22-23; Colossians 1:18. Whom is our fellowship with? 1 John 1:3, 7.

7. What do the believers do together? Acts 2:42. What are we exhorted to do with and for each other? Hebrews 10:24-25; 1 Peter 4:10; 1 Thessalonians 4:18; Colossians 3:16.

Throughout the New Testament, believers are often found meeting together. Although our homes may be scattered among unbelievers, we form a new community, the church. In the church, we are learning to love each other, to be reconciled to each other, to help each other. We worship God together, we pray together, we study the Bible together and encourage each other in the faith. And together, we reach out to share the gospel with those who walk in darkness.

As an organized community, the church encourages its members to serve others, each according to their ability. But our interactions are not just with one another — they are also spiritual. Our fellowship is also with the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. As we express love to one another, we also express love for God, since God wants us to love one another.

"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another" (John 13:34-35).

Michael Morrison

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## From Guilt to Grace: Romans 3

In Romans 2, Paul explains that both Jews and Gentiles need the gospel — everyone needs salvation, or rescue from judgment. Although some Jews claimed to have an advantage in salvation, Paul explains that Jews are not immune to sin and judgment. Everyone is saved in the same way. So how do people become right with God? Paul explains it in chapter 3 — but first he has to answer some objections.

### Any advantage for Jews?

Paul had preached in many cities, and he knew how people responded to his message. Jewish people often responded by saying: "We are God's chosen people. We must have some sort of advantage in the judgment, but you are saying that our own law condemns us." Paul asks the question that they do: "What advantage, then, is there in being a Jew, or what value is there in circumcision?" (3:1). What's the point of being a Jew?

Paul answers in verse 2: "Much in every way! First of all, they have been entrusted with the very words of God." The Jews have the Scriptures. That is an advantage, but there is a downside to it — those who sin under the law will be judged by the law (2:12). The law reveals requirements that the people do not meet.

So what's the advantage? Paul will say more about that in chapter 9. But here in chapter 3 his goal is not to explain how special the Jews are, but to explain that they, just like everybody else, need to be saved through Jesus Christ. He's not going to elaborate on their privileges until he has explained their need for salvation — they haven't kept the law that they boast about.

So Paul asks: "What if some [Jews] were unfaithful? Will their unfaithfulness nullify God's faithfulness?" (3:3). Will the fact that some Jews sinned cause God to back out of his promises?

"Not at all! Let God be true, and every human being a liar" (verse 4). God is always true to his word, and even though we are unfaithful, he is not. He won't let our actions turn him into a liar. He created humans for a reason, and even if we all fall short of what he wants, his plan will succeed. God chose the Jews as his people, and they fell short, but God has a way to solve the problem — and the good news is that the rescue plan applies not only to Jews, but to everyone who falls short. God is more than faithful.

Paul then quotes a scripture about God being true: "As it is written: 'So that you may be proved right when you speak and prevail when you judge'" (verse 4). This is quoted from Psalm 51:4, where David says that if God punishes him, it is because God is right. When God judges us guilty, it is because we are guilty. His covenant with Israel said that there would be unpleasant consequences for failure, and indeed, there had been many such times in Israel's checkered history. God had done what he said he would.

### Reason to sin?

Paul deals with another objection in verse 5: "But if our unrighteousness brings out God's righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us? (I am using a human argument.)" Here is the argument: If we sin, we give God an opportunity to show that he is right. We are doing God a favor, so he shouldn't punish us. It's a silly argument, but Paul deals with it. Is God unjust? "Certainly not!" he says in verse 6. "If that were so, how could God judge the world?" God said he would judge the world, and he is right in doing so.

Paul paraphrases the argument a little in verse 7: "Someone might argue, 'If my falsehood enhances God's truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?'" If my sin shows how good God is, why should he punish me? In verse 8 Paul gives another version of the argument: "Why not say — as some slanderously claim that we say — 'Let us do evil that good may result'"? Paul stops dealing with the argument and repeats his conclusion by saying, "Their condemnation is just!" These arguments are wrong. When God judges us as sinners, he is right. The gospel does not give any permission to sin.

### All have sinned

In verse 9 Paul returns to his discussion: "What shall we conclude then? Do we have any advantage?" Are we Jews better off than others? "Not at all! For we have already made the charge that Jews and Gentiles alike are all under the power of sin." Jews have no advantage here, because we are all sinners — we are all under an evil spiritual force called sin. God does not play favorites, and he does not give salvation advantages to anyone.

In a rapid-fire conclusion, Paul quotes in verses 10 to 18 a series of scriptures to support his point that everyone is a sinner. These verses mention various body parts: mind, mouth, throat, tongue, lips, feet and eyes. The picture is that people are thoroughly evil:

#### There is no one righteous, not even one [Ecclesiastes 7:20];

#### There is no one who understands; there is no one who seeks God.

#### All have turned away, they have together become worthless;

#### There is no one who does good, not even one [Psalms 14:1-3; 53:1-3].

#### Their throats are open graves; their tongues practice deceit [Psalm 5:9].

#### The poison of vipers is on their lips [Psalm 140:3].

#### Their mouths are full of cursing and bitterness [Psalm 10:7].

#### Their feet are swift to shed blood; ruin and misery mark their ways, and

#### The way of peace they do not know [Isaiah 57:8-9].

#### There is no fear of God before their eyes [Psalm 36:1].

Those scriptures are true about Gentiles, some Jews might say, but not about us. So Paul answers them in verse 19: "Whatever the law says, it says to those who are under the law." These Scriptures (the law in a larger sense) apply to people who are under the law — the Jews. They are sinners. Gentiles are, too, but Paul doesn't have to prove that — his audience already believed that.

Why do the scriptures apply to the Jews? "So that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God." Humanity will stand before the judgment seat of God, and the result is described in verse 20: "Therefore no one will be declared righteous in his sight by the works of the law." By the standard of the law, we all fall short.

What does the law do instead? Paul says: "Rather, through the law we become conscious of our sin." The law sets a standard of righteousness, but because we sin, the law can never tell us that we are righteous. It tells us that we are sinners. According to the law, we are guilty.

### A righteousness from God

Paul introduces the good news in verse 21 with the important words "But now." He's making a contrast: We can't be declared righteous by the law, but there is good news—there is a way that we _can_ be declared righteous: "But now apart from the law the righteousness of God has been made known, to which the Law and the Prophets testify." Here Paul gets back to what he announced in Romans 1:17, that the gospel reveals God's righteousness.

Since we are sinners, we cannot be declared righteous by observing the law. It must be through some other means. God will declare us righteous in a way other than through the law. And although the law does not make us righteous, it does give evidence about another means of righteousness: "This righteousness is _given_ through faith in Jesus Christ1 to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile" (3:22). This righteousness is a gift! We do not deserve it, but God _gives_ us the status of being counted as righteous. He gives this to all who believe in the gospel of Jesus Christ. Because Jesus was faithful, we can be given the status of being righteous.

This pathway to righteousness gives no advantage to the Jew — all are counted righteous in the same way. There is no difference, Paul says, "for all have sinned" — both Jews and Gentiles have sinned — "and [everyone] falls short of the glory of God." When our works are judged by the law, we all fall short, and no one deserves the salvation that God has designed for us. But our weakness will not stop God's plan!

"All are justified [declared righteous] freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (verse 24). Because of what Jesus did, we can be made right, and it is done as a gift, by God's grace. We are not made sinless and perfect, but in the courtroom of God, we are declared righteous instead of guilty, we are accounted as acceptable to God and as faithful to the covenant. Whether we feel forgiven or not, we _are_ forgiven because Christ paid our debt in full.

What permits God to change the verdict? Paul uses a variety of metaphors or word-pictures to explain this. Jesus has paid a price to rescue us from slavery. He has bought us back; that is what "redemption" means. That is one way to look at it, in financial terms. Courtroom terms have also been used, and in the next verse Paul uses words from Jewish worship:

"God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood — to be received by faith." God himself provided the payment, the sacrifice that sets aside our sin. For "sacrifice of atonement," Paul uses the Greek word _hilasterion,_ the word used for the mercy seat on top of the ark of the covenant, a place where Israel's sins were atoned every year on the Day of Atonement.2

Because of his love and mercy, God provided Jesus as the means by which we can be set "at one" with him. That atonement is received by us through faith; we believe that Jesus' death did something that allows us to be saved. Paul is talking about three aspects of salvation: The cause of our salvation is what Jesus did; the means by which it is offered to us is grace; and the way we receive it is faith.

God provided Jesus as an atonement, verse 25 says, "to demonstrate his righteousness" — to show that he is faithful to his promises — "because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished." Normally, a judge who let criminals go free would be called unjust (Exodus 23:7; Deuteronomy 25:1). Is God doing that? No, this verse says that God is not unjust when he justifies the wicked because he has provided Jesus as a means of atonement.

He is within his legal rights, to use a human analogy, in letting people escape because their sins have already been compensated for in the death of Jesus Christ. Even for people who lived before Christ, the payment was as good as done. In one sense, that applies to everyone, to the whole world: sins are paid for even before people become aware of it and believe it. But only those who believe it can be freed from the fear of punishment.

Romans 3:26 says that God "did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus." In the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God demonstrates that he is just even when he declares sinners to be just. He has "earned the right" to count us as righteous.

### All are equal

"Where, then, is boasting?" Paul asks in verse 27. Can the Jew boast about advantages over Gentiles? When it comes to salvation, there's nothing to boast about. We can't even boast about faith. Faith does not make us better than other people — we are only receiving what God gives. We can't take credit for that, or brag about it.

Boasting "is excluded. Because of what law? The law that requires works? No, because of the law that requires faith" (verse 27). If people were saved by keeping the law, then they could brag about how well they did. But when salvation is by grace and faith, no one can boast. Paul is making two points that reinforce each other: That no one can boast, and that righteousness is by grace rather than by the law or by works. It takes faith because we don't have the physical evidence to prove that we are righteous—all we have is the promise of God in Jesus Christ.

In verse 28, he says it again: "For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law." Being counted right with God on the day of judgment can never be on the basis of the law. The law can't do anything except point out where we fall short. If we are going to be accepted by God, it will not be on the basis of the law, but because of the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

"Is God the God of Jews only?" Paul asks. "Is he not the God of Gentiles too? Yes, of Gentiles too, since there is only one God" (verses 29-30). God is not the exclusive possession of the Jews. According to the gospel, God "will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through that same faith." He makes Jews righteous in the same way that he makes Gentiles righteous, and that is through faith, not through the law.

"Do we...nullify the law by this faith?" Of course not, Paul says in verse 31. "Rather, we uphold the law." The gospel does not contradict the law, but it puts law in its proper place. The law was never designed as a means of salvation. But the salvation it hinted at is now available to all through Jesus Christ. Paul does not yet say how we "uphold the law." For that, we will have to continue reading in his letter.

### Things to think about

##### Did the Jews, by having the Scriptures, have an advantage in salvation? (verse 2)

##### Does our sin give God an opportunity to be more gracious? (verse 7)

##### Are people really worthless, no one good for anything? (verses 10-12)

##### If the law can't declare us righteous, what is it good for? (verse 20)

##### In verses 22, 24, 26 and 28, Paul tells us how we are justified or declared righteous. What does he stress by repetition?

##### How does Jesus' sacrifice demonstrate God's justice? (verse 25)

##### How does Paul want us to respond to this chapter?

### Endnotes

1 The NRSV footnote on verse 22 says the Greek words can also mean "through the faith of Jesus Christ." It is theologically correct that we are saved through the faithfulness of Jesus, through his obedience (see Romans 5:19). The only reason that we can have faith in him is because he was completely faithful. But in order for us to experience the results of his faithfulness, we also need faith in him, in what he did. We do not need to resolve the question about the best translation of Romans 3:22 at this point. It is possible that Paul's original readers were not completely sure of what Paul meant with this phrase. Paul may have given them a phrase that required them to continue reading to get the whole picture.

2 The cover of the ark was the location of atonement, but it was not a place of sacrifice. It may therefore be better to translate _hilasterion_ as "place of atonement," as done in the NRSV footnote. Some translations use the word "propitiation," a word Greeks used to describe someone appeasing the anger of the gods. But this would mean that God supplied something to appease his own anger, which implies that he didn't really _want_ to be angry, but had to perform a ritual so he could get his original wish. This puts God into a convoluted position; it is simpler to say that God provided a means of atonement, because his original wish was atonement, being in fellowship with the humans he had created.

Michael Morrison

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## Grace and Peace: Ephesians 2

Paul's letter to the church at Ephesus is filled with numerous theological and practical insights. Chapter 2 takes us from death to life, from hostility to peace. This chapter shows us that there is an important connection between God's grace and human interrelationships.

### Spiritual death

Paul begins by telling his readers: "You were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live" (Eph. 2:1-2). All humans start in a state of spiritual death, whether we have many transgressions or only a few. A life not oriented to God is dead.

Paul is talking about average people, socially respectable people. When they "followed the ways of this world," they were following the devil — "the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient" (verse 2). In living the way they thought best, they were unwittingly imitating the devil and disobeying God.

Christians did it, too: "All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath" (verse 3). We lived with no thought other than to take care of our desires, and as a result, we were objects of wrath — under the judgment of God (Rom. 2:5).

### Spiritual life

But God's wrath is not the end of the story: "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" (Eph. 2:4-5). The judge of all humanity is full of mercy, and even when we were guilty and without excuse, he forgave us. Insofar as we sin, we are dead, but as much as we are in Christ, we are alive.

Life in Christ is much more than the physical existence we are familiar with — our new life has a different quality to it, a heavenly quality, an eternal quality. When we become Christians, our identity changes. We become new people. The old self dies, and a new person lives. We died with Christ, we were buried with Christ, and we also live with Christ.

"God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus" (verse 6). Those who have faith in Christ are seated with him in glory. It is so sure that Paul can say that it has been done.

God did this "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" (verse 7). God's grace is already at work in our lives, but the extent of his grace will be revealed with much greater clarity in the future.

Paul then summarizes the way God is working: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith — and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God" (verse 8). In Greek, the words grace and faith are feminine, but Paul uses a neuter form of the word this. Paul is not saying that faith is a gift of God, or that grace is a gift of God — they are, but here Paul is saying that all of salvation is a gift of God. None of it comes from ourselves — "not by works, so that no one can boast" (verse 9). No one can brag about having faith or works. Since God has done it, he gets all the credit.

"For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do" (verse 10). Even our good works are a result of the way God is working in us. He created us for his purpose, to do his will.

Paul expects believers to be obedient. He says that we used to be disobedient, but that in Christ we are created anew, so that we might have a different foundation for how we live. This new life is a result of our salvation, not the cause of it. Our works should be good, but they can never be good enough that we deserve to be saved. We are saved by grace, by God's mercy and love, through Jesus Christ.

### Unity in Christ

Paul then begins to address a practical matter within the church, the tensions between Jewish and gentile believers. Because we are saved by grace and because we are saved for good works, our attitudes and behavior toward one another ought to change.

He begins by writing to the gentiles: "Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called `uncircumcised' by those who call themselves `the circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men) — remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world" (vv. 11-12).

The Jews looked down on the gentiles, calling them "uncircumcised." This insult was a reminder than the gentiles were not in the covenant of Abraham and not included in the blessings promised to him. Although circumcision was a human work, it reflected a spiritual reality. The gentiles were separated from Christ, God, hope and promise. But that has now changed: "But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ" (verse 13). Once they were separated from Christ; now they are united with him. Once they were excluded; now they are included. They have hope, and they have God, through the death of Jesus Christ.

"For he himself is our peace, who has made the two one" (verse 14). What "two" is Paul talking about? He is talking about Jews and gentiles. The peoples who used to be in different spiritual categories are now united in Christ. The Jews were just like the gentiles in being spiritually dead; the gentiles are now like Jews in that through Christ they are members of the people of God.

Jesus has made the two peoples one by bringing the outsiders in, by bringing the gentiles just as close as he does the Jews. Through Christ they both have the promises, the citizenship and the hope, and they have God. Where there was rivalry between Jews and gentiles, Jesus has made peace, because both peoples are equally saved by grace and no one has any reason to feel superior.

### Abolishing the law

How did Jesus make peace between Jews and gentiles? It is because he "has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility" (verse 14). And what was the wall that created hostility between Jews and gentiles? Paul answers this question when he says that Jesus destroyed the barrier "by abolishing in his flesh the law with its commandments and regulations" (verse 15).

The wall of hostility was the law, which had commandments and regulations separating Jew from gentile. This law defined who was on which side of the barrier, it said who had the promises and who belonged to the people of God.

Some of the Jews had created laws that made the Jew-gentile hostility worse, but Paul is not talking about human-made laws. Christ did not need to abolish human-made laws, because they had no spiritual authority in the first place, and Paul is talking about barriers in connection with God. He is talking about spiritual realities, not human traditions.

Paul is talking about laws that divided Jew from gentile in the sight of God, laws that had to be abolished by the cross of Christ (verse 16). Jesus did not have to die to eliminate human regulations. Rather, he died to bring an end to the old covenant. Ephesians 2 is therefore in agreement with what we read in Acts 15, 2 Corinthians 3, Galatians 3-4, Colossians 2 and Hebrews 7-10.

The old covenant came to an end with the death of Jesus Christ. The old covenant had defined Jew and gentile, creating the distinction, and Jesus made the two peoples one by destroying that divider. Jesus abolished the old covenant with its regulations and commandments. The people of God are no longer defined by old covenant laws.

Christ's purpose, Paul says, "was to create in himself one new man out of the two, thus making peace, and in this one body to reconcile both of them to God through the cross, by which he put to death their hostility" (vv. 15-16). Before Christ, there were two kinds of people: dead Jews and dead gentiles. Both peoples needed to be reconciled to God, and this is what Christ did on the cross. The result is a new people, a people who are alive in Christ, alive to God.

"He came and preached peace to you who were far away [gentiles] and peace to those who were near [Jews]. For through him we both have access to the Father by one Spirit" (vv. 17-18). Paul is proclaiming equality for gentile believers and unity of all Christians. People of different ethnic groups, people of different denominations, are one in Christ.

### One building

"Consequently, you [gentiles] are no longer foreigners and aliens, but fellow citizens with God's people and members of God's household" (verse 19). Through Christ, we are members of God's family.

Paul then shifts to a different metaphor: "Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets" (verse 20). Moses is not our foundation. The apostles and prophets are — and Paul is probably speaking of New Testament prophets, as he does in Ephesians 3:5. But even more important than this foundation is the fact that "Christ Jesus himself [is] the chief cornerstone." He is our primary point of reference.

"In him the whole building is joined together and rises to become a holy temple in the Lord" (verse 21). Our unity is in Christ, and as we are growing in him, we are a place of acceptable worship.

"And in him you too are being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit" (verse 22). As we are in Christ, through faith in Christ, through seeing ourselves as his people, we are growing closer to one another, and God is living in us by his Spirit. If the Holy Spirit is living in us, then God is living in us, for the Holy Spirit is God.

Michael Morrison

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## Making Grace Look Good: Titus 2

In the second chapter of Titus, Paul tells us that people often judge the gospel by the way we live. Do we make the gospel look good, or do we give people a reason to complain? The gospel teaches grace, and grace teaches us something about the way we live.

### Self-control: a good example

Paul tells Titus, "You must teach what is in accord with sound doctrine." He then describes teachings that are reliable: "Teach the older men to be temperate, worthy of respect, self-controlled, and sound in faith, in love and in endurance" (Titus 2:1-2). Titus is working with believers who need some guidance about their behavior.

Paul begins with three virtues praised by Greek philosophers—not going to extremes, acting respectably and having self-control. He then gives three virtues important in Christianity: having right beliefs, showing love, and maintaining these qualities even when it is difficult.

For women, Paul gives slightly different advice: "Likewise, teach the older women to be reverent in the way they live, not to be slanderers or addicted to much wine, but to teach what is good" (verse 3). These vices are not typically associated with women today, and Paul could easily point these teachings at men—they are appropriate for all Christians.

Paul expects older women to be able to teach: "They can train the younger women to love their husbands and children, to be self-controlled and pure, to be busy at home, to be kind, and to be subject to their husbands" (verses 4-5). Paul does not tell Titus to teach the young women directly, but he asks the older women to lead them.

Paul lists a number of roles that women had in first-century society and then explains why Christian women should perform them: "so that no one will malign the word of God." Christianity has several beliefs and practices that unbelievers do not like, and Christians cannot do everything that unbelievers want. But in many customs, Christians can conform, and this is what Paul wants.

If people are going to criticize, let it be for essential matters, not for unnecessary differences. If we break social customs, people will be more skeptical about everything we say, so we want to keep our differences to a minimum. Paul is concerned about how our behavior might affect the gospel.

"Similarly, encourage the young men to be self-controlled. In everything set them an example by doing what is good" (verses 6-7). Titus will teach not just by words, but also in what he does. Even his style of teaching is important: "In your teaching show integrity, seriousness and soundness of speech that cannot be condemned." Why? Because our reputation as bearers of the gospel is important: "So that those who oppose you may be ashamed because they have nothing bad to say about us." People will disagree with our beliefs, but we do not want to give any extra offense.

Paul then comments on one more social group: "Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive" (verses 9-10).

Paul is advising believers to perform their social roles well—he is not necessarily saying that those social roles are good. But we can with some modification apply what Paul says to employment situations today. Believers should perform their jobs well, being cooperative, trustworthy, and respectful to everyone.

Why? To make the gospel attractive, so that people will be more likely to listen to what we say about Jesus. The way we live, the way we work, the way we treat our families and neighbors, all make a difference in how receptive people will be to the message we share.

### Grace-based behavior

Paul then gives a theological reason for teaching people to be well-behaved: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men" (verse 11). Or the Greek could also be translated, "The grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all" (NRSV). Not everyone has seen it yet, but salvation is available to everyone on the basis of grace.

And what does this grace do? "It teaches us to say 'No' to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" (verse 12). Grace—if we understand it correctly— teaches us to reject sin and to do good. As children of God, we want to be like the Son of God, but we cannot do this on our own strength. It is only by God's grace that we are enabled to do what he wants.

This is a good way to live "in this present age," but the rewards are not necessarily seen in this age. Therefore, "we wait for the blessed hope—the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ" (verse 13). Here, Jesus is clearly called God, and Paul says that we await his return.

What did Jesus do? He "gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good" (verse 14). He redeemed us from sin. But Christ has a purpose for us beyond that: He wants to purify us, to eliminate the sin, and to create in us a desire for good behavior.

So Paul summarizes his point: "These, then, are the things you should teach. Encourage and rebuke with all authority. Do not let anyone despise you" (verse 15). Jesus wants people who are eager to do good, so Titus, as a messenger of Christ, should encourage good behavior and speak out against bad behavior. He should not do anything that would cause people to despise him, because they would then despise the Savior he represented.

As Titus reads this letter to his congregation, Paul is also speaking to them: "Titus is going to have to correct you on some of your behavior. But he is simply doing what I would have done, and doing what grace tells you, if you are willing to hear what it says." In the same way today, we should not despise those who exhort us to resist sin and do good.

### Things to think about

##### What virtues are most needed in our culture? (verse 2)

##### What behaviors today, although not sins, might cause people to despise the gospel? (verse 5)

##### Paul said that slaves should submit (verse 9). Was it therefore wrong for Christians to try to abolish slavery in the 19th century?

##### Grace means that we are not penalized for sin; how then does it teach us to avoid sin? (verse 12)

Michael Morrison

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## Grace and Discipline

Christians live _in_ grace and _by_ grace, not by works. We cannot boast about our own works, no matter how good they are. God gets all the glory, for he is the one who motivates us to do anything good. Even the faith we have is a gift of God.

So, to ensure that God gets all the glory, should we sit back and do nothing? Should we not study unless God motivates us to feel like it, should we not pray unless he motivates us to feel like it, should we not do any good works unless he initiates them? Does any talk of discipline take the initiative away from God, give people opportunity to boast, and become a form of legalism?

Is discipline an enemy of grace? If it's all of grace, what need is there for any discipline? If God does the work, why should we try?

Parents: have you ever taught a child to do something by doing it with the child – so much so that you were actually doing all the work and the child was just following along? Did you want the child to try, or to quit trying? Give an example.

In 1 Corinthians 15:10, Paul tells us, "By the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them – yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me." Who was doing the working – was it God, or was it Paul? What characteristic of God did Paul say was working in him?

###

### Key Scripture: Romans 12:1-8 (NIV)

##### 1. After Paul has explained to the Romans that salvation is by grace through faith in Jesus Christ as our atoning sacrifice, he now begins to stress some practical applications. Does he exhort us to be passive, to wait upon the Lord for him to work in us? Verses 1-2.

##### 2. How might Paul respond if we asked him: "You tell us to be transformed by the _renewing of our minds._ How do we go about that?" Is that something we do, or do we wait for God to do it?

##### 3. Paul says that we are members not just of Jesus Christ, but also of one another – we belong to one another (verse 5). How might this affect our behavior?

##### 4. Paul talks about spiritual gifts – given by grace – in verses 6-8. Do these gifts of grace do their own work in our lives, or is there something we are supposed to do with them? Do our efforts take anything away from God's glory?

##### 5. In Galatians 2:20, Paul said, "I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God." Who was doing the living – Paul, or Christ? (See 1 Corinthians 9:27 and Romans 15:18).

In Colossians 1:29, Paul explained how he proclaimed Christ: "To this end I labor, struggling with all his energy, which so powerfully works in me." Who was doing the working in Paul's life? Are we to strive for grace in the same way? How can we labor without taking any credit for it?

John Piper says that God gives us faith, but yet it is still we who believe and trust. "It is unbiblical and irrational to say that, because the grace of God produces in us an active trust in God, we don't need to exert an active trust in God. Is it not irrational to say, 'God enables us to trust him; therefore we don't need to trust him?'" (http://www.soundofgrace.com/piper98/09-20-98.htm). How might this principle apply to works?

### Challenges for growth

##### 1. How can we work as hard as Paul did without being legalistic? Can we ask God for more zeal than we really want?

##### 2. If we don't want that much zeal, why not? What is more important to us than zeal?

##### 3. Since we belong to one another, what is my responsibility toward _you_ to help you in obeying Paul's exhortations?

##### 4. Do we look on grace as a cover for wrong-doing, or as a motivation for right-doing?

Michael Morrison

## Grace and Obedience

Following centuries of debate, it seems that Christians still have not settled on how best to speak about the connection between grace (faith in God's grace in Jesus Christ) and obedience. Biblically grounded Christian teachers recognize that salvation is God's work and that it is received by faith. They also recognize that the resulting life with Christ involves obedience. The problem arises in how to affirm the one without denying (or severely qualifying) the other. The challenge is avoiding either lawlessness (antinomianism) or works-righteousness.

### Both-and?

Most recognize the validity of both grace and obedience (faith and works). Rather than going the "either-or" route, most embrace some form of the "both-and" approach. However, this approach typically has little to say about the "and"—about how grace and obedience are actually connected. The result is that grace and obedience are artificially laminated together or stacked on top of one another. It is as if they are put into a room together and told to "get along."

Following this approach, efforts to correct perceived errors on one side typically involve emphasizing the other. If the perceived problem is too much works, then grace is emphasized. If it's too much grace, then obedience is emphasized. In similar fashion, various ministries emphasize one or the other, depending upon which they think is more dangerous or prevalent. I find that the result of this approach is a sort of "seesaw theology" where the connection between law (works) and grace (faith) remains vague if not altogether absent.

In contrast, I find that the Bible deeply relates and integrates grace and obedience as fundamental to Christian faith and life. For example, in Romans 1:5 and 16:26 the apostle Paul says that bringing about this integration was the goal of his ministry. In 14:23 he says that any obedience that does not spring from faith is sin! Hebrews 11 offers illustrations of people who obeyed God "by faith." Then in 1 John 5 we are told that God's commands are not burdensome because of the victory of faith in God's grace (verses 3-4). Jesus himself reminds us that his burden is easy and his yoke light (Matthew 11:29-30) and that we are God's "friends," not his slaves. In Galatians, Paul tells us that "faith is made effective through love" (5:6 NRSV, footnote).

### The nature of "AND"

There are dozens of places in the New Testament that clearly establish this connection between grace (faith) and obedience (love for God and for others). But how does the connection work? What is the nature of the AND? It is found in the person of Jesus, who alone embodies fully the character, mind, attitude and purpose of God. The object of our faith is Jesus Christ, and the essence of that faith is trusting in Jesus as God in person according to who he is and what he has done. Faith is our response to who Jesus is in person, word and deed. We put our trust in God because of who Jesus Christ is. And he himself is the grace of God towards us.

Jesus is the gospel. He is our salvation. And we receive all the benefits of who he is as we trust in him and cast aside (repent of) all rival objects of trust. We then enjoy our union and communion with Jesus as our Lord and God. Our lives are united to him and we share in his life, participating with him in all he is doing and will do in our relationship of trust (faith).

We have our being by being in fellowship and communion with Jesus, receiving from him all that he has for us, and he taking from us all that we give him. In that union and communion we are transformed, bit by bit (2 Corinthians 3:18) to share more of Christ's own glorified human nature, his character. We can count on this on-going gracious work of Christ by the Spirit even if much still remains hidden (Colossians 3:3) and we remain mere earthen vessels (2 Corinthians 4:7).

### Our view of Jesus

The problem is that people have too small a view of Jesus and thus a restricted faith in him. Though they trust him for future salvation (getting into heaven), that's pretty much it. However, when we look closely at scripture, we see that Jesus is both Savior and Commander. Jesus saves us by grace and also commands things of us.

We know that our obedience to his commands does not earn us salvation, so why is obedience important? Perhaps we think that we must obey simply because our Commander says so—because he is big and powerful and we had better obey or else! Approached in this way, obedience becomes an act of will in response to the might and seemingly arbitrary will of God. This is the obedience of a slave.

The problem with this approach to obedience is that it reflects a shrunken conception of Jesus and what he offers. We need to see all of who Jesus is and all of what he offers if we are to grasp all of what we can trust him for. We begin by understanding that Jesus is Lord of the whole cosmos, the entire universe; Lord of all reality, and he has a good and loving purpose for it all. He is redeeming all things and will renew heaven and earth. He is Lord and Savior over every aspect of human life and has a purpose for every dimension of our existence. It is all to be a channel of his blessing to us and through us to others. All of it, every relationship, is meant to lead to life and life abundantly. Even our eating and drinking is to reflect the very glory of our life-giving God (1 Corinthians 10:31). Every relationship is to be a fruitful gift exchange that contributes to a fullness of life and so a fullness of love.

Jesus' authority extends into every aspect of created existence, into every dimension of life at every level: mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, animal, human, social, cultural, linguistic, artistic, judicial, economic, psychological, philosophical, religious and spiritual. All this has its origin in fellowship and communion with God through Christ. This relationship with God through Christ works its way into every avenue of life under his redeeming lordship. God's grace has to do with _everything_. That's the foundation of a Christian worldview.

Everything we receive from God we pass on to others to contribute to God's universe-wide purposes. This is especially true in our relationships. We receive forgiveness of sins—renewing grace to start again with hope. We receive God's generosity, providing us all the fruit of the Spirit. We receive comfort, love, transforming power and a purpose and direction in life to be a sign and witness to the grace and goodness of God. We become witnesses to the truth and holy loving character of God. All these things point to eternal life—life with God as his beloved children in holy, loving unity.

### Trust and obey

Our faith is a trust in God through Christ for all these things, not just for "going to heaven" or "being in the kingdom" someday. Every command of God and our every act of obedience is keyed to some aspect of what we can trust God for:

##### We forgive because we have been and will be forgiven.

##### We love, because we are first loved by God.

##### We love our enemies because God first loved us and also loves (wants his best) for his and our enemies.

##### We can be generous because God is generous with us.

##### We can be truthful and honest because God is truthful and honest and will bring out the truth in the end.

##### We can be creative and helpful because God is creative and helpful to us.

##### We comfort others in their grief because God comforts us in our grief.

##### We can be patient because God is patient with us.

##### We can be peacemakers because God is a peacemaker.

##### We can pursue justice and right relationships at every level, because God is just and righteous.

##### We can be reconcilers because God is a reconciler.

All our doing by faith is participating in what God is doing through Christ and in the Spirit. That means everything we do is fellowship and communion with Christ. We never act alone—because we are never alone but are united to Christ as his brothers and sisters and members of the family of God.

### Imperatives flow from indicatives

We obey by faith when we see all of who Jesus is in any given situation, trust him to be faithful in that situation and then act as if he will be faithful. That is, we act on our faith in who he is. You will find that, connected to every command in Scripture is some kind of reference to who God is and what he can be trusted for. Seeing the connection between what God can be trusted for and what he then directs us to do generates the obedience of faith.

James Torrance spoke of this by saying that every _imperative_ of grace is built on a foundation of an _indicative_ of grace. The reason there is always a connection is because all of God's commands to us (the imperatives) arise out of his own character, heart, nature and purpose, including everything he has done for us in Jesus Christ (the indicatives). God is not arbitrary—his will for us always is informed and controlled by his nature and character as the Triune God who came to us in Jesus Christ so that we might have fellowship and communion with him in holy love.

_Faith_ in God's grace arises out of a trust in God because of Jesus Christ, and _obedience_ to the God of grace arises out of a trust in God because of Jesus Christ. Faith and obedience have one and the same source—the faithfulness of God in Christ. They both are a response to who Christ is. They both have the same Trinitarian, Incarnational theological source. They both are the fruit of a trusting relationship with God through Christ in the Spirit.

### Guidelines for preaching/teaching

Here are guidelines that I've developed to help keep grace and obedience together in Jesus:

##### 1. Never call for an act of obedience without first showing how that call to action corresponds to something we can trust God for. Always look for the indicatives of grace that are the foundation for the imperatives (commands) of grace in every biblical passage.

##### 2. Always indicate the character of the gracious, saving, redeeming Commander. Never present God as a merely a commander with a strong will disconnected from his heart, mind, character and purpose, which we see in Jesus Christ. Always begin by answering the foundational question, Who are you, Lord? Doing so makes our preaching and teaching truly Trinitarian and Incarnational.

##### 3. Never simply preach to a person's will or power of choice. Behind every act of will and choice is a desire, a hope, a love, a fear, a trust or distrust. That is, behind every act there is belief or unbelief, trust or distrust in God. Preach to persons' hearts, their affections, their yearnings concerning the character, purpose and heart of God and his desire for our fellowship and communion with him. Preach what God can be trusted for. He can be counted on to keep his promises. Feed people's faith, hope and love for God. Obedience will flow out of that.

##### 4. Do not preach: "If you...then God." Doing so tempts people into legal obedience and works-righteousness. Instead, preach: " _Since_ God in Christ by the Spirit...then you ____." Or, " _As_ you do x, y or z out of trust, you will be receiving what God offers us in Christ." For example, say, " _As_ we confess our sins, we experience the forgiveness that God has already given us in Christ."

##### 5. Present obedience as "going to work with God"—as an act of fellowship with God that involves us in what the Spirit of God is doing.

##### 6. Preach obedience as a "get to," not a "have to." Preach it as the privilege of a child of God, not the grit-your-teeth duty of the slave of a willful God.

##### 7. Do not seek to motivate others on the basis of trying to close a supposed "credibility gap" between the "reality" of this fallen world and an ideal that we suppose God hopes for. It is not our calling to build the kingdom or to make God's ideal actual. Rather, preach the reality of who God is and what he does (and has done), and the calling we have to participate with God in making visible a bit of that reality. With this approach, our only choice is to affirm and participate in the reality that God has established in Christ by the Spirit or to deny and to refuse to participate. We have no power to change that reality, but only to choose whether we will participate.

##### 8. Preach and teach the grace of God as a finished work—a reality that we can count on even if it is hidden for now. Do not teach it as a _potential_ that God has made possible _if_ we do x, y or z—God is not dependent upon our actions. Rather, he invites our participation in what he has done, is doing and will do. Preach like Jesus did: "The kingdom of God has come near, so repent and believe in that good news." Preach like Peter did: "Since God has made Jesus Lord and Savior, therefore repent and believe." Notice that the desired action is presented as a response to who God is and what he has done.

##### 9. Never preach as if God cannot be more faithful than we are—as if God is limited by what we do or don't do. Paul says that, "If we are faithless, he [God] remains faithful" (2 Timothy 2:13). We may miss out on being involved, but God will still accomplish his good purposes. God does not need us, but he delights in having his children involved in what he is doing. We were created for fellowship (communion, partnership) with God.

##### 10. Do not grant reality-making to human actions, as if what we do makes "all the difference." Christ alone gets that credit. Our actions, whether they be great or small (as small as a cup of water, or a mustard seed of faith), amount only to a few loaves and fish to feed 5000. They are signs pointing to the coming kingdom of God. We are mere witnesses, and our sign-acts are partial, imperfect, temporary and only provisional. But by God's grace, the Spirit uses even these meager things to point people to Christ so that they may put their entire trust in him according to who he really is.

##### 11. Realize that you will have to trust mightily in the unconditioned grace of God to bring about the obedience of faith in order to preach and teach this way and not succumb to the temptation to revert back to making it sound like God's grace is dependent upon our response (and thus conditional upon our action).

##### 12. Know that you, like Paul, will not be able to prevent some people from trying to take advantage of this grace (even though taking advantage of it is not receiving it, but rejecting it!). You will also be accused by some, just like Paul was, of encouraging sin and disobedience (antinomianism)! But Paul did not change his message of grace under the pressure of such accusations. We must not attempt to prevent this rejection and abuse of grace by changing our message to a conditioned grace or an arbitrary obedience, as happened in Galatia. Making that switch would be a denial of the gospel of God in Jesus Christ.

I hope you can see how I think this biblical orientation brings together grace and obedience in an organic, personal and integrated way so that there is no "either-or" separation, nor a simplistic seesaw "both-and" juxtaposition of two different things. Those who love and trust God through Christ in the Spirit as Lord of the universe will desire to be faithful to him and with him in every dimension of life here and now, even in our current fallen condition.

Gary W. Deddo

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## Too Much Grace?

Sometimes I hear expressed a concern that we emphasize grace too much. The suggested corrective is that we should counter-balance teaching about grace with teaching about obedience, righteousness and other obligations mentioned in Scripture, especially those in the New Testament. I have been reflecting on this concern and think I might have something useful to offer concerning the nature of grace and our response.

### A legitimate concern

Those who worry about extending "too much grace" sometimes have a legitimate concern. Sadly, some people teach that because we are saved by grace and not by works, it makes no difference how we live. For them, grace means no obligations, rules or expected patterns of relationship. For them, grace means that pretty much anything goes, since it's all forgiven beforehand. This erroneous view sees grace as a free pass—carte blanche permission to do whatever one wants. In my experience, most people who hold this view, or something like it, don't go quite this far—they seem to know that there are some limits. However, some people do hold an extreme, and I believe unbiblical, view of grace.

Living without or against any laws or rules is known as antinomianism. This problem has been written and preached about throughout church history. Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who was a Christian martyr under the Nazis, called it "cheap grace" in his book _The Cost of Discipleship_. Antinomianism is addressed in the New Testament. Paul referred to it when addressing the accusation that his emphasis on grace was encouraging people to "continue in sin in order that grace may abound" (Romans 6:1, _NRSV_ ). Paul's reply was short and emphatic: "By no means!" (verse 2). Then a few sentences later he repeats the charge against him and answers it: "What then? Should we sin because we are not under law but under grace? By no means!" (verse 15).

### But what is the real problem and solution?

There was no ambiguity in Paul's response to the charge of antinomianism. Those who argue that grace means "anything goes because it's all covered" are mistaken. But why? What's gone wrong? Is the problem really "too much grace"? And is the solution to counter-balance grace with something else? Is that how Paul and the rest of the New Testament writers understood the problem? Was that how they sought to remedy it? I think the answer to both questions is clearly, "by no means!"

The New Testament revelation, founded in Jesus Christ himself, identifies the nature of the problem and its solution quite differently. Paul did not change his message of grace and he warned against those who would, especially in his letter to the Galatians.

Rather than being "too much grace," the real problem is a misunderstanding of both grace and obedience. Ironically, those who worry about "too much grace" hold the same misunderstanding about grace as those who have no worries at all and so go merrily on their way without giving further thought to living a life of faithfulness to Jesus Christ and the instructions given in the New Testament. Their misunderstanding of grace trips them up and undermines their ability to live a life of joyful obedience in the freedom of Christ—a freedom and joy that both Paul and Jesus talk about.

It took me many years to get to the bottom of this issue, and I didn't get there without a lot of help from others who I learned from, some in person and others through their writings. So let me now try to lay out what I found.

The problem is not too much grace, nor is the solution to counter-balance grace with an equal insistence on obedience, works or service. _The real problem is thinking that grace means God makes an exception to a rule, a requirement or an obligation_. That is a common, everyday misunderstanding of grace. If grace involved merely allowing for exceptions to rules, then yes, a lot of grace would simply yield a lot of exceptions. And if God was said to be all-gracious, then, we could expect that for every obligation or responsibility God would make an exception. The more grace, then the more exceptions to obedience. The less grace, the fewer exceptions allowed. A nice clean proportion. If we have to allow some room for grace in this scheme, then the only question is where to put the balance between grace and requirements: 25/75? 50/50? 75/25?

Such a scheme perhaps describes the best that human grace can achieve. But note that this approach pits grace against obedience. It puts them at odds with one another—always pushing and pulling one another; back and forth, never really settling down, since they fight against one another. Each one undoes or negates the other. Being in perpetual contradiction, they have no hope of ever getting along. Folks who assume that "this is just the way things have to be" experience this tension within themselves. Externally their lives might look like a teeter-totter, tipping now on one side and then on the other. But such a scheme does not represent God's kind of grace. The truth about grace sets us free from this false dichotomy.

### God's grace in person

Question: How does the Bible actually define grace? Answer: Jesus Christ himself is God's grace to us. Paul's benediction that ends 2 Corinthians refers to "the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ." Grace is what God freely gives us in his incarnate Son, who in turn, graciously communicates to us God's love and restores us to fellowship with God. What Jesus does towards us reveals to us the nature and character of the Father and the Holy Spirit. Scripture tells us that Jesus bears the stamp of God's exact character (Hebrews 1:3). It says that "he is the image of the invisible God" and that "God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him" (Colossians 1:15, 19). He who has seen him has seen the Father, and if we know him we will know the Father (John 14:9, 7).

Jesus explains that he only does "what he sees his Father doing" (John 5:19). He tells us that only he knows the Father and he alone reveals him (Matthew 11:27). John tells us that this Word of God, who has existed from the beginning with God, took on a human existence and has shown us "the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth." While "the law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ." In fact, "from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace." This Son who has existed in the heart of God from all eternity "has made him known" (John 1:14-18).

Jesus is God's grace to us—revealing in word and in action that God himself is full of grace. Grace isn't just one of the things God happens to do every now and then. Grace is who God is. God gives us his grace out of his own nature, the exact same character we meet in Jesus. He does not give out of a dependence upon us, nor does he give because we somehow obligate him to extend his good gifts to us. God gives grace because he has a giving nature. That means that God gives us his grace in Jesus Christ, freely. Paul calls grace a free gift from God in his letter to the Romans (5:15-17; 6:23, _NRSV_ ). And in his letter to the Ephesians, he memorably declared: "For by grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God — not the result of works, so that no one may boast" (Ephesians 2:8-9, _NRSV_ ).

All that God gives us he gives freely out of his own goodness, out of his desire to do good to all that is less than and other than himself. God's acts of grace have their source in God's good, freely giving nature. So God continues to give freely of his goodness even when it meets up with resistance, rebellion and disobedience from his creatures. In response to sin, he freely gives his forgiveness and reconciliation in and through his Son's atonement. God, who is light and in whom is no darkness, gives himself to us freely—in the Son, by the Spirit, so that we might have abundant life (1 John 1:5; John 10:10).

### Was God always gracious?

Unfortunately it has often been said that God originally (even before the Fall) agreed to give of his goodness (to Adam and Eve and then to Israel) only if his creatures fulfilled certain conditions (obligations) that he set out for them. If they didn't, he would not extend much of his goodness to them. He especially would not extend forgiveness and eternal life.

This erroneous viewpoint sees God as having a contractual, _if you-then I_ relationship with his creatures. That contract has conditions or obligations (rules or laws) that humanity must meet in order to receive what God is offering. According to this view, God's primary concern is conformity to his rules. If we don't measure up, God will withhold his best from us. Worse than that, he will give us what is not good, what leads to death, not life; both now and in eternity.

This erroneous view sees law as the deepest thing about God's nature and thus the most fundamental aspect of God's relationship with his creatures. He wills what he wills, and he blesses us only when we fulfill certain obligations. This God is essentially a contract God who has a legal and conditional relationship with his creatures. He conducts that relationship like a master to a slave. In this view, God's freely giving of his goodness and blessings, including forgiveness, is far from the essence or nature of this God. From this perspective, Jesus is viewed as showing us only one particular and isolated aspect of who God is. Jesus actually represents an exception to God's rule and will, nature and character, rather than representing the fullness of God's divinity. In this way of thinking, Jesus only reveals and demonstrates something that is non-essential to God's nature and character. Regarding Jesus in this way ought to alert us to a serious problem.

If law actually was the most fundamental feature of God's relationship to us, then grace could only be an exception to law. But, especially given the new covenant, it is clear that law is not the most basic way that God relates to us now. It never has been. God is not fundamentally sheer will or law. This is most clearly seen looking at Jesus, who shows us the Father and sends us the Spirit. It is clear when we hear from Jesus about his eternal relationship with the Father and Spirit. Jesus tells us that his nature and character are identical to that of the Father's.

The Father-Son relationship is not one of rules, obligations or the fulfilling of conditions in order to earn or deserve benefits. The Father and Son do not have a legal relationship with each other. They have not drawn up a contract with each other where if one fails to complete his part the other will not fulfill his part. The idea of a contractual, law-based relationship between the Father and the Son is an absurdity. The truth, revealed to us in Jesus, is that their relationship is one of holy love, faithfulness, self-giving and mutual glorification. Jesus' prayer in John 17 powerfully reveals that those triune relationships are the foundation and source for all God does in every relationship, since God always acts according to who he is—because he is faithful.

As we read Scripture carefully, it becomes clear that God's relationship with his creation, and with Israel, is not contractual—it is not one of conditionality. An important point to remember, one that Paul is clear about, is that God's relationship with Israel was not fundamentally one of law, of an _if-then_ contract. God's relationship with Israel began with a covenant, a promise. The Law of Moses (the Torah) came in 430 years after the inauguration of the covenant. Given that timeline, law could hardly be regarded as the foundation for God's relationship with Israel.

In the covenant, God freely pledged himself and his goodness to Israel. It had absolutely nothing to do with what Israel could offer God (Deuteronomy 7:6-8). Abraham did not know God when God pledged to bless him and make him a blessing to all the nations (Genesis 12:2-3). A covenant is a promise—it is freely chosen and freely given. "I will take you as my people, and I will be your God" said God to Israel (Exodus 6:7). God's pledge of blessing was unilateral—established from his side alone. God gave the covenant as an expression of his own nature, character and being. Its establishment with Israel was an act of grace—yes, grace!

A careful review of the early chapters of Genesis makes it clear that God does not relate to his creation according to some sort of contractual agreement. First, creation itself was an act of free giving. There was nothing there that deserved or earned existence, much less a good existence. God declares: "And it was good," even "very good." God freely extends his goodness towards his creation, towards what is far less than himself, giving it life. Eve was God's gift of goodness to Adam so that he would no longer be alone. In like manner, God gave Adam and Eve the garden and the good purpose of keeping it so that they would experience fruitful and abundant life. Adam and Eve fulfilled no conditions before these good gifts were given freely by God.

But what about after the Fall, when sin entered? What we find is that God continues to give of his goodness freely and unconditionally. Was not God's pursuit of Adam and Eve, giving them an opportunity to repent following their disobedience, an act of grace? Consider also how God provided animal skins for their clothing. Even their expulsion from the Garden was an act of grace, to prevent them from taking of the tree of life in their fallen state. God's protection and provision for Cain can only be regarded in the same light. We also see grace in God's protection of Noah and his family, and in his pledge of the rainbow. All these acts are of grace—freely given gifts of God's goodness. None of them are rewards for fulfilling some kind of even minimal legal contractual obligation.

### Grace as unmerited favor?

It has often been said that grace is God's unmerited favor. Strictly speaking, this is true. But given what we think it implies, it is just barely true. What is false about it is the assumption (almost always lurking in the background) that God originally intended for us to merit his favor. That is utterly false. God did not originally plan on us meriting his favor, but then gave up as he saw us fail. God did not abandon Plan A: Merited Favor for Plan B: Unmerited Favor. No—God never, from the foundations of the earth, wanted a contractual, conditional relationship with us. He never wanted a master-slave relationship.1 Rather, he wanted all along for his children to have a relationship with him that mirrored as much as possible the relationship God the Father has with his Son in the Spirit.

God always freely gives of his goodness, of himself to his creatures. And he does so because of who he is, eternally and internally as Father, Son and Holy Spirit. All they do towards creation is an overflow of their inward life together. The acts mirror externally who God is internally, and so give him glory. A legal and contractual relationship with God would not give the triune creator and covenant-making God glory, but would obscure it, even deny it. It would make God into an idol. Pagan gods always enter into contractual relationships with their appeasers because they need their worshippers just as much as the worshippers need them. They are mutually dependent. So they use one another for their own self-centered ends. The only question is which "side" will win. The outcome of that competition is largely dependent upon which side is strongest, more powerful, and slightly less dependent than the other. But such a relationship is exactly what the God of the Bible completely repudiates. God is not a pagan deity and does not want the kind of contractual, conditional relationship with his people that idols demand. Idols must be appeased, but not the God of Israel and of our Lord Jesus Christ.2

The smidgen of truth hidden down under the saying that grace is God's unmerited favor is simply that we don't merit it. But the implication almost always accompanying that idea is false! God's favor or blessing (his freely given goodness) was never meant to be merited. You can "unmerit" God's blessing, but you can't merit it and you never could. For if God extended his goodness to us because we merited it, that action would not be motivated by God's own nature and character. Such goodness would not be freely given by a good God. Favor earned is not favor freely given. It is not grace!

### The graciousness of grace demonstrated

Grace does not just come into play when there is sin, making an exception to some law or obligation. God is gracious whether there is sin or not. God does not need sin to be gracious. However, grace continues when even there is sin. So it is true that God continues to freely give of his own goodness to his creatures even when they do not merit it. He freely gives forgiveness at his own expense of reconciling atonement.

Even when we sin, God remains faithful, because he _is_ faithful, just as Paul says: "If we are faithless, he remains faithful" (2 Timothy 2:13). Because God always is true to himself, he persists in extending his love and in pursuing his holy purposes for us even when we rebel and resist. This constancy of grace shows the depth of the freedom that God has to be good toward his creation. "For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.... But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:6, 8 _NRSV_ ). The special character of grace shines forth when it shines out in the darkness, so we often speak of grace in the context of sin. There is nothing wrong with that. But the problem comes when we think God's favor was originally meant to be earned in a legal arrangement with him.

Sin can't stop God's free giving of his goodness. He remains constant in character, nature and purpose. God is not dependent upon us to remain true to himself. We cannot make God freer than he is, nor by our rejection of his goodness can we take from him his freedom to be gracious.

So God is gracious without sin and God is gracious with sin. God is faithful in being good to his creation and maintaining his good purposes for creation. We see this most fully in Jesus, who cannot be stopped from completing his atoning work by all the forces of evil arrayed against him. Those forces cannot prevent him from giving up his life so that we could have life. No amount of pain, suffering and utter humiliation could deter him from carrying out his holy, loving purposes to reconcile humanity to God.

God's goodness does not require evil to be good. But when it comes upon evil, goodness knows what to do: overcome it, conquer it, and vanquish it. There is no such thing as too much grace.

### So why the law (or any other commands)?

Given what we saw about grace, how then do we regard the Old Testament law and Christian obedience under the new covenant? If we remember that God's covenant is a unilateral promise, the answer more easily falls into place. A promise calls for a response from the one to whom it is made. However, the fulfillment of the promise does not depend upon this response.3

There are only two options here: to trust (have faith or believe) in the promise or not. The Law of Moses (the Torah) described for Israel much of what trusting God's covenant should look like during its pre-fulfillment stage (prior to Jesus Christ). God graciously provided for Israel ways to live within his covenant (as it was expressed in the old covenant). The Law of Moses also described ways that were distrustful of God's covenant promises to Israel. But what the Torah did not do is to prescribe how Israel might earn God's favor and blessing—its purpose was not to define how to get God to make a promise and then how to keep him faithful to it.

The Torah was freely given by God to Israel. It was meant to help Israel. Paul calls it a "tutor" (Galatians 3:24-25, _NKJV_ ). It should be regarded as a good gift of God's grace to Israel. The Law of Moses is given inside and under the old covenant, which was the covenant of grace in its phase as promise (awaiting the fulfillment in Christ within the new covenant). It was meant to serve God's freely given covenant purpose to bless Israel and make Israel a channel of blessing to all nations.

God, remaining faithful to himself, desires the same kind of non-contractual relationship with people who live within the new covenant fulfilled in Jesus. He freely extends to us all the blessings of his atoning and reconciling life, death, resurrection and ascension. We're offered all the benefits of his coming kingdom. Even more, we are offered the blessedness of being indwelt by his Holy Spirit. But the offer of these gifts of grace of the new covenant calls for a response—the same kind of response that Israel was to give: faith (trust). But under the new covenant we trust in the fulfillment of God's covenant rather than in its promise.

What difference does the response to grace make? It is in answering this question that confusion often arises. If we are to benefit from the promise, we must live on the basis of trusting it. This is what is meant by "living by faith." We see faithful living exemplified by the Old Testament "saints" in Hebrews 11.

There are consequences for not living out of trust, both in the covenant promised or the covenant fulfilled. Distrust in the covenant and in the God of the covenant severely limits one's experience of the covenant benefits. Israel's distrust cut them off from the source of their life—their sustenance, health and fruitfulness. Distrust blocked their relationship with God to the point where they were unable to receive much of anything from God. God did not want that, because he is gracious and want to give! So in Scripture we find strict warnings describing the dire consequences of living in ways that deny God's faithfulness (faithfulness to his word of promise), thus preventing his people from receiving the freely given grace of God. Instead of blessings, what his faithless people receive is sometimes referred to as "curses." He had warned them about unpleasant results of faithlessness.

However, even these warnings can be regarded as gifts of God's grace. If God did not care about Israel and would just as soon cancel his covenant, there would be no reason for him to warn them. He'd just let them go, and be done with it. But Israel was in the covenant, and even if they lived as if they were not, the result was NOT that it would be nullified, or that God would change his mind and go back on his promise. God cannot be tempted to be unfaithful to his promise.

God's covenant, Paul tells us, is irrevocable. Why? Because God is faithful and will keep his covenant even when it costs him dearly! God will never go back on his word; he cannot be forced to act uncharacteristically towards his creation or his people. Even in our distrust of the promise, we cannot make God to be untrue to himself. This is what is meant by God doing things "for his own name's sake."

Israel's disobedience resulted in bad (even dire) consequences. All of these occurred within the covenant, under God's grace. Under the old covenant, God never abandoned Israel—never went back on his covenant promises. From time to time, God renewed his covenant with Israel, always leading up to the fulfillment of the covenant in Jesus Christ.

It is the same under the new covenant. All the instructions and commands we find there are meant to be obeyed by faith in God's freely given goodness and grace. That grace reached its high point in God's self-giving and self-revelation in Jesus. To be enjoyed, God's good gifts must be received, not rejected or ignored. The imperatives (commands) found in the New Testament describe what receiving or trusting in God's grace looks like for the people of God living after the establishment of the new covenant.

### Where does obedience come from?

So where then does obedience come from? It arises out of a trust in God's faithfulness to his covenant purposes fulfilled in Jesus Christ. The only obedience that God is interested in is the obedience of faith—faith in God's constancy, in God's faithfulness to his Word, faithfulness to himself (Romans 1:5; 16:26). Obedience never was and never is an attempt to fulfill conditions to get God to be faithful, to make God more likely to be good, to get God to be (freely!) gracious.

Obedience is our response to grace. Paul is clear on this—especially where he tells us that Israel's failure was not that the people did not fulfill certain legal conditions of the Torah, but that they "did not strive for it on the basis of faith, but as if it were based on works" (Romans 9:32, _NRSV_ ). Paul, a law-keeping Pharisee, came to realize that God never wanted him to work up a righteousness of his own through keeping the law. What good would that be even if it were possible (which it is not)? Compared to the righteousness that God intended to give him by grace, compared to having a share in God's own righteousness given to him in Christ, it would be garbage (or worse!)–see Philippians 3:8.

All along, God intended to share his own righteousness with his people as a gift of grace. Why? Because God is gracious! (Philippians 3:8-9). So how do we receive this freely given gift? By trusting God for it, by having faith in his promise to provide it. Trying to work for or earn that gift—trying to meet certain legal conditions, trying to conform to specified obligations in order to earn God's blessings—actually indicates distrust. Such attempts indicate unbelief in God's freely given grace.

The obedience that God is looking for is motivated by faith, hope and love for God. The calls for obedience found throughout Scripture, the commands found in the old and new covenants, are those of grace. They are not conditions of grace. If we believe in God's promises and trust in their fulfillment in Christ and then in us, we will want to live in, under and by those promises, as if they are true and trustworthy. If we are not living in a way that expresses trust in God's grace—his being good to us even when we don't deserve it—then we're not really trusting in God's grace!

The obedient life is a trusting life. A disobedient life is one that is not trusting or perhaps does not (yet) want what is promised.4 Only obedience that arises out of faith, hope and love gives God glory, for only that kind of obedience bears witness to the truth of who God actually is, as revealed to us in Jesus Christ.

God will continue to be gracious to us whether we receive or resist his grace. Part of his graciousness will be to resist our resistance to his grace! That's the nature of God's wrath as he says "No" to our "No" to him in order to reaffirm his "Yes" to us in Christ (2 Corinthians 1:19). God's "No" is just as strong as his "Yes," because it is an expression of his "Yes." Those who resist God's grace will not experience the benefits of living by faith. However, they will not, by that unbelief, stop God from being true to himself, from being the gracious God that he is.

### Grace makes no exceptions!

It's important to realize that God makes no exceptions to his good purposes and holy aims for his people. Because he is faithful, God will not give up on us. Instead, he loves us to perfection—the perfection of his Son. God intends to glorify us so that we perfectly trust and love him with all that we are and have, and so live out our trust in his graciousness to the full. Doing so means that our distrusting hearts will be done away with so that our lives perfectly reflect our trust in God's freely given goodness. God's perfect love will love us to completion by justifying us, sanctifying us and glorifying us. "He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion" (Philippians 1:6).

Would God be gracious to leave us, in the end, less than whole? What if heaven were filled with individuals for whom exceptions were made—allowing for a lack of faith here, a failure of love there, some unforgiveness here, some bitterness and resentment there, a bit of jealousy here and a mote of selfish pride there? What would that be like? It would be just like it is here and now, but forever!

Would God be gracious to leave us in such an "exceptional" condition for all eternity? No, he would not! In the end, God's grace allows for no exceptions to his ruling grace, to the rule of his love, to the sovereignty of his loving will—because otherwise he would not be gracious.

### What can we say to those who abuse God's grace?

How might we answer those who say that they can do whatever they like since we're under grace and not law? Perhaps we can point out that living a lawless life actually resists or goes contrary to the grace of God. Perhaps we can help them understand that to _presume_ upon grace is to not receive it, and thus to experience few of its benefits. Grace is not permission to indulge in behaviors that hurt us. Indifference is not love.

As we disciple people in the way of Jesus, we should help them understand and receive God's grace, rather than misunderstand and pridefully resist it. We should help them to live in the grace that God is extending to them right now. We should help them know that no matter what they do, God will continue to be true to himself and true to his good purposes for them. We should help them trust in the fact that because God loves them and is gracious in his own nature, character and purpose, he will resist any resistance to his grace so that one day we all might fully receive and thus live by his grace and so gladly take on joyfully the "obligations" of living in grace, knowing the privilege it is to be a child of God with Jesus Christ as our elder brother.

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1 An even worse explanation is that God wanted us to believe the falsehood that he wanted a conditional relationship with us, where we merited his favor, so that when we failed (which he knew we would), we would come to see that we could not merit it. Thus it turns out that he never did really want a conditional relationship with us, although he had to deceive us into believing that he did.

2 See for example Isaiah chapters 1 and 66 and Hosea 4–14 for God's complaint about sacrifices given to appease God as if he were an idol.

3 The idea of an inheritance conveys the same sort of understanding. The giving of an inheritance does not depend upon its reception. It is given and therefore possessed in a certain way even before it is received. Found in the practices of Israel, the idea of an inheritance is also used to speak of God's ultimate blessings at numerous key points in the New Testament. See Galatians 3:18; Ephesians 1:11; Colossians 3:24; Hebrews 9:15.

4 Editor's note: What is promised is Jesus—life with Jesus living in us, living in the way that Jesus lives. This is what God is giving; this is his grace. Salvation is _not_ living a selfish life for all eternity. People who want "grace" without any commands are seeking permission to be self-centered, and that is not the grace that God gives.

Gary W. Deddo

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## Afraid of God?

Are you a little afraid of God? Do you worry that he has something against you? When I feel that way, it helps me to remember three stories in which God teaches us how he really feels about us.

The first is the strange story of the prophet Hosea. God told Hosea to marry a prostitute, so he did. Their marriage produced children, and Hosea loved his wife. She eventually went back to her immoral ways, but despite her unfaithfulness, Hosea didn't stop loving her. Hosea's experience was God's way of illustrating how he never stopped loving his chosen people, even though they repeatedly turned back to idolatry.

The second story is that of the Good Samaritan, who stopped to help a Jew in distress. Samaritans were despised; but in Jesus' parable, the Good Samaritan ignored the history of prejudice and mistreatment to help a man who in other circumstances might have spit in his face. That's just how Jesus feels about me. No matter what I've done, he still loves me, forgives me and takes care of me.

The third story is Jesus' parable of the Prodigal Son. The father of the prodigal son didn't wait for his son to drop to his knees, begging and pleading to be taken back, even as a servant. He ran to his son crying, elated to have him back, before his son had even spoken a word.

Sometimes we might think God is much like stern parents or teachers, peering over his reading glasses, looking down his nose at us, waiting for us to sheepishly or desperately admit our sins and ask for all to be forgiven before giving us the "Well, okay, but don't do it again" condescending nod. We might or might not get the ruler on the knuckles before he sends us on our way.

Growing in grace and knowledge means we can put aside our childish notions of a God who thinks and acts as we humans do. He is not like us; his thoughts and ways are not like ours. He is not a petty, malicious, self-centered being who gets offended when we sin and then peevishly waits for us to crawl to him on bloody knees. Just as in the examples of Hosea, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan, our God loves and forgives us even while we are sinning! Christ died for the ungodly. His love is not conditional, and his forgiveness is ours before we even think to repent.

God wants us to repent. He wants us to be with him and to know we have his forgiveness. Repentance is going to God's throne of grace and being reassured that he never stops loving us. It does not mean drumming up artificial sorrow and begging for a forgiveness we fear we might not get.

God is not holding a grudge and he has not turned away from us. He lovingly awaits those who fall back into old habits, who still feed at the pig troughs, and who in their sins are helpless in a ditch, no matter how long it takes. His love is unfailing and his grace is never ending.

Tammy Tkach

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## Lopsided Grace

It's been said there are only about seven stories in the whole world, and the storyline of every book or movie is simply a variation of one of them. The most common storyline is the battle between good and evil and usually features a savior figure.

One familiar story is that of King Arthur, Guinevere and Camelot. It's a utopian setting until a bit of evil enters the scene in the form of temptation. The queen is seduced by Lancelot, the king's best knight. When the king discovers their infidelity, he is faced with a painful choice: abandoning the law or the death of his beloved Guinevere. But he knows her death is the only action that will satisfy the law and serve justice.

The tale of Arthur and his queen comes in many versions, but parts of it remain constant: just as Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden, Guinevere gave in to temptation, messed up and needed to be saved.

But here's where Camelot diverges from the original story and the truth. While Arthur agonized over the decision to let the love of his life die and serve justice or let her go and negate the law, God's decision and plan were clear from the beginning. Unlike Arthur, God is not subject to the law— rather, he created it. He in no way agonized over balancing the scales of justice because he himself is justice. His plan to die in our place wasn't about fulfilling any requirements of the law.

Some look at grace and see a great balancing act, with mercy on one side and God's holiness on the other, as if he has set limits on how much he can forgive. What Jesus did is sometimes called the Great Exchange, which makes it sound like a business transaction instead of the greatest act of love ever performed.

Humanly speaking, we think everything has to work out evenly and be fair. Remember the parable of the workers in the vineyard who began at dawn? They received the same pay as those who showed up at the end of the workday. To us, this seems unfair and even extravagant. But God does not use scales of justice like humanity does. God's love and grace are outrageously unfair. When Jesus went to the cross, everyone was forgiven. Everyone was invited to the eternal banquet with the Father, Son and Spirit. No sin is too great to be wiped out. No one is beyond help. No one is out of his reach and no one must be punished as a way of balancing grace and justice.

If God were to use scales, one side would be up in the air and the other resting on the table. How can grace be so lopsided? His love and grace far outweigh even his own laws to the point of seeming like the ultimate lack of balance. Lucky for us and unlike King Arthur, God is more powerful than the law. He uses a different scale, a scale of mercy balanced only with more love and grace.

Tammy Tkach

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## Grace to Be Who You Are

I enjoy riding a bicycle for exercise and try to ride almost every day. One day this past summer, believe it or not, it rained—in the summer, in California! It wasn't really rain, but there was enough moisture I decided not to ride. I don't have rain gear and didn't want to get wet. Not that I'm afraid I'll melt — I just don't like going out in the elements without the proper clothing. So, not wanting to miss a workout, I pulled out an old exercise DVD.

I started to laugh as Tony Little appeared on the screen, telling me to "Conceive, believe and achieve." I used to work out regularly with Tony and realized I've missed his wit and wisdom. As we started into a nice stretch for the back, Tony reminded me to go only as far as I can go. "Well, of course," I always say. What else does he expect?

Tony may not realize it, but he has hit upon an essential element of grace. As we each work our way through life, we can only go as far as we are able. We may see someone achieving something wonderful and think, "I should be doing that." But if or when we can't, we may become discouraged and may even give up. We compare ourselves to others, then judge and condemn ourselves. Or others may judge and condemn us because they feel we should be more like them.

The grace we receive from God and in turn extend to others and ourselves allows us to go at our own pace, fall down and get up again, without fear of condemnation. God knows our weaknesses and faults. He knows our strengths and abilities. He doesn't expect everyone to look alike, act alike or be in the same place in their growth.

God values our unique personalities, and his grace gives us room to be who we are. We can be happy we have different gifts and talents and give glory to him as we use them to serve him and others. How can we do less for each other? Just as we have received forgiveness and are learning to extend it in return, so we are to honor and respect each other by showing grace in our everyday interactions.

Paul was careful to stay away from making comparisons: "We do not dare to classify or compare ourselves with some who commend themselves. When they measure themselves by themselves and compare themselves with themselves, they are not wise" (2 Corinthians 10:12 _)_.

Even nature teaches us each star, tree, flower, animal—everything—has its value, glory and purpose. Each of us has value and purpose, with our own unique place in the world. We have the freedom to do what we do best and not worry about what we can't do.

God's grace is a marvelous gift and touches every part of our lives. Go as far as you can go and may his grace be with you on the way.

Tammy Tkach

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## Grace: A License to Sin?

It is a constant wonder how we guardians of the true faith can become so skilled at gumming up the greatest news in the universe. We hold in trust the Good News of all good news — God gives free grace to sinners for Christ's sake — and then we break our necks to hide it behind a great wall of rules, regulations and laws.

"You must not take grace too far or you will turn it into license to sin!" we admonish one another, as though lack of license has ever stopped anybody from sinning.

Hasn't anyone noticed? We are all sinners, for crying out loud, even all we religious, God-fearing, church-going Christians. Always have been, always will be, in this life. It is only by God's pure and unfettered grace, as demonstrated once for all through Jesus Christ, that we are made something else — righteous — and not by avoiding sin, but by trusting him.

It seems that our vigilant efforts to prevent anyone from "turning grace into license to sin" has resulted, ironically, in our managing to turn sin into a barrier to accepting grace. The church promises grace, then delivers condemnation. The church headlines the gospel, then preaches hellfire. The church disguises its moralistic hook with gospel bait, reels in the unwary catch and plops him or her into the hot greasy frying pan of salvation by works.

Consider how the gospel is plowed under by the relentless glacier of denominational "rightness," doctrinal "exactness" and behavioral "standards." Christian church against Christian church, warring over phraseology, terminology, dress codes, political stands, seating arrangements, music styles, architecture...the list seems endless. We all seem to have at least a mild case of the "our-way-is-God's-way-die-you-heretic" virus.

Certainly, right doctrine is important. But surely we need look no farther than the Nicene Creed or the Apostles Creed for those doctrinal "issues" that really matter. Yet, many Christian churches still refuse Communion to fellow believers who don't belong to the "right" denominational brand name or haven't jumped through all the required theological hoops.

The underlying message of religious behaviorism, "Behave right (according to our particular standards), or go straight to hell," buries the gospel under layer after layer of religious hair-splitting, nit-picking and measurement-taking. That isn't the gospel. It's religion. It holds out salvation like some phantom carrot-and-stick reached only through a lifetime of unquantifiable good deeds. It is a soul-sapping lie against the truth of God.

Jesus did not bring some "new and better" brand of religion. He brought the gospel, which is good news for sinners, which we all are. For the sake of Christ, God has thrown away all the report cards, homework records and detention notes in the world and given everybody a 4.0 GPA and a gold-plated invitation to eternal life.

Only some of us, it seems, "don't want no charity." We'd rather feel like we have been — or through discipline and devotion have become — the right and proper sort of person upon whom God could appropriately bestow eternal life. We have been good Christians, and we don't want to be lumped in with a bunch of immoral losers who do nothing more than put their trust in the Christ we have worked so hard for so long to imitate and obey. (We thank you, O God, that we are not like the rest of people — greedy, dishonest, adulterous or, for that matter, like this embezzler.)

Suppose we take up a challenge: give up the charade. Drop the legalism and the fear tactics. Quit pretending to be worthy and righteous, admit we are hopeless sinners without anything to our credit, and put our trust in Jesus Christ, for whose sake God justifies the ungodly (Romans 4:5).

Drop the nonsense about how that would mean people could "just go out and sin all we want, since we're already forgiven." Nobody who trusts God wants to sin. When you trust God to love you and forgive you, you want to be like Jesus; you don't want to sin. But when we do sin, in spite of the fact that we don't want to, we have an advocate with the Father, 1 John 2:1-2 tells us (and he tells us that so we won't sin, not so that we will, verse 1 says).

It's like Paul told Titus:

#### The grace of God that brings salvation has appeared to all men. It teaches us to say "No" to ungodliness and worldly passions, and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age, while we wait for the blessed hope — the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us to redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own, eager to do what is good. (Titus 2:11-14)

It's _grace_ that teaches us to say no to ungodliness. It's _grace_ that makes us eager to do what is good. Knowing we're already forgiven and accepted does not lead us into the devil's workshop, but into deeper fellowship with our Lord and Savior. The gospel really is that simple. It really is good news.

J. Michael Feazell

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## Grace to the Gluttons

"Cretans are always liars, evil brutes, lazy gluttons," Paul wrote to a young pastor on the island of Crete. "Therefore, rebuke them sharply" (Titus 1:12-13). Paul went on to advise Titus to teach the Cretans to be self-controlled and to set a good example (Titus 2:1-7).

Why should they learn self-control? "So that no one will malign the word of God" (verse 5). They were to change their behavior to make the gospel more attractive. Slaves, too, were to be good representatives for Christianity — "so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive" (verse 10).

Paul did not want enemies of the faith to have anything bad to say about the people who were associated with the gospel message. He wanted the Christians to live holy lives and serve God, which would help put the gospel in a good light.

Then Paul gave some more reasons: "For the grace of God that brings salvation has appeared" (verse 11). Grace, he says, teaches us to reject ungodly desires "and to live self-controlled, upright and godly lives in this present age" (verse 12). Grace teaches us to be obedient. The message of grace leads to holy living. Gluttons need grace, and they should stop being gluttons.

Christians ought to be among the best-behaved people on earth. Often we are not, and for that we ought to be ashamed. Our sins invite people to say bad things about what we teach, the church we attend, and worst of all, the Savior we worship. We have every reason to live holy lives — not only in obedience to our Savior, but also for the sake of his gospel and for the salvation of those who see the example we set in his name.

Dedicating our lives to Christ leads us to reject every ungodly desire — sexual temptation, pride, greed for money and power, and even gluttony. It leads us to pursue peace and harmony in our families, learning how to constructively work through conflict. It leads us to a job performance that is marked by diligence and humility, not by office politics and stubbornness.

Our way of life is the result of God working in us, motivating us to conform to the image of Christ. His grace transforms us, and his Spirit changes us from lazy gluttons into self-controlled good examples. But it takes time. And it takes earnest commitment to our calling.

Jesus "gave himself for us," Paul wrote (verse 14). Christ is not only our future King but also our Savior, the One who died for us. Why did he do it? "To redeem us from all wickedness and to purify for himself a people that are his very own." He died for us so that we might be rescued from the power of sin.

Our Savior redeemed us and is purifying us, leading us to holy lives rather than sinful lives. Instead of catering to our natural selfish desires, we are to respond to his lead — we are to be "eager to do what is good." This is the product of our salvation!

"These, then, are the things you should teach," Paul concluded (verse 15). This is the job of a pastor, to teach about grace and living a good life.

We were once foolish and sinful, Paul noted (Titus 3:3). But when Christ came, he revealed God's kindness and love for us. "He saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy" (verse 5). Salvation was given by grace.

"He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit." We became cleansed of all sin and heirs of eternal life. The message of God's grace and the gift of eternal life is "a trustworthy saying," Paul says (verse 8). We can count on it and have faith in it.

"I want you to stress these things," Paul instructed Titus. On Crete, an island full of "lazy gluttons," Paul wanted Titus to emphasize grace. Every culture needs the message of grace. And the message includes the obligations that come with grace, too: a new way of life — holy living, self-control, the path of eternal life in Jesus Christ our Savior.

Joseph W. Tkach

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## Grace: An E-Ticket Ride

You'd think that the transition from a legalistic religion to an understanding of the gospel of grace would make life easier. It does in some ways. But it is also an "E ticket ride."

E ticket ride? Today when you go to Disneyland, you pay a onetime entry fee, giving you access to everything. But before 1981, you needed individual tickets for each ride. They ranged from "A" tickets for the less spectacular rides, through B, C, and D for the more exciting ones. But the best attractions, like the Matterhorn Bobsleds, needed an E ticket.

E ticket rides were more expensive and the lines were longer, but they were worth it. You'd be strapped into your seat and warned "Keep your arms and legs inside the bobsled at all times" and "Don't get out until it stops." Then with a lurch you'd be off.

First was a long slow haul up an incline, and a brief moment to admire the view and catch a glimpse of less adventurous friends far below. Then you hurtled down towards what looked like a sheer drop. At the last second you were yanked at right angles to face another abyss and an even more impossible-looking hairpin bend.

"No way," you'd think. "We're going to come off." But as the bobsled careened around the track you realized that the ride only looked impossible. If you stayed with it you'd be okay.

In some ways a journey from legalism to grace is like that. You see, a legalistic approach to your relationship with God is "safe," like an A ticket ride. The pace is slow and the rules seem clear-cut. Don't eat "unclean" food, don't watch TV or fix the car on the Sabbath, pray and study an hour a day, and you might have at least the illusion of progress. With legalism, you can at least feel as though you know where you stand.

Oh, you won't be perfect. But like the Pharisee in Jesus' parable (Luke 18:11-13), who boasted "I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get," you can say "God, I thank you that I am not like other men — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector."

"But," Jesus explained, "the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'" He was on an E ticket ride. Once you begin to understand the depths of God's mercy and grace, you want to please him. And the more you know him, the more fully aware you become of your own sinfulness. So, naturally, you want to make amends—to do something to make up for your sins—and legalism tells you that you can do that. But the Bible tells you something entirely different.

#### Should I bring an armload of offerings topped off with yearling calves? Would God be impressed with thousands of rams, with buckets and barrels of olive oil? Would he be moved if I sacrificed my firstborn child, my precious baby, to cancel my sin? (Micah 6:6-7, _The Message_ Bible).

No. That is not the answer.

#### He's already made it plain how to live, what to do, what God is looking for in men and women. It's quite simple: Do what is fair and just to your neighbor, be compassionate and loyal in your love. (v. 8)

Is that it? Yes. When we believe God loves us, we are free to love others. In other words, just hang on tight to life's bobsled, trusting in God's love and mercy. There is nothing you can do, or need to do, to get back into God's favor.

There are times on the journey when that is hard to believe. Moments when, looking at what the track looks like ahead, you think "There's no way..." But there always is. Jesus didn't promise an A, B, C or even D ticket ride. To trust in God's grace needs an all or nothing E ticket. But you can take rest in Jesus' promise to be with you, both on the long uphill climbs and the lurching, heart-stopping, nail-biting descents.

#### I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. (John 10:28-29)

Just stay in the bobsled, and don't get out until it stops.

John Halford

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## The Divine Grace in Christ  
Ephesians 2:1-10

**Key text:** "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" (Ephesians 2:4-5).

**Lesson objective:** To understand that this world is under God's wrathful judgment and our only ticket out is the way God planned it: salvation by God's merciful divine grace through faith alone in the full merits of Christ.

**Introduction:** When one takes into account the world history of this present age, it can be summed up into the words "aggression and strife for survival!" Once we have experienced biological life, we can be certain that death will mark the next phase. At some point in the beginning, sin entered the world, and death has accompanied it ever since. Our physical and psychological natures have carried the infection from one generation to another and passed it on like a virus. The symptoms of a sinful nature are pride, self-centeredness, the inclination to esteem ourselves better than others, despising the imposition of God's authority, and the inner drive to satisfy illicit passions and lust at the expense of ourselves and others. And, the most damaging tool of all is our deceptive ability to be in denial of our sinful ways and thus to rationalize our thoughts and behavior as appropriate and politically correct!

The consequences of sin are that the world has severed its relationship to God, and God has condemned the world for its rebellion. Both Jews and Gentiles are condemned to death on the account of sin, having been found worthy to receive God's divine judgment. They are legally and spiritually dead as far as God is concerned (2:1-3). However, God's love planned a way to save the world that he condemned. He has done so by condemning his only Son instead of you and me. In this way, God declares us just, pardons our sins and grants us life on the basis of the righteousness of the One who died and rose on our behalf. The riches of God's mercy and divine grace are shown in raising the spiritually dead to new life in Christ. Also, we will not only share in Christ's heavenly enthronement in the future, but through our spiritual union we are _already_ seated with him in the heavens (vv. 4-7)!

Salvation is a gift of God and appropriated by faith alone (vv. 8-9). In other words, the fact of a person being saved does not depend on what merits or works he or she has done, but by God freely giving salvation on account of the grace he gives to everyone who is willing to believe via the Holy Spirit. Salvation is a God-human interaction. God provides the content of faith, that is, what we are to believe (Christ's death and resurrection), but _we_ do the actual believing (no one else can believe for you). Faith is not a work, but the God-sought response of accepting and receiving what God provides (Romans 4). What is meant by faith alone is simply believing that Christ's redemption is more than enough for our salvation, without the need to add our own obedience or religious rituals.

This new relationship with God produces a new creation in us, that is, new life in Christ (verse 10). Our old sinful nature has been subdued by an all-new outlook on life with Jesus at the center of it. As a result of our new relationship with Jesus, we are to produce good works that are in accordance with **God** 's character and design. Although good works are never the basis or cause of our salvation (for the root is Christ), yet they are the fruit or result of our new covenant relationship with the risen Lord.

### Questions for Bible Study

1. Ephesians 2:1-3

##### a. In this letter, who is Paul addressing? v. 1a. Note: Paul often distinguishes between himself and other Jews from Gentiles by the use of "we" and "you," respectively.

##### b. What was the condition of the addressees at one time? v. 1b. Why was this so? What does Paul mean by "dead"? In what sense: spiritually dead (meaning the annihilation of human free will); or spiritually dead (meaning the corruption of free will, with a legal sentence of death imposed on account of sin)? Explain. See Colossians 2:13-14.

##### c. What manner of life did these Gentiles lead in the past? v. 2a. Who is this ruler that they followed? See 2 Corinthians 4:3-6.

##### d. Among whom does this "spirit" work? v. 2b. Do you think that the majority of his followers are consciously aware that they follow him? What do they think?

##### e. What does Paul mean by "all of us"? v. 3a. See Romans 3:9-10. Note: Here Paul is all-inclusive and means both Jews and Gentiles. In what manner did they once live? v. 3b. See Galatians 5:19-21. What about you? How did you once live?

##### f. What was their common lot with the rest of humanity? v. 3c. Why? See Romans 3:19-20.

2. Ephesians 2:4-7

##### a. What attribute within God moved him toward us? v. 4a. What other attribute of God do we desperately need? v. 4b. How much of this attribute does God have?

##### b. What has God done for us? v. 5a. See Luke 15:24; John 5:24. When did God bring us to life in Christ: when we are made ourselves perfect, or when we were yet sinners? See Romans 5:8.

##### c. How or through what means have we been saved? v. 5b. Explain and illustrate this great concept. Note: Even the most religious persons often fail to grasp its meaning!

##### d. What has God done for us in Christ? v. 6. How have we become partakers of his resurrection, ascension and session? Explain each of the three in theological terms. Can you grasp the enormity of our position in Christ? Explain what this means in our Christian walk.

##### e. What is it that God wants to demonstrate from this present age to the age to come (the resurrection age)? v. 7a. How has this been expressed, and through whom? v. 7b.

3. Ephesians 2:8-10

##### a. What emphasis regarding salvation is given here again? v. 8a. The grammatical tense of the word "saved" is in the past. Can you explain?

##### b. If God's salvation is by grace, what is the human response to it called? v. 8b. What is "not of ourselves" — salvation itself or the response of faith? Note: The answer is salvation itself. Although faith is not a meritorious work, it is "our" response to God's saving act in Christ. We do the believing. See Romans 4:1-7.

##### c. What is salvation called? v. 8c. Why? See Romans 3:22-24.

##### d. What is salvation definitely not by? v. 9a. See Acts 13:38-39; Galatians 2:16; Philippians 3:7-9; Titus 3:5. For what reason? v. 9b. See Romans 3:27-28.

##### e. As a result of God's saving grace, what are we now? v. 10a. In whom are we newly created, and for what reason? v. 10b. Explain, and consult the Introduction. See 2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 6:14-15.

### Contemporary interaction

##### 1. Describe to what depth human depravity can sink. Take into account some of humanity's recent history: The Nazi-Jewish problem; Marxism in Central America; death squads in Latin America; Jewish-Palestinian conflict; genocide in Africa; the World Trade Center attack; the war in Iraq; and Muslim terrorist organizations on a global scale.

##### 2. As Christians with a higher calling and indebted to God's saving grace, what do you think is the role of the church in today's world? How do we reach out to a world in conflict?

### Conclusion

This world seems to be spinning as fast as it can away from God and toward its own destruction. Nevertheless, God's love has found a way from the despair of death to the joy of the gift of life in Christ. Saved by divine grace!

Lorenzo Arroyo

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## An Interview With Robert Capon

**Tim Brassell:** Can a pastor take grace too far?

**Robert Capon:** No. A pastor can't take grace too far. That is, not unless he claims that sin doesn't matter. If he claims that, he's abusing grace, because sin does matter. It matters to _me,_ the sinner. It matters whether I leave myself stuck in it.

Suppose a mother has a kid who comes in all muddy. She just washes off the mud. She loves her child and doesn't wait to see whether the kid decides if he wants to live with mud all over him. She just washes it off. And if she is a faithful, true mother, she will continually take that mud into herself and say, "Well, this is my son, and I will stick with him."

**TB:** Mothers are like that.

**RC:** Yes. The point is that sin is mud. It's a cover-up or cover-over of your true being as a person. And Jesus has washed it away. He's erased the sins. He's washed them away.

Not all churches practice infant baptism, but infant baptism is a wonderful testament to absolute grace. It says, "It's done." It doesn't say, after this if you do something, _then_ you'll be OK. It says, "You're OK _now,"_ not because you did something or thought something or figured something out, but you're OK now because Jesus says so.

It isn't religion that makes you OK with God, it's God who does it. The sacraments are not religion. They do not cause something to happen. You don't change the wine in the Eucharist into the blood of Christ, the presence of Christ. You just put up a sign in which you say, he is present in this sign as he is present in all things, including me.

For example, a priest in my jurisdiction holds up the bread and wine before communion and says, "Behold the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world." That means that the whole world is changed, changed by Christ.

**TB:** Some people say that if you preach grace a lot, people will get the idea that they can go ahead and sin all they want and still be saved. What would you say about that?

**RC:** First, I would say they're perfectly free to sin all they want whether you give them permission or not. But the thing that they are not free to achieve on their own is their own forgiveness, and that is what is already done. They simply have to accept that in Jesus, God has forgiven their sins.

Jesus is the Word of God incarnate. The incarnation has been in the works from the beginning. The incarnation is from the foundation of the world—no, before the foundation of the world. The incarnation is not an afterthought. God didn't say, "Uh-oh, I've got to do something now," after Adam and Eve ate from the tree. The incarnation is built into the fabric of the creation from before time began. So after sin came into the picture, history simply becomes the restoration of the human race to God in Christ.

It's all that and also the results of paying no attention to that restoration. You can't experience what you don't pay attention to. What's the first argument that happens after the fall?

**TB:** Cain and Abel. They argued over religion.

**RC:** Exactly. My god likes my sacrifice better than your god likes your sacrifice (laughter). Adam and Eve exit the garden, and the angel guards the way to the tree of life with a flaming sword, so this brilliant idea that _we_ will be like god blows up in their faces. And of course, the only thing that could mean is that even though they couldn't make themselves god, they _could_ turn God into a copy of themselves.

**TB:** God in their own image?

**RC:** Yes. First comes the idea that we will be like God, and then the next disaster is to make God like ourselves. The basis of classic orthodoxy, with all its faults, is that it does say it's all done. It does give you the doctrine of the Trinity. Pure monotheism is dangerous. The doctrine of the Trinity embraces the paradox of mutuality in God himself without violating the unity of God—because it can only be presented as a _paradox_ and a _mystery_.

Paradox can take you on trips that religion can't even buy a ticket for. God is who God is, who he reveals himself to be, not something we can reason out or come up with by some kind of logic. And from before the foundation of the world, God is both Creator and Redeemer. The incarnation of the Word stands under and upholds everything, which means we can pay attention to the restoration that is already a reality for us.

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## Grace Leads to Godly Living:  
An Interview With Alan Torrance

Dr. Torrance is a Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of St. Andrews and a widely respected teacher and author. As the son of James B. Torrance and nephew of Thomas F. Torrance, he carries on their theological tradition. Professor Torrance's work includes _Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Participation._

**Alan Torrance:** The parable of the prodigal son is one of my favorite parables. It's often told as a story of confession. The prodigal son comes home because he's repented, and because he's repented, the father accepts him home. That's just nonsense. That's not the story. He comes home for one reason and one reason only, and it couldn't be more plain—because of the quality of the pig food!

He wants to use his father still further. The whole point of the story is that the father, who is a wealthy dignified nobleman, _ran_ —that means he grabbed his robes up around his waist—humiliated himself in order to run and embrace his son—before he had heard any statement.

It's a great parable of the love of the father. But the gospel goes further. There's a non-parallelism between this parable of the prodigal son and the gospel. The whole time that the son was in the far county, the father was at home. In the gospel, we have the Father going (in the person of the Son) and setting up home in the far country to be with the son and to be where the son is. And, just to continue the non-parallelism, in the person of the Son, God completes all that was required of the prodigal. He offers the faith, the worship, the worth-ship... all that is required is fulfilled in him, in the place of the son. So that by the Spirit, the son might be given to recognize the meaning of grace; that all, as John Calvin put it, all parts of our salvation are complete in Christ, the head of the human race. Wonderful good news. Remarkable.

**JMF:** Some people, upon hearing that and hearing that explicated, get uncomfortable and say well, if that's true, then that would just give me the freedom to behave improperly. It would give me freedom to sin and not worry because I know that God has forgiven me and loves me despite my sins, so there has to be something wrong with that, because it would promote...especially among our teenagers...why if they heard something like that, they would go out and sin all the more.

**AT:** That's invariably the response that one gets. Let's just think about that for a minute. Great question. Let's think up an analogy.

I was blessed with a very devoted, faithful, loving wife. There's one period in my life when I was involved in theological conversations in Holland, in the Netherlands. I was quite regularly going off to Amsterdam. Lots of non-theological things go on in Amsterdam, and it's sometimes known as sin city. (I used to pull Jane's leg about this.) Let's just imagine that my wife had come to worry as to whether I was actually engaged in illegitimate activities on my travels, wherever those travels were.

Two responses she might have given. She might have said, "Alan, I just want you to know that if you even contemplate involving yourself in any illicit activities while you're away in your travels, I get the kids and I get the car and you're going to pay for this the rest of your days." She could have just spelled out the ramifications and implications, the costliness of any sinning I got up to.

Or she might have said this: As she waved me goodbye from the front door of my house, "Alan, I just want you to know that if ever you find yourself in trouble, no matter what comes your way, I'll always be there for you. You'll always be welcome home. I'll always love you, I'll always be there for you." That sounds a little bit Mills and Boonish. **** [Mills & Boon publishes romance novels in the U.K.]

But ask yourself...which is most likely to lead me to engage in un-theological activities on my trips to Amsterdam? There is absolutely no question in my mind that I'd be much more likely to go my own way in the first situation, because the first response basically said, well, there's no real unconditional love between us, it's a contractual deal. If you play the game, then I'll play my part, etc. That's not love.

The second was genuine, unconditional, costly love, and that is what converts us, and that's what makes us faithful. I don't think antinomianism (the repudiation of law) is a consequence of discovering God's grace, seeing the extent of God's grace for what it is. I think it's exactly the opposite. When we are brought by the Spirit, we are given the eyes to see the lengths to which God goes out of unconditional love for you as a particular person, as an individual. When you see that and are given to live in the light of that, you're liberated from sin. It doesn't encourage us to go and sin, thinking it's not going to matter. It has exactly the opposite effect.

That's the difference between what's called legal repentance and evangelical repentance. When we're presented with a _law,_ I don't think repentance is anything sincere. It's when we're presented with the gospel, the _euangelion,_ the unconditional love and forgiveness of God, when we see that, believe it, given our eyes to recognize it and to affirm it, that sets us free from sin. It actually liberates us from sin. It's an evangelical _metanoia_ _._ A _metanoia_ is the word for conversion. It just means the transformation of our minds. When we're presented with unconditional love, it transforms our minds.

So the church is often trying to prop up the gospel either by dangling people over the pit or setting up conditions: if you commit this sin, you're beyond the pale. No. We should have the courage to trust in the grace of God and the work of the Spirit getting people let in, liberating people by giving them eyes to see the meaning of the unconditional freeness of grace.

**JMF:** It reminds me of Paul's letter to Titus [2:12] where he says, "For it is grace that teaches you to say no to ungodliness."

**AT:** Precisely. I like that. Why did I take five minutes to say what you said in a sentence? Exactly.

**JMF:** It's like when people ask that question, it doesn't work like that. Christians who receive the grace of God don't think like that.

**AT:** There's no question at all: good, devout Christians sin. I don't mean to claim that I'm a good Christian, but I sin all the time. _Why_ do I sin? Why do I sin when I believe so strongly in the unconditional freeness? I am absolutely convinced when I look at a moment that I'm sinning, it's because for that moment, I've lost my faith. I'm not actually believing in the grace of God.

When to believe in the grace of God is to believe that the risen, crucified Jesus, the sole Priest of our confession, is before us now saying, "Alan, there is nothing you can do that will separate you from my love," and when I believe that, when I'm presented with that and have the eyes to see that and hear it, I'm not tempted to sin. It's when I look away from that, that sin becomes a temptation. So the answer to sin, I think, is for the church to continue to remind people of the unconditional, costly freeness of grace in Jesus Christ. It's when we're living out of that reality that we're liberated. Not just liberated from sin but, more importantly, from the desire to sin.

**JMF:** So it's fair to say that the gospel is not about rules and law-keeping. The gospel is about the positive relationship that we're brought into with God and with one another. In other words, the gospel is a gospel of relationship, not behavior.

**AT:** Precisely. And that's not just the New Testament. That's the heart of the Old Testament. Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments, the laws, where do they start? The first one, "I am the Lord thy God who has brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage." When people talk of the Ten Commandments, they immediately want to start with the "thou shalts" and the "thou shalt nots." But it only makes sense in the context of that first verse, which spells out the nature of God's unconditional covenant commitment to Israel. He loves Israel and has delivered them from bondage in that love.

It should read...I am the Lord thy God which has delivered you from Egypt...therefore, as I am unconditionally faithful to you, Have no other God's before me. And as I am unconditionally faithful to all of Israel, so be faithful to each other. Don't kill, don't commit adultery, don't lie, don't steal, etc.

In other words, the Torah, the Jewish law, the commandments, are simply spelling out the structure, the logic of a relationship of love and faithfulness. The key concept in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, is God's _hesed,_ God's covenant faithfulness, or _berith_ **—** that's the word for covenant. In other words, it's about relationship. The whole of the Pentateuch is a relational gospel.

So when Jesus summed up the law, in love God and your neighbor as yourself, he wasn't introducing some new formula, he was being a good Jew. He was simply summarizing the heart of the Ten Commandments. So I couldn't agree more with what you just said.

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## The Grace of the Finished Work of Christ  
An Interview With David Torrance

**MM:** How would you describe what Christ has done for us? I mean, why are people so excited about it? I could have my word for it, what's yours?

**DT:** He's done _everything_ for us. When Christ came into the world, we read in John's Gospel, he said, "I have come that you may have life, life more abundant, life to the absolute full." When we come to Christ, we are coming face-to-face with God, we're entering into the family of God, but we're discovering life itself, and that's a good thing.

**MM:** Does that mean I don't need to do anything?

**DT:** No. I wouldn't say that. God has done everything for us in Christ. Christ has come, Christ has redeemed us. When Christ on the cross said, "It is finished," that was a triumphant call, the triumphant shout of a victor. He's done everything for our salvation. All we can do is accept it.

Many years ago (I mentioned that I was involved in mission) when Billy Graham carried out an "All Scotland Crusade" a long time ago in Edinburgh in 1955, some 2000 people went forward in his crusade in Edinburgh district. I was very heavily involved in the follow-up. We had classes for them for 12 weeks. We took away, we think, 800 or 900 in three residential conferences.

I became involved in conversation with a man who was an office-bearing elder in the church, a very fine man. He said, "I've done everything that Billy Graham has asked. I came forward, repented, prayed, asked Christ into my life." In his own words, he said, "I never seemed to have got there." As I listened to him, I said, "You know what you've got to learn? Nothing at all."

He was very startled. I said, "You've got to learn to do absolutely nothing, because when Christ said on the cross, 'It is finished,' he's done everything for your salvation, and there's nothing left for you to do except to say _thank you,_ and to go on and on and on saying _thank you._ Your thanksgiving is your acceptance." I still see that man in my mind's eye as it broke home to him. You could see his face relax, and he laughed. The whole burden had departed. He was set free to live. He was set free to share the gospel with other people.

**MM:** He had been trying too hard.

**DT:** I think one of the disasters of the Christian church today...I love the church, I grew up in it...is that we tend to say, God has done his part in Jesus Christ. Christ has come, he's died, he's redeemed—now it's over to us. And we call on our people to do their part. We say come, repent, believe, pray, worship, read the Bible. But we're really throwing a tremendous responsibility back on the people.

**MM:** You do this, you do that.

**DT:** ...so that their salvation, to put it rather crudely, we're really saying that salvation is partly what God does and partly what you do. That's totally wrong. It's entirely of God, and all we've got to do is simply to thank him, and that must be a wholehearted thanksgiving. It's a total letting go. A total surrender.

**MM:** If we really realize what a gift it is, then we are thankful.

**DT:** Absolutely. But it is a total thanksgiving where we thank God with our whole being. The Psalmist said that in Psalm 103: "Bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all that is within me, bless, praise, his holy name." It's that thanksgiving where we're letting go...that we accept the whole wonder of what God has done in Christ. We're receiving new life. In that freedom, there's joy.

**MM:** If he's done everything and he gives that to us, theologically, that's grace. People misunderstand grace, though.

**DT:** Grace is a tremendous outpouring of the love of God in Jesus Christ. God, our Creator, came in incredible love to give himself to us in Jesus Christ—to give himself in his love, in his forgiveness, in his continuing redemption. If we were to stand under a waterfall, now, we'd be drenched, we'd be soaked. You and I stand under the waterfall, as it were, the outpouring of God's love and grace, of his forgiveness, of his redemption. And that's grace, the sheer outpouring of the love of God, because we don't deserve anything.

We deserve nothing. But God as love comes, gives himself to us, forgives us, redeems us, gives us life, through the Holy Spirit brings us in, we are adopted into the family of God, able to call God Father. Know that we are in Christ, sons and daughters of God, heirs of the everlasting kingdom. That all is a free, an abundant gift. That's grace.

**MM:** I noticed earlier that you said not just that he gives us forgiveness, but he gives us _himself._

**DT:** We can never separate the grace of God from the person of Christ. One of the great, dare I say, sins of the church through the ages is to separate the person of Christ and the work of Christ and separate Christ from grace. The medieval church was tempted to believe that grace is something that the church possesses, something that the church can dispense. That's nonsense. We can be possessed by Christ, but we can't possess Christ. Grace is wrapped up with the person of Christ and across the work of Christ, because we can't separate them.

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## John McLeod Campbell and Grace:  
An Interview With Daniel Thimell

Daniel Thimell is Associate Professor of Theological and Historical Studies at Oral Roberts University. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen in 1993. He has 30 years of pastoral experience and has taught at Trinity College in Bristol, England, and the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. In 1997, Dr. Thimell won first place in a nationwide preaching contest sponsored by _Pulpit Digest,_ and he's a regular contributor to _Clergy Journal._ He and Trevor Hart co-edited the book _Christ in Our Place: Essays Presented to Professor James Torrance_ , published by Pickwick in 1991 as part of the Princeton Theological Monograph Series.

**JMF:** I wanted to begin by asking you to talk about how you came to be a Trinitarian theologian.

**DT:** It was during my time at Westmont College, particularly under the tutelage of Ray Anderson, when I began to reflect more deeply on my understanding of Christ. I had come to know him as Savior years earlier, but it was during those wonderful classes that I took from Ray Anderson that I began to discover the theology of John McLeod Campbell, a Scottish pastor and theologian who, when he would make his pastoral rounds, discovered that his people didn't have any joy in believing.

**JMF:** What was his time frame?

**DT:** McLeod Campbell was a pastor in the early 1820s, in Scotland. He found that as he made his pastoral rounds, the people would dread his coming because they were afraid that he would inquire after their spiritual condition, and they felt so unworthy. He found that they had no grounds for rejoicing in God, and he thought this strange, that here we had this wonderful good news of what God had done in Christ, but the people were not finding any joy in it.

**JMF:** Sounds somewhat like today, doesn't it?

**DT:** I think it does. It has amazing parallels to today. He found that the problem was that they were so wrapped up in themselves and in their adequacy to be "eligible" for grace. They understood that Christ had done something wonderful on the cross, but all their doubts were as to themselves: Have I repented enough? Am I sincere enough? Have I believed enough? Am I worthy enough?

So he sought to begin to direct their attention away from themselves, hunting in themselves for some kind of worthiness, and instead pointed them to Christ and to see how God felt toward them, and to see what God and Christ had already accomplished for them.

This really switched on some lights for me. It helped me to see that in Christ, we have a full revelation of God; that God has come in our humanity to disclose his very heart to us. In Christ we see a God who loves us unconditionally, who will go to any length to bring us back.

**JMF:** Why is that so hard to get our minds around?

**DT:** I think because it's so counterintuitive. In our society and our world today, everything is based on performance, whether it's the job we have, perhaps even the relationships that we have, we're always trying to _win_ a relationship. We're trying to _earn_ a job, earn a raise. So when we're told that God loves us unconditionally, that we're already loved and accepted by him, that's astonishing.

Grace is an alien word in our culture. We think that we must _do_ certain things, perform certain things. We must bring a certain amount of merit so that God will accept us. So when McLeod Campbell began to proclaim the gospel that God and Christ had already done it all, his people were astonished, and some of them felt liberated for the very first time in their lives, and others began to murmur and complain.

Eventually he was forced to leave the ministry of the Church of Scotland for daring to preach a universal pardon available through Christ. But he went on to become one of Scotland's finest theologians with his work _The Nature of the Atonement._

**JMF:** So Ray Anderson brought this as part of the class work to your attention?

**DT:** Exactly. He helped us see that Christ reveals the Father, and we began to appreciate the depth in God as being a Triune God, that within God there's this Father/Son relationship that's been existing from all eternity. God is a God of relationships. Ray also emphasized the fact that the Holy Spirit is another of the three persons in that communion.

**JMF:** So if there's relationship in God, then that translates over into how everything is made, including us, our relationships with God and with each other.

**DT:** That's a crucial point. Within God, God being from all eternity a triune communion of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, experience an abundance of love through all eternity. It was out of the overflow of that love that God through Christ brought the world into being. So we were made in love, and for love.

After the fall, Christ the creator becomes the Redeemer. God comes to reclaim that which he had made. He was not willing to live without us. In love, he went all the way to be incarnate in our humanity, and our skin and bones, to live life just as we live it, with the same temptations we face, the same struggles. Yet through it all, Jesus was faithful to his Father. Then he died our death and rose in triumph in our humanity. Now he presents us in himself as those who are loved by the Father, who have been redeemed.

**JMF:** Didn't Campbell have a great influence on Thomas and James Torrance?

**DT:** He definitely did. Campbell had been branded a heretic by the Church of Scotland in his day because at that time, the Church of Scotland was enamored by the high Calvinist idea that only some are predestined to salvation and that Christ only died for some. Calvin himself (but that's another story) taught that Christ died for the world. But McLeod Campbell, when he began to state that Christ's atonement was universal, that he died for everyone, raised the eyebrows of his peers and he was defrocked from the ministry.

But later on, he was awarded a doctor of divinity by the University of Glasgow before he died. By the time he died, the majority of the Kirk, as we call the Church of Scotland, had come around to his point of view of a universal atonement.

Both Tom and James Torrance loved the writings of McLeod Campbell. They found particular help in his emphasis on the priesthood of Jesus, that Jesus not only did a priestly work by his death on the cross, but that he represented us in his humanity, that our humanity was assumed by Jesus so that as he lived his life, we were there in him, and when he died, we died, when he rose, we rose.

Paul writes to the Colossians, in chapter 3, "You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." This is true, because it's a present reality, because Christ goes on bearing our humanity. We're included in the priesthood of Jesus. "When I go to pray," James Torrance was fond of saying, "I'm not left to struggle God-ward with my prayers hoping that I'm worthy enough or pious enough or good enough to get a hearing, but rather, Jesus Christ ever lives to make intercession for us, as Hebrews 7 puts it so memorably."

This dimension of the priesthood of Jesus has been emphasized greatly by the Torrances. It helps us understand our ongoing relationship to God today.

**JMF:** Most people have the idea that Jesus was human while he was here on earth, but after he died and was raised, that he's no longer human; he's fully God but not fully human anymore, but that works against the scriptural witness.

**DT:** I think it does. One of the most memorable passages is 1 Timothy 2, where Paul writes to this young pastor he is mentoring and reminds him that there is one God and one mediator between God and man, _the man_ Christ Jesus. He puts it in the present tense. Jesus' mediation today with the Father is as a human. He goes on being human. This is important because the humanity of Jesus is our bridge to God. It's through his humanity that we're included in the life of God and the communion of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. It's through the humanity of Jesus that I can come right into the Father's arms even though I don't deserve so glad a welcome.

**JMF:** So getting back to your journey, these things were brought up, you were introduced to them through Ray, and then how did things go after that?

**DT:** After serving in the pastorate for a few years, it was my privilege to go to Scotland in 1985, where I studied under James Torrance. These were transformative years for me. James Torrance was a wonderful man of God, Christ-centered, a tremendous warmth about his pastoral way, but he brilliantly reflected on the nature of God as a triune God and as a communion of persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

He also made much of the fact that in our life in God, grace is the first and primary thing, that God's expectations of us are the second thing. The first thing is his grace. As J.B. (We used to call him J.B. To his face, we called him Professor Torrance; to one another we affectionately called him J.B.) said, you could summarize a paradigm for the Christian life as being grace, law, consequences. God's grace comes first, and then he enables us to keep his expectations through his grace. Then as a consequence, we live our lives in Christ. It was a very freeing thing to see this and to experience this.

**JMF:** I love Paul's letter to Titus, where he says, "It is grace that teaches us to say no to ungodliness." Often what we hear is, "say no to ungodliness," but Paul's point is that it isn't _law_ that teaches us to say no to ungodliness — it's grace, the fact that we're already accepted, and forgiven, and clean in Christ, that's what teaches us, that's the springboard toward saying no to ungodliness.

**DT:** That's right. Grace is the basis for our life in God, not our works. Paul says to the Galatians that he's astonished that they're deserting the gospel, that having begun in the Spirit they wanted to continue in the flesh, that having received the free grace of God, now they thought they were on probation or that they were on performance, that they had to somehow or another be obedient enough or keep enough rules in order to be in good with God. Paul wants to draw them back to the gospel of grace in Christ.

**JMF:** The place where the rubber meets the road with that, we might say, is when a person has sinned.

**DT:** Yes.

**JMF:** Maybe they've sinned again. Maybe they've done the same thing they've been struggling with for decades or whatever. There's a sense at that moment of, "I am never going to overcome," and there's a sense of, "God has left me. I am forsaken," but that's precisely where the real gospel can meet us with hope and joy in the face of our sin.

**DT:** That's profoundly important. One of the greatest enemies of the Christian life is our preoccupation with ourselves and our unworthiness and our failings. Luther said that the fallen man...the condition of the sinner is that he is _incurvatus in se ipsum,_ he's curved inward on himself. That's the bondage we face sometimes because of our brokenness. We don't look up to God and his grace, we look inside ourselves and we see our hurts, we see our failings, we see wrongs we've committed, and we feel despairing.

But the gospel invites us to look away from ourselves to what God in Christ has done. It was while we were yet sinners that Christ died for us, when we were powerless that Christ died for us. Our life in Christ continues after conversion, where we're continually upheld by the faithfulness of Christ, continually upheld by the grace of Christ.

That's why Paul writes to the church at Corinth. He says in 1 Corinthians 1:30, "Christ is our wisdom, our righteousness, our sanctification." He is all of those things. If we try to find it in ourselves, we'll only be discouraged. Sometimes this is an ongoing thing. We don't get a magical mastery over all of our sins when we suddenly get the right insight or when we hear the gospel of grace. We're broken people, and that brokenness will not be completely healed until the next life.

**JMF:** Doesn't that mean that there's a significant difference between our faith and Christ's faith? In other words, what we tend to do is say, "My faith is so weak. I want to believe what you just described, and yet I find such a hard time believing it, because you don't know how bad of a sinner I am," but really we're dealing with, not the quality of our faith, but we're dealing with Christ's own faithfulness. Our trust is in him, not in our faith.

**DT:** That's a vitally important point that isn't emphasized enough today. This was one of the great teachings of Tom Torrance. Early in his career, in 1957, he wrote an important article called "One Biblical Aspect of the Concept of Faith." In there, he points out that in the Bible, particularly in the Psalms, you see there's this continuing contrast between God who is faithful, and true, and stable, and unchangeable, and man, who is frail and changeable as a flower that is vital and full of life one minute and withering and blowing away the next.

The Bible encourages us to take refuge from our own frailty and instability in God, who is faithful. Tom Torrance points out that this is continued in the New Testament with the emphasis on the faithfulness of Jesus. That's why Paul says, "When we are faithless, he is faithful. When we are vacant of faith, he is full of faith. He is faithful."

Paul says in Galatians 2:20, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me. And the life I live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." Paul was not impressed with his own faith, but he was very impressed with the faith of Jesus. Paul didn't have the feeling that it was the vitality of his spirituality, or his faith, or his sincerity that guaranteed him a place in God, but he was very impressed with the faithfulness of Jesus. That's what kept him going.

**JMF:** That's so freeing and comforting to know that it's entirely the love of God and his faithfulness toward us, Christ's atoning work for us, that we depend on and rest in and we don't have to (as Tom Torrance puts it) look over our shoulder all the time wondering if we're doing good enough, believing well enough...

**DT:** That's right. A centurion went to Jesus, his daughter is desperately ill, but he has to say to Jesus, "I believe, help my unbelief." Jesus didn't say, "Go away until you get more faith."

**JMF:** Yeah. The church does sometimes...

**DT:** That's right. But he could come to him in his brokenness and his half-belief and say, "Lord, I don't even know if I believe. My faith is so fragile that I'm just desperate." Jesus met him right there and wonderfully healed his daughter.

**JMF:** You wrote an article that was published in _Princeton Theological Review_ called "Torrance's Theology of Faith." In that, you use an illustration, along the lines of what you just said, about a drowning man.

**DT:** I think this is a vivid way of putting it. Calvin describes faith as an empty outstretched hand, and the place of a sinner before God is like that of a drowning person. That person is going down. They're losing their life, and there's nothing they can do to save themselves. The lifeguard can come and save that person, but the person needs to stop struggling. Instead of taking swimming lessons at the time, he needs to relax in the arms of another who will carry him to safety.

The analogy that Tom Torrance used, which I find to be a vivid one, he employs it in his _Mediation of Christ._ He said when his daughter was very young, he would sometimes walk her some place, and she would put her tiny weak hand in his and she was secure in the strong hand of her daddy. He says, "That's the picture of faith." It wasn't the strength of my daughter that kept her secure, that guided her to the right places, it was simply my strong hand around her weak hand. He says, "In Christ's faithfulness, we're being undergirded by the faithfulness of Jesus every day of our lives."

**JMF:** So getting back to...you had gone to Aberdeen, you had studied under James Torrance, and how did things go from there?

**DT:** It was during that time that I began to study in depth not only McLeod Campbell, but I also studied Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin. I was seeking to understand how one's understanding of God affects one's understanding of salvation and of the Christian life.

Aquinas has many wonderful things to say. He was a great theologian, one of the great theologians of the church. But when it came to his understanding of the gospel, he began to insert conditions. He began to say that God will meet you if you meet him halfway: "If you do what's in you, if you try your best, if you're sincere enough, if you confess enough, if you comply with the conditions the priest sets forth, then you can receive grace."

Aquinas was convinced that Christ had done a great work on the cross, but he argued that God meets us halfway, and the classical definition of that position is Semi-Pelagianism. Pelagius taught that we're saved by works, but Thomas Aquinas said that's not quite right. We're not saved by works, we're saved by works-plus-grace, and that's known as Semi-Pelagianism.

I wondered how it was that he would have such an understanding that our works contribute to salvation. I wondered what in his doctrine of God led him to that position. I discovered that he was heavily influenced by Aristotle, and his understanding of God was one of absolute will, and God who simply can decree the way he's going to work with the world. God can do whatever he wants, and what he decided was to set up a situation in which those who perform sufficiently along with his grace would receive salvation. To my mind, that didn't square with the gospel, didn't square with the God revealed in Christ.

Then I moved on to look at John Calvin. John Calvin has a much more Christ-centered theology. He understood grace as being totally unconditional. He points out that when John the Baptist said, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," that John was saying that because the kingdom of God has come with all of the grace that Jesus is bringing, you are enabled to live a new life in Christ. Repentance wasn't a condition of salvation—it was a way of living out the new life in Christ.

Calvin was much more helpful because he had a Christ-centered understanding of God the Father. His doctrine of God led to a much better understanding of salvation and the gospel.

The problem for Calvin, in my view, is that he had an understanding of God's grace being limited from all eternity to certain elect ones, and those were the ones who received salvation. In that respect, he departed from his Christ-centered point of view. Because you don't find a God who only loves certain ones in Christ. You find Christ opening his arms and saying, "Come to me, _all_ you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." And, "God so loved the _world_ that he gave his only Son."

Last, I looked at McLeod Campbell, and I saw that McLeod Campbell was an advance over both Aquinas and Calvin because he was throughgoingly Christ-centered in his understanding of Scripture and of God.

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## The Grace Walk  
An Interview With Steve McVey

**MM:** Steve, you've written a book called _Grace Walk_. It's sold quite a number of copies now, and in the book you describe the story of how you came to an understanding of grace, and I wondered if we could start today by rehearsing a little bit of that story as to what it was that motivated you to write this book.

**Steve McVey:** Sure. I grew up in a Christian home. My parents were Christians; they're both in heaven now. But I was taught about the Lord from the time I was a small child and was very sincere. I understood the gospel when I was 8 years old, and by the time I was 16 years old, I was preaching. I preached my first sermon at 16 years old and was very sincere....became a senior pastor at 19. Can you believe that? 19 years old and I was a senior pastor of a church with about 100 people — about 80 of them were over 65, which seemed old to me back then. It doesn't seem so old these days.

Anyway, I was very sincere in my Christian walk, but little by little I found happening to me what I think happens to a lot of people, and that is my focus began to be, in small increments, it began to move away from being on Jesus and began to be more directed toward my own performance — how well I was doing and living the Christian life.

The essence of legalism is thinking that somehow we can make spiritual progress or gain God's blessings based on what we do, making sure that we do the right things, making sure that we're keeping all the rules. In the modern church, I think we get grace when it comes to evangelism for unbelievers, but then once people believe, it's like bait and switch — we turn the tables on them, you know what I'm saying? It's like "OK, it was grace for you to understand the gospel, but now that you're a believer, everything's changed. Now it's all about you and what _you_ do." I lived that way for the first 29 years of my Christian life. 17 of those years I was a senior pastor.

In my first book, _Grace Walk_ , which was published in 1995, I described how the Lord brought me to a place where I realized that although my heart had been in the right place, my head was in the wrong place. That book starts out with me lying on my face in the middle of the night at 2:00 in the morning crying in my office, as a pastor, saying, "If this is the Christian life, it's overrated, and if this is the ministry, I want out." How's that for a sort of tease introduction to a book? A pastor who wanted to quit.

**MM:** It sounds like you'd been a successful pastor, if you had 19 years, and if you then continued to focus on performance, perhaps that's because you were "performing" well.

**SM:** That's right. It's really interesting. I write about it in the book, that for many years as a pastor I felt successful. I felt that way. I got that from accolades of other people, the affirmation of my ministry and those kinds of things.

But I began to pray a prayer, and I tell you this is a prayer that the Lord takes very seriously. I began to pray a prayer, and I said, "Father, I want to know you more intimately than I've ever known you. I want to be used by you. I want you to work through my life to impact people with your love, your life, more than I could even imagine it." Then I said this: "And whatever it takes, I want you to do it to bring me to that place."

Well, he heard that prayer. I'm making a long story short...I wrote a whole book about it. Shortly after that, I made a move from a church where I served as senior pastor in the state of Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia. I moved to Atlanta anticipating that I was going there to build a megachurch, and that I would see unprecedented success in my ministry. The church I was going to had been dying in every measurable way for five years before I got there, but I thought when I got there, things would turn around.

But to my surprise, things didn't turn around. The church kept dying and it just kept dying, right out from under me. After I had been there a year, that's when, as I mentioned a moment ago, I was approaching the first anniversary date of my tenure as pastor, and I found myself lying on my face, and I said, "If this is the ministry, I want out. If this is Christian living, it's overrated."

But the ironic thing is that what the Lord used in my life (as he does in, I think, all of our lives when he wants to bring us up to a deeper or higher understanding of grace), is he had to bring me to the place where I had discovered my need for grace. You see?

We "get" grace [i.e., understand it] for unbelievers. But sometimes as pastors, especially, we don't get it. We think, "I'm preaching the Bible, I'm counseling, I'm doing all the things a pastor should be doing. I'm having success with it." The Lord has to work in our lives to bring us to the place where we say, "I can't do what I thought I could do," so that we'll be open to what he wants to teach us.

**MM:** So in some ways, failure was good.

**SM:** Failure is always good, because failure is not the end. Suffering and pain and what we interpret as failure is sometimes not failure at all. It's the principle in the Bible about dying to live. Jesus said unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies it abides alone; you've got to die to live. The Bible is full of paradoxical statements like that. We have to think about that the Bible says we die to live. We have to be weak in order to be strong. We go down so we can go up. It has to get dark before the light comes.

But we're wired in this world. Our flesh is programmed this way. Especially those of us who live in the Western culture, we're wired to think that we have to succeed, and we have to make our mark, and there has to be this continuous upward trajectory toward success and what we're doing. But we don't get strong enough for God to use us. We have to get _weak_ enough for God to use us. The best way to learn that is in the midst of our failures.

**MM:** That kind of thing kind of hurts, though, doesn't it?

**SM:** It does. Just like when my children were small and I took them to the doctor for their vaccinations, it always hurt. When I took them for their booster shots, it hurt, and it was for their own good. It was a good thing, though in their little minds it didn't seem like it. In our own minds, as human beings, sometimes when we're in painful circumstances, we think, "If God cares, why is he letting this happen?" If we could hear him answer, we would hear him say, "It's precisely because I do care, that I'm letting this happen."

In my situation I came into that church and it kept dying out from under me (numerically, I mean), and I had always been used to growing churches. So I prayed, "Lord, what's going on?" I began to feel weakened. I began to feel discouraged, despondent, finally despair. I kept praying, "Lord, make me stronger, make me stronger."

I realize now what he was saying is, "Steve, I've got a better idea. I'll make you weaker." I'm going to say it again. We don't get strong enough for God to use us, so we might as well stop praying "make me stronger," because grace isn't afforded to the strong, you know what I'm saying? It's not the strong people who tap into grace. It's weak people who understand our need for grace, so we've got to become weak, so that we'll reach a point where we can become recipients of grace in an experiential way.

**MM:** So when we have strengths, we tend to rely on our strengths.

**SM:** Absolutely.

**MM:** For some people, it's physical strength, others it's intellectual, some social.

**SM:** That's right. That reliance upon our own abilities and our own strengths as we're describing it — the biblical word for that is the "flesh." When the Bible talks about walking after the flesh, it's not talking about the skin, these physical bodies. It's can't mean that. Paul said to one group, "You're no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit." He didn't mean they were ghosts. What he meant is "You get it. You finally get it."

"The flesh" is you or I trying to live for Christ instead of understanding that we can't live for him. We weren't called to live for him. Grace is the enablement by virtue of his indwelling life for us to live his life because he's expressing it through us, not because we're doing it for him, and there's a big difference between the two. To experience that kind of outflow of grace from our lives, we've got to come to the point where we realize, "I can't live the Christian life no matter how hard I try."

It's a great day for any of us when we discover that the Christian life is not hard for us to live, it's _impossible_ for us to live. There's only one who can live the Christ-life, and that's the Christ himself. And he will live it, if we come to the end of ourselves and abandon ourselves in total surrender to him. The gospel is not just the gospel for unbelievers, it's the gospel for believers, too. We need his grace just like unbelievers need his grace.

**MM:** People tend to rely on their strengths — sometimes they call those spiritual gifts. How do we tell the difference between our fleshly strength and a spiritual gift?

**SM:** That's a good point you make, and there's a fine line sometimes, because the abilities that we have come from our Father. He's given us those abilities. The key distinguishing factor revolves around one question—what animates those abilities? What is it that I'm relying on to give expression to those abilities? Is it me? Is it my own know-how? Is it my own determination? My own willpower? My own intentionality? Or is it an attitude that says, Apart from him I can do nothing, so I rely upon him and by faith I trust him to be the one to animate those abilities.

For those first 17 years as a senior pastor, I tried to do things for the Lord. My heart was in the right place, it was my head that was messed up, not my heart. My heart was toward him. But when the Lord brought me to brokenness in 1990 and began to teach me this grace walk and what it means to let him live through me, I'll never forget the changes I began to see, because the most evident change is I began to see I didn't have to struggle anymore. I could simply rest in him knowing that he is in control of my life. It's not even my ministry. It's his ministry, and if I just yield myself to him, he will do through me what he wants to do.

He's done that in ways that exceeded anything I could have done or imagined. It's not just like God has a favorite and he'll do for me what he won't do for somebody else. He doesn't pick folks like you and me and say, "I'm going to do something with their lives, but you guys on the margin, on the periphery, I won't use your life or I won't work for you." No, no, no. He wants to use all of us. Paul told the Corinthians that "You see your calling, that it's not many that are noble and mighty and strong..." You know the passage...but he goes on and says, "God chooses the weak."

So I would say to those who watch us that if they feel like, "I'm just not strong like that guy. I'm weak. I've never written books. I don't have the education or the abilities, or..." No, no, no. You're perfect. I'd say to them, "You're the _perfect_ candidate for God to use you, because you know it has to be him that does it, and that's the kind of person he will use and takes delight in, in fact."

**MM:** But he doesn't necessarily use us in the way that we associate with success.

**SM:** Absolutely not. God's definition of success and ours, in the religious world at least, is very different. It's not possible for you and I not to be successful as we depend on Jesus as our life source, because _he_ is our success. Christ is our life. In him we live and move and exist, Paul said on Mars Hill, and he was speaking even then to unbelievers. He said, "In him we live and move and exist."

Christ is our life, so success is our union with him. We just can relax. It's not about striving for success anymore. It's about just resting in Jesus and letting Jesus be who he is in us and through us. There's success right there, whatever it might look like.

**MM:** So, I can be a success even without doing anything, achieving anything.

**SM:** Absolutely. In fact, we don't achieve anything. We're not called to achieve anything. We are receivers, not achievers. The great Achiever lives inside us, and he will accomplish through us whatever he wants to do as we depend upon him. We don't have to make something happen — as I said, we don't live for him, we don't have to do anything for him.

Now, for people who have been groomed in the legalistic mindset, they're thinking, "That guy's talking passivity." No, I'm not talking passivity. I can only speak for myself...well, I can speak for more than that. I can speak for all the people I have seen who have embraced grace in saying this: He will do more through us in a day than we can do for him in 25 lifetimes. We just need to stop the struggle.

Jesus said, "Come to me..." (I'm quoting the King James—it's the one I grew up on—so this is the way I have memorized it.) "Come to me all ye who labor and are heavy-laden, and I'll give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and you shall find rest for your souls, for my yoke is easy and my burden is light."

Religion beats the daylights out of us. (Sound of whip cracking) "More, more, more!" That's what legalistic religion does. But grace is the voice of Jesus saying, "Come to me and I'll give you rest." Yet it's not passivity, because it's a life of active rest, where he lives his life through us and does more through us than we could ever do for him.

**MM:** What's the role of our decisions in that? How do we let Jesus live through us without us taking the credit for the results?

**SM:** It's a mindset. Once we've failed enough to realize "I will mess it up every time I try," that's a good teacher. When we see God doing something through us, we begin to realize "This is not me. I couldn't have done this."

Can I give you one example? First time I saw this after I began to understand... (to _begin_ to understand, notice, because we're still growing in grace, all of us are). When I began to understand this, the first example that I saw in my own life...here I had been trying to make my mark for Jesus. I was senior pastor at the time. My secretary comes in and she says, "Pastor, there's a guy here that would like to talk to you." I said, "What about?" She said, "About attending church." I said, "Okay."

The guy comes in; he was from Africa, from Cameroon. He begins to talk to me about the church, and I quickly realized that he doesn't understand the gospel or anything about our faith. So I share the gospel with him and the guy believes. He trusts in Christ that very day. Every week he began coming for me to disciple him on Tuesday. I did that every week.

One week he comes in and he says, "Pastor, have you noticed that every week when I come, I take notes of what you're saying? I said, "Yeah." He took copious notes every single week when I was discipling him. He said, "Do you know why I do it?" I said, "I guess you take them back and study." He said, "No. I go over here to the shipping place and I mail these notes to the chief in my village in Africa. Every week the chief is getting these notes, and he goes out and he calls the village together. He's sharing with them what you're teaching me."

He said, "A lot of people in my village are trusting Christ, and they're asking the chief questions that he doesn't know how to answer, and he's asking me, and I don't know how to answer, so I'm supposed to ask you. If I translate, will you answer the questions of the new Christians in my village?" All of sudden, it just washed over me. I thought, "Here I am sitting in Atlanta, Georgia, with one man across the desk from me, and I'm evangelizing and discipling a whole village of people in Africa."

**MM:** How strange is that? Pastoring them, too.

**SM:** Exactly. I couldn't make that happen in a million years. That's the point I make. When we strive to do things for God, all it is, all it results in, is what the Bible calls "dead works." It's just religious works. But if we give up on our struggle, and as the writer of Hebrews says, "enter into his rest." (I used to think that meant dying and going to heaven — that's how anemic my Christian life was. No...enter into his rest.) That is, I stopped struggling and striving, and I'm just going to trust that God is my life and that he'll live through me.

If we'll do that, the kind of thing I just described, that one anecdote, that's just the tip of the iceberg. I've been on six continents sharing this message and seeing God do things that there's no way I could take credit for. How do I know it's him and not me? Because I'm not smart enough to do the things he's done through me. As you started out by saying, people might see his life expressed in different ways. It might not be something that they would consider on a grand scale, but it doesn't matter, because when Christ does something through us, we recognize, "That happened from a source beyond my own abilities. That was _him_ through me." We see it, and that encourages us and motivates us to want to trust him more.

**MM:** That reminds me of Susanna Wesley, who had no idea that her role as a mother would turn out to be so influential. Just an ordinary station in life, she thought, and yet the Lord was able to use what she had done.

**SM:** Perfect example. I wrote about her. I wrote a book called _Walking in the Will of God_ , and I make the point toward the end of the book, that very point. I said, fulfilling God's will in your life doesn't mean that you have to see your name in lights or anything. And I gave the example of Susanna Wesley. What greater contribution could somebody make than Susannah Wesley made by being a godly mother? Look at what Charles and John Wesley gave us – and continues till today, in fact.

**MM:** You said your heart was in the right place, but your head was not. _What_ about our head knowledge is going to make a difference, the kind of difference that you describe?

**SM:** Here's the big thing that I see in the modern church. The big idea is that we think God has called us to himself because he needs us to do something for him. I've got good news and bad news. I'll start with the bad news. The bad news is: God doesn't need us. If we think God needs us, then we greatly underestimate him or we overestimate ourselves. I often say you can take a blank sheet of paper and write down a list of everything you think you have to offer God on that paper, and stand up to the edge of eternity and hold that list up to the God who stood on the edge of nothingness and said "let there be" and there _was,_ and tell him what it is you think you've got that he needs. No, He doesn't need us.

But the good news is, he _wants_ us. He's not looking for a maid, he's looking for a bride. This is biblical, Acts 17. The Bible says, "Neither is he served by human hands as though he needed anything." I like the passage in the Old Testament where God told Isaiah, he said, "If I were hungry, I wouldn't tell you." You know why? Because there's nothing we could do about it. God doesn't need us.

But the religious culture of the world today, even in the Christian world, somehow communicates, "God has shown you his grace by bringing salvation to you, and now you understand that he's forgiven your sin, you're one with him now, so now it's up to _you_ ...now you've signed up for something and now it's up to you to accomplish something, to achieve something, to do something for him."

It's a misguided, albeit sincere, intention, because it suggests the very contrary of what I've just shared from the Bible. God doesn't need us. We have been called to live in this union, this, as you guys here know very well, this _perichoresis,_ this inner penetration of inner love and harmony. We've been called to live in that group hug and then to live out of that group hug expressing the life of the Father, Son, and Spirit in our day-to-day activities.

That's a far cry from religion. Religion demands that we _do_ things, but when we live out of the circle of the Father, Son, and Spirit, we find it's not demand, it's desire. It's not law, it's love. It's not responsibility, it's relationship, it's privilege that motivates us to want to express the divine life of the Father, Son, and Spirit to the world around us. And that's a country mile, as we say down south, away from religious obligation.

**MM:** A lot of people have a picture of God that's a bit austere, and not very inviting. But you're describing a more attractive God. Is that part of the head knowledge that makes a difference in our relationship?

**SM:** How we see God, our theology, is everything. That's the foundation. Sometimes people say to me, "What difference does theology make?" The answer is: it makes all the difference in the world, because our view of who God is, our understanding, our concept of who he is, will affect the way we see and do everything else in life. It will affect how we see ourselves, it will affect how we see others, it will affect how we see situations that we face.

Many of us have grown up... if we grew up in the evangelical world it was almost inevitable that we would come to the conclusion that we serve a God whose primary interest is in matters of right and wrong, and that his primary focus is that once he's forgiven us of our sins, now he's going to teach us how to do the right thing.

**MM:** Well sure. In the Bible we see all sorts of commands – do this, do that.

**SM:** Right. But we don't see those commands through an unfiltered lens. We read the Bible just like we look at our God, and that is through the skewed, tainted, blurred lens of our own making. All the way back in the garden, when Adam and Eve sinned and they...immediately they had this skewed sense of who God is, and they began to see him through the distorted lens of their own guilt and shame. Ever since then, we've done that.

Don't think just because a person trusts Christ and says, "Thank you, Lord, for forgiving my sin, I'm a believer," don't think that that lens just instantly goes away. It doesn't. There's this renewal of the mind that has to take place.

I've had two monumental paradigm shifts, radical changes in my life since the time I trusted Christ as a child. One was what I wrote about in this book, _Grace Walk_ , when I began to understand my identity in Christ...that I don't have to try to live for him, but that I died _with_ him and now he is my life.

The other was just less than six years ago when I began to understand the Trinitarian viewpoint. That is this idea of who the Father, Son, and Spirit are, and that our God is not a punitive, judgmental, harsh, demanding, exacting God who's looking down on us saying, "When are you going to ever learn to quit doing the wrong and start doing right?"

Why, for God to do that would be a violation of what he had told Adam and Eve in the Garden when he said, "Don't eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil." But they did, and suddenly everything became about morality, and it became about issues of right and wrong. We lifted up that filtered clouded lens and we looked at the face of our God through that.

But sin didn't change God, it only changed Adam and Eve. Our God never was, never has been, never will be, a God who's preoccupied with issues of right and wrong. Our God is preoccupied with _us._ It's about relationship, not rules.

When we read the Bible, if we read the Bible through a particular lens, we're going to see a lot of demanding things in Scripture. But let me give an example, if I could, and excuse this kind of familiar example, a personal example. When I go home from California, back to my wife, if my wife says, "Get over here and kiss me now," if she _commands_ me to come kiss her, okay, her commandments are not burdensome, to quote Scripture (laughing.)

You see what I'm saying? The commands of the Bible, when we understand the New Testament...first, we're free from the Old Testament law. Paul said in Romans 7, "We are made to die to the law so that we might be joined to another, to him who was raised from the dead." We're out from under the law — we don't even live in that world anymore.

But the commands in the New Testament, that's like my wife saying, "Get over here and kiss me." John said, "His commandments are not burdensome" (King James, "His commandments are not grievous."). We _want_ to do those things. God gives us a new motivation, and the motivation is desire. It's not duty, it's desire. For anybody who's watching who reads their New Testament and thinks it's filled with commands that they have to struggle to try to keep, I think it does come back to their concept of who their Father is. Because once we know that we're totally accepted, listen, that changes everything.

Life is not a test. Life is a _rest._ Jesus said, "Come to me and I'll give you rest." He didn't say I'll give you a test. There is no test. It's a rest.

**MM:** There's not a final exam.

**SM:** There's no final exam. We've passed, we've scored a perfect score with flying colors because the grade that we have is the grade of Jesus, because he is our life, we're one with him. Paul said, "He who joins himself together to the Lord is one spirit with him." It's so simple. No wonder Jesus said, you have to become like a little child. Because our religious minds and our adult minds, and our Western-world minds, we tend to miss it. It's so simple. If I could just say it as simply as the Bible says it, just believe! Just believe it.

It's called the gospel because it's good news—if we could just believe it. God in Christ, Jesus, by the power of the Holy Spirit, has made everything right. We're restored, we're reconciled, it's all good now. So all we can do, all we need to do, is just live out of the overflow, the celebration, of that _perichoresis_ , the _koinonia_ , that fellowship that we have with the Father, Son, and Spirit because of the cross. Sounds too good to be true, and when it does, it's probably the gospel, it's grace.

**MM:** Many people think that that's not very workable. They just don't...

**SM:** It's _not_ (laughing). It's not workable, you can only _trust_ it. That's a good point, I like it. That was a little slip there, I like it. It's not _work_ able. It's not of works, it's of faith. Sorry to interrupt, but I couldn't resist that.

**MM:** That's good.

**SM:** But you make a good point. A lot of us think that that we're forgiven our sin and now we're in Christ, but now we've got this _manual_ here [the Bible], we've got this...

**MM:** Yeah...isn't right and wrong found in there?

**SM:** Yeah, it is. And we're told to avoid it. We're told...see, here's the key. Whatsoever is not of faith is sin. You can do the right thing and it still be a sin.

It's not about right and wrong, it's about trusting Christ in us to live his life through us. We're capable...and this is where the modern church misses it, in my mind. We're capable of more than right. You don't even have to believe in Christ to do the right thing. I know many people that renounce the gospel who don't commit adultery and don't steal or kill, or we could go down the list. But we're capable of more than right, we're capable of living righteously.

We're capable of more than morality. Morality is that system of right and wrong based on the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the one God said stay away from. We're capable of more than moral living, we're capable of _miraculous_ living. By that I mean that the deity, Father, Son, and Spirit, flows through us, out into this world like a river of living water from our innermost being.

**MM:** Right. But we're not doing it.

**SM:** You mean the modern church is not experiencing that?

**MM:** You say that we're capable of this, but yet in a way _we're_ not doing it — it's Jesus working in us.

**SM:** That's right. We're capable because he has enabled us.

**MM:** Our role is to get out of the way?

**SM:** That's right. We are capable because he's made us capable. We are responsible, response-able, we're responsible, we're now able to respond to him and say, "OK, I get it, I don't have to struggle."

I wrote in _Grace Walk_ an experience I've seen, I've witnessed many times. When I was a pastor of churches I'd visit hospitals. A guy might have had heart surgery, and he's on a breathing machine. Have you ever been in the room with somebody when they wake up on a breathing machine? They have to kind of learn with that thing, because if they're not careful, it happens a lot of times when a person wakes up in a recovery room after surgery and they're on a breathing machine, they try to breathe.

When they try to breathe, they're fighting against the machine, and all kind of alarms go off, and it's very uncomfortable for them. I've seen it again and again. My own dad had heart surgery, and I saw him on one when he was alive. The nurse will come in and say, "Calm down, don't struggle...." Listen to this, "You don't have to try to breathe, just relax. The machine will breathe for you." Sure enough, I've watched it again and again. The people would just kind of let go and relax and quit struggling, and the machine takes over and begins to breathe for them.

Isn't it interesting that the word for Spirit is _breathe?_ So when we rely upon the Holy Spirit, we don't struggle to breathe. We just depend on the Spirit of Christ in us, the Spirit of Jesus that indwells us, and as we learn to just rest and realize, "I don't have to make it happen, I just trust him." As we learn that, then he does it through us. It's a rest.

It's one of those paradoxical statements. In Hebrews the Bible says...I like it, it's almost comical to me, " _Strive_ to enter into that _rest_ " (laughing). The reason we have to strive to enter into that rest is because it's not the default setting of the flesh to rest, and so we have to be very intentional about that.

We have to say, "No, no, no, no, I'm not going to take my life or my circumstances, my will, I'm not going to try to take this back into my own hands, I've already proven I'm not capable. So I'm going to just, by intentionality, which is the striving part, I'm going to choose, I'm going to decide, I'm going to go against the current of modern religion, I'm going to go against the current of my own fleshly inclinations, and I'm going to just trust and rest and let him be who he is in and through me." That's grace. It's the unilateral expression of his life and love in us and through us. He does it all. We're containers and we're conduits of his life, but we don't work it up.

**MM:** And that's the grace walk.

**SM:** That's the grace walk. Him doing it in us and through us. It's not a passive lifestyle. It's a lifestyle where we actively rest in him, and he does it all.

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## We Will Never Overestimate God's Grace  
An Interview With Steve McVey

**MM:** In an earlier program, you talked about how you had a couple of theological transitions in your life and you gave a synopsis of the first one. Maybe you could give an even briefer synopsis now, and then describe the second one.

**SM:** Sure, I'd be glad to. First let me back up and say that I understood the gospel as a young boy. I grew up in a Christian family and I believed in the Lord at a very early age, became a senior pastor at 19 years old, and for 17 years as a senior pastor I was very sincere, but I was caught up in the typical, I'll call it traditional, religious legalism, and that is the mindset that says that God blesses me or approves of me because I'm doing all the right things that I need to be doing, reading my Bible, praying, involved in church, sharing the gospel, those kinds of things.

In 1990, the Lord brought me to a place of brokenness. That is, I came to the end of myself and my struggle of trying to be the perfect Christian and trying to be a good pastor. He began to show me that it wasn't about me and what I could do for him, that he didn't call me for that, he didn't make me for that, but instead it was about him and what he wanted to do through me. I wrote about that in my first book, _Grace Walk,_ in the early 90s. It came out in '95, and I wrote about that time in life.

That was the first, I'll call it as you said, monumental shift for me in my thinking. I realized, first of all, that I was in union with Christ and that it wasn't Steve with a split personality, an evil twin living inside, you know, a new nature and an old nature combating, but I began to understand co-crucifixion — that the old Steve was crucified with Jesus and now Christ is my life. I began to understand what it means to walk in grace instead of religious legalism, instead of building my life around rules, just relax and let him live his life through me. That was in 1990. We talked about that last time.

For another 15 years, I taught that message. It's what many have called the "exchanged life" message — that "exchanged life" is a phrase that some missionary coined to describe this idea of biblical truth, that our old life died with Christ and that in its place he's given us a new life. I call it the grace walk, Hudson Taylor called it exchanged life, some have called it the higher life, the deeper life, I think Andrew Murray called it the abiding life, Watchmen Nee called it the normal Christian life. Whatever you want to call it, it just means Jesus living his life through us, and understanding that our identity is in him.

The second, I'll call it cataclysmic event, a revelation even, if I can use that word, that came to me and I began to grow in, was about six years ago. It was when I began to think...I've been a Calvinist for about 27 years. I believed, and still believe, in the sovereignty of God. That was the thing I found attractive about Calvinism, and so I'm not trying to be disrespectful to those who hold a Reformed theological view or are Calvinist. But I know in my own teaching I had said for many years, "No matter how big you imagine God's love to be, it's bigger."

Then I began to think about it and I thought, now wait a minute. Some of what I'm teaching about how big God's love is, is actually inconsistent with the tenets of what I have professed to believe, the five points of Calvinism (and for those who might be watching, they are represented by the acrostic TULIP, total depravity, unconditional election, and it was that third one that I began to grapple with — limited atonement, and then there was the irresistible grace, and perseverance of the saints).

But I began to think about that "limited atonement." I thought, now wait a minute. Did God choose everybody, or not? Because I've said everywhere, God's love is bigger than you can imagine it to be. I thought, if God is love the way that I'm teaching, how could this God that I'm teaching and that the Bible clearly says is love by essence, how could he intentionally choose the majority of his creation, his people born, to be reprobates, to never have the opportunity to even know him? How can I say that's love? How can I say that a minority of us will go to heaven and celebrate forever how loving he is, when he purposely chose not to elect the majority of people?

My theology, my concept of God, began to mess with my biblical understanding. Some people might get rattled with me for this, but it wasn't that I looked at the Bible and said, wait a minute, my Calvinistic understanding won't line up with Scripture. That wasn't what precipitated the change in me. What precipitated the change was, I began to say, wait a minute, the Christ who lives in me, who is the exact representation of his Father, I know him. He's not somebody who would decide to never choose the majority of those that would ever be born and never include them in the finished work of the cross. My understanding of the Father through the Son who lives in me and the Spirit who illuminates truth caused me to say, I've got to go back and look at the Bible again. I went back and I began to study the Bible again with fresh eyes, if I can use that phrase — I hope that makes sense.

**MM:** With new lenses.

**SM:** A new lens. That's right. It was the lens that said my God is not a punitive judgmental God, but my God is love, pure and simple. That's not one of his characteristics. Love is not "one of his attributes" — love is the DNA of God. I began to go back into the Bible and study it again. You know how the Holy Spirit works. I began to see things in Scripture in a different light, through the different lens, that I had never seen. I began to realize that this God the Father did indeed express who he is through the Son in his earthly ministry. The Holy Spirit does give us revelation of his love. I began to see a shift.

As I did begin to see a biblical transition in my thinking, the Lord brought along folks that, lo and behold, had written on this very subject of what we know is a Trinitarian perspective. The Lord began to bring people across my path, guys like you here at Grace Communion International, and people like Baxter Kruger, and Thomas Torrance, and J.B. Torrance, and others, Robert Capon, and some of these others that have written from that perspective. It's like wow! All these years I've been teaching the grace of God as what I call the grace walk, and now I get it. The grace of God is even bigger than I had thought. I don't guess we'll ever overestimate God's grace, will we?

That's a long question for a short answer, but that at least sets us in the direction of where my thinking came from and where it is these days.

**MM:** So you examined the Bible from the perspective that God is like the Jesus you had been taught about, or the Jesus you had experienced. Was there previously a "disconnect" between what you thought of God and what you saw as Jesus?

**SM:** The problem with speaking of my experiences...it might sound to somebody like I'm being critical of the evangelical world, and I'm not, but I will say I don't think my experience is unique. I had the idea that I think many do, that you have the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and the Father, in my thinking at the time (not now, this is not how I see it now), but at the time, this Father was a _just_ God who demanded that there be payment for sin, and he had this seething anger, and to get it out of his system and balance the books and satisfy his justice, somebody had to pay. That somebody was going to be me and you and everybody else. I had this concept of this judicial, punitive, harsh God who found everything in him screaming out that his justice be avenged.

Then I had the good cop (you know what I mean? Bad cop, good cop...) Jesus who says "Father, it's okay. How about this? How about if I go down... [and I'm using hyperbole, okay. I'm not being fair to the evangelical perspective I grew up with, sometimes I exaggerate things to make a point, so let me concede that at the start, but there's some truth in this]...

It's like my mind said it was Jesus who said, "Father, how about this? I'll go down to the world, I'll live a sinless life, and I'll go to the cross and you can vent all this anger you have against sin toward me, so that you won't have to vent it toward Steve." God says, "Okay." So Jesus comes down into this world, lives a sinless life, goes to the cross, and God kicks the daylights out of his own Son at the cross. He pours out his anger, he pours out his rage about sin onto Jesus and he gets it out of his system. And now I believe on Jesus, and so God won't pour out his rage on me, because he's poured it out on Jesus.

But even then, I had this idea that God still is this judicial God who's really obsessed with right and wrong, so that even as a Christian when I would sin, God still would have come at me, but Jesus was going, "Father, Father, the scars, the scars." God would say, "Oh yeah, okay, you're right, the scars." I thought God saw me through his Son Jesus, and that's what protected me.

The fallacy in that, is that what we got is a schizophrenic God. And the Spirit, well, we don't even go there, because I didn't belong to a charismatic or Pentecostal denomination, so I knew the Spirit existed, but we didn't talk a lot about him. I knew the Spirit existed, but in my mind I had this harsh, judicial, judgmental God who had to have justice through punishment, and I had this loving Jesus.

But the fallacy in that view is that Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the Father." There's the disconnect. What? How can I see loving Jesus and him say I've seen the Father, if the Father was indeed angry and had some sort of justice (and that's a distorted sense of God's justice) that necessitated that he vent anger against somebody about sin. No. Our triune God, three in one, all share the same heart, and all share the same love and the same passion. They, he, has lived in this _perichoresis,_ in this circle-dance of love that has existed through eternity past, it will exist through eternity future.

One day our God said, if I can take a little literary liberty — I'm a writer and a preacher, that's the double danger here. If I can use a little imagery here, he says, "This love we share, Father, Son, and Spirit, it can't be improved on. It's perfect. It couldn't be improved on, it's already perfect. But you know what we could do that would intensify it? We could share it. We could widen the circle."

So the Father, Son, and Spirit said in Genesis, "Let us make man in our own image." You know the story. It starts right there in the garden, where God created mankind. The reason we're here is so that we can be loved by the Father through the Son and the communion of the Holy Spirit. That's what it's all about. It wasn't a good cop/bad cop. Even the fall of Adam didn't change God. Adam hid because he thought God had now gone over the edge and was angry. No. God came for his walk in the evening just like he'd always done.

**MM:** Even though he _knew_ what Adam had done.

**SM:** Exactly. Adam's sin didn't change God — it changed Adam's perception of God, and it's affected us and contaminated our view of God ever since, unless we see the truth in Scripture that we're talking about today. So God came...and from the get-go he told him, "You don't have to sweat it. Your seed, his seed will bruise the heel of your offspring, but your offspring (speaking of Jesus) will bruise his head [Gen. 3:15]. One day the devil will be destroyed, and in the meantime I'm going to cover you with these animal skins, these bloody skins, to show that the remedy is on the way, don't panic. I'm going to banish you from the Garden and keep you out, so you won't eat from the tree of life and be doomed to this life of sin and distortion, forever living under the delusion and the lies."

From the beginning it's grace, grace, grace, grace, and then when Jesus came to the cross, contrary to my view (which as you understand, and some of the viewers will, is called the penal substitution view — the idea that Jesus took our punishment so that we wouldn't have to take it).

The apostle Paul said it this way in 2 Corinthians, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting those trespasses against them." God the Father was in the Son. Over in Hebrews it said he offered himself by the eternal Spirit. We've got the whole Trinity. We've got our Triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit on a rescue mission, not God the Father punishing Jesus, but the Father and the Son and the Spirit in sync working together to rescue us from this destroying thing called sin that would, to use C.S. Lewis's kind of imagery, make us wither away into nothingness if he didn't come along. I get excited about this.

**MM:** So there was no change in God's attitude toward us because of the death of Jesus?

**SM:** Here's a verse some people know: "God says, I am God and I change not." God has never changed. God's always loved us. God's heart was toward us before the death of Jesus. That's why Jesus came. It's not that God the Father was against us and Jesus came to change God's mind about us — Jesus came to change _our_ mind about God the Father, not to change the Father's mind about us. The Father, the Son, the Spirit had always loved us, and Jesus came to help us see that.

Lo and behold, who were his biggest critics when he tried to show and express that love? It wasn't the drunken cursing sailors, was it? It wasn't the woman taken in adultery, it wasn't the harlot who washed his feet with her hair using the perfume from the alabaster box. No. The people who got all bent out of shape about Jesus saying let me show you the kind of loving Father you've got, the people that got bent out of shape by it were the religious people.

When I teach this message today and you teach it and everybody you have on this program teaches it, we find out the same thing still happens. It's not those "out there," so to speak. I hate to use that term in a dichotomy like that, but it's not those who don't believe, it's those who profess to believe who get mad as the devil about the love of God. They're the older brother in the story of the prodigal. I know, I'm a charter member of that club. You know what I'm saying? I've lived there.

**MM:** I know. But you, as the older brother, finally went in to the party.

**SM:** Which gives me hope. That's why I share this message of perichoresis now, because if I could one day say, you know...and thank God it speaks well of my Father that he stood out there in the darkness of my own religion, he stood out there in the darkness when I was saying, "No, no, God's not like that. It can't be that good. You can't tell me everybody gets off scott free. You can't tell me everybody's included. You can't tell me that God loves us all. No, no."

My Father didn't give up, but he kept pleading and appealing and showing and wooing (that's an old word, isn't it? That's a biblical word), and enticing me to see his love, until finally like that prodigal, at least we know, he melted in his father's embrace and accepted it. The interesting thing about the older brother in the story in Luke 15 is we don't know if he went in or not, but one thing we do know, the Father never went in without him. He didn't go in, but neither did the Father. Our God doesn't give up on us.

This whole idea of this perichoresis, this dancing with deity concept, this idea that we live in the communion of the Father, Son, and Spirit and we live out of that as our reality, that's enough to excite anybody. It's not just us, but the essence of this program that you guys have here, _You're Included_ , points toward the good news of the gospel that God was in Christ reconciling the _world_ to himself. Everybody was wrapped up in that big bear hug, that big group hug at the cross — not just the religious people. (That would be a sour party, wouldn't it?) Not just the people who believe, but we're all wrapped up in it.

Somebody's going to watch this and say, "Don't you think we have to believe?" Sure. Who wants to stand outside in the darkness of unbelief if you're missing the party? But let the record show: both sons had the same privileges. It's just one accepted his acceptance, and the other didn't.

**MM:** What are the consequences if we don't believe?

**SM:** You're going to stand out there in the cold and the dark and miss out on the party, but don't blame your Father, because as the Father in Luke 15 said, the accepting father in that story that we call the prodigal, he said to his older son, "Everything that I have is yours." The problem with unbelievers is that — unbelief. It's not like there's something left for God to do for them. God's done what he's going to do for all of us. He's done what he's going to do for humanity.

The problem that exists, and listen, I'm speaking as a pastor, I've been preaching since I was 16 — for 40 years I've been preaching. I was pastor at traditional institutional churches for 21 years, and I'm telling you the problem is in the modern church world (I don't mean it to be mean, it's just a fact), the problem is we don't preach the pure gospel. By and large, we preach a _potential_ gospel, not the pure gospel. We say, here's what Jesus did for you, now _if_ you will believe, then he'll forgive your sin. No. It's not _if_ you believe, then you'll be reconciled to God. No. _If_ you believe then he'll do this or that. No, no, no.

That's not the gospel. That's a _potential_ gospel. The gospel is good news that he says he's already done it whether you believe it or not. If you don't believe it and want to stand out in the darkness, you're going to miss out on the party, but the _truth_ is that the objective reality of what he did at the cross is real, whether you believe it or not, but by believing it we experience it. And experiencing it is where the abundance comes in that Jesus talked about in John 10:10 when he said, "I've come so that you might have life and have it more abundantly."

**MM:** You said earlier that Jesus didn't die as a punishment. God didn't punish Jesus on the cross. Why then did he die? What's the connection between his death and our salvation?

**SM:** Good question. Because this thing called sin had infected all of humanity through Adam, and it's a congenital disease that everybody's born with, and incidentally it's fatal — the wages of sin is death, and such sin was being passed down from person to person to person through the generations from Adam. God saw that, left to ourselves, we would be destroyed by sin. Our God said "No, sin shall not have the last word. Sin will not be the trump card. I didn't create mankind to wither away into nothingness. I didn't create humanity to die out. No. Sin won't have the last word."

To use a literary imagery, it's like the Father, Son, and Spirit said, "We're going to go down there and we're not coming back until this thing is done." They came — Jesus the Son came empowered by the Spirit, superintended, if you will, by the sovereignty of the Father. He came into this world to finish a job. What did he come to finish? Daniel 9:24, prophesying about the Messiah, says, "He'll make an end of sin." He'll make an end...he'll finish the transgression. Along comes Jesus all these centuries later showing up on planet earth. The angels said, "Call him Jesus, because he's going save his people from their sin."

Come on down the road another three decades or so and here's John the Baptist saying, "Look, it's the lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world." And before his crucifixion you've got Jesus holding up that cup saying, "This is the blood of the new covenant which is shed for the remission of sin." We're getting closer. He came on mission to finish a task. All the way from Daniel, he'll finish the transgression (Daniel 9:24), make an end to sin. Here's Jesus on the cross.

What does he do? He takes all the sin of the world and he draws it into himself. It's not God the Father punishing Jesus. It's _sin_ punishing Jesus. Let's be clear, sin brings punishment. It's not God who brings the punishment, it's sin. The wages, the punishment, the penalty of sin is death. Jesus draws that into himself. It's not God. I'll give you an example. A poor diet and poor exercise habits will lead to the punishment of bad health. It's not God that's punishing you with bad health, it's your own choices. Those habits are pregnant with punishment, with penalty. And so it is with sin. It wasn't God punishing Jesus, it was sin punishing Jesus.

He drew it all into himself. When he had drawn the sin of the world into himself, now that which had been started in the eternal circle of heaven before the beginning of time comes to a climactic finish at the cross when Jesus said, "It's finished." He dealt with it, and that's the gospel we proclaim.

Later on, John in his epistle would say, "You know that he appeared to take away the sins of the world." The writer of Hebrews would say, "He put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." The question I would ask the evangelical church (and myself included) is, Did he succeed, or not? Did he fail, or did he do what he came to do? We know he did what he came to do, and he did succeed, and it is finished, and it's all over now except the celebrating. Those of us who believe it are celebrating.

**MM:** But yet we look around at the world around us, we even look in ourselves and say, "the sin isn't completely gone."

**SM:** That's right. We live in this little box called time/space, and we need to be clear about one thing, and that is the old Adamic race died with Jesus, and he did defeat sin. He conquered it once and for all, as the phrase goes, once and for all. We know the truth...people say the truth will set you free. The truth is, Jesus dealt with sin.

No, no, no...the Bible doesn't say the _truth_ will set you free. The Bible says, "You shall _know_ the truth and the truth will set you free." It's not just the truth that sets you free, it's _knowing_ the truth that sets you free. The truth is, he has dealt with sin. He's conquered it. It has no power over us. But if you either don't know or you don't believe the truth, then a person will still live under the lie that befell Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. If they appropriate the lie, then guess what they're going to live like? They're going to live as if the lie is true. It's not. They're going to live in a counterfeit reality, which seems like an oxymoron, but you get my point. They're going to live out of a delusion, they're going to live as if Christ didn't really do what he did, but he did.

Back to the 2 Corinthians 5 passage, if I can turn over there, I want to read it instead of try to quote it. Verse 17, "If anyone is in Christ, he's a new creation." Most Christians know that one. But let's come down to verse 19, "God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them." There's the objective reality. That's real whether anybody believes it or not. Then it says, "And he's committed to us the message of reconciliation, therefore we're ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us: we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." There's the subjective reality. In other words, it is real whether you believe it or not, but we're begging you, we're appealing to you, believe it, so that it will be real to you.

**MM:** The verse said that he wasn't counting people's trespasses against them, does that mean that I don't need to ask for his forgiveness?

**SM:** Bingo. In fact, it insults the finished work of Christ when you do ask for forgiveness. I'm glad you asked that because this is one of those things that are so misunderstood in the church world. How about Colossians 2? Let me just turn over there a minute. (You better be careful, you're going to put me in a preaching mode here in just a minute, because I do get excited about this.) How about this one? Colossians 2:13, "When you were dead in your transgressions and the uncircumcision of your flesh, he made you alive together with him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled out the certificate of debt consisting of decrees which was against us and hostile to us, he's taken that away and nailed it to the cross."

I would say to everybody to watches us, do we believe this Bible or not? Because this Bible, Colossians 2:13 says he's blotted out all our transgressions. Somebody says, "You mean my future sins?" Here's a question, how many of our sins were future when Jesus died? They were _all_ future sins. Yes, he dealt with all of our sins at the cross. They were all future sins, and he's dealt with them all.

Let me add real quickly, to _confess_ my sin doesn't mean that I'm asking for forgiveness. Because somebody's going to throw out 1 John 1:9, that's what always pops out. I've been teaching this a long time now. That's not to say I won't confess, I won't admit. Confess just means to agree, to say the same. I'm going to acknowledge it when I've sinned, but I don't do it to _get_ forgiveness, I do it because I've _already gotten_ forgiveness. There's a big difference between the two.

1 John 1:9, if I can give an amplified explanation or paraphrase, might read like this. Since it's the nature of the believer to constantly admit it when we've sinned, so is it the nature of God to constantly relate to us from a posture of forgiveness, keeping us cleansed of all unrighteousness. My part is that I admit it. What else am I doing to do, lie? He knows. His part is to keep me in that state of constant forgiveness because of the work of the cross. What else is he going to do? It's finished.

**MM:** Often we try to repent and prove our repentance and show how sorry we are.

**SM:** That's idolatry, you know. Do you know why it's idolatry? Because if I think I have to show my sorrow and I have to wallow in self-condemnation and I have to rededicate myself and promise God this or that, then what I'm really saying is, I don't believe the work of the cross was enough to deal with sin, there's a contribution _I_ need to add to it. And what I add is going to put it over the top, right? Idolatry.

Let's just relax. We're forgiven. Let's just believe in the finished work of Christ. Somebody says, "If you tell people that, they're going to go out and live like the devil." No, they won't. Authentic grace won't do that. Paul told Titus, "The grace of God has appeared bringing salvation to all men, teaching us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and how to live soberly, righteously, and just in this present age" [Titus 2:12]. Grace is divine enablement for us to live a godly lifestyle. It doesn't create a desire to sin, it creates an appetite for righteous living. That's what grace does, real grace. Anything else is disgrace.

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## About the Authors...

Lorenzo Arroyo studied at Denver Seminary and served as a district pastor for Grace Communion International.

The late Robert Capon was an Episcopal priest and author of numerous books.

Gary W. Deddo received his Ph.D. from the University of Aberdeen. He works for Grace Communion International and is the president of Grace Communion Seminary.

J. Michael Feazell earned his Doctor of Ministry degree from Azusa Pacific Seminary. He was vice-president of Grace Communion International and is now retired.

The late John Halford was a pastor, writer, and editor of Christian Odyssey.

Steve McVey is founder of GraceWalk Ministries. His doctorate is from Luther Rice Seminary.

Michael Morrison received a PhD degree in New Testament studies from Fuller Theological Seminary. He is an instructor at Grace Communion Seminary, and the editor of this compilation.

Daniel Thimell received his doctorate from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland. He is associate professor of theological-historical studies at Oral Roberts University.

Joseph Tkach is the president of Grace Communion International. He received his Doctor of Ministry degree from Azusa Pacific Seminary.

Joseph W. Tkach was the president of the Worldwide Church of God during its extensive doctrinal transformation, 1986 to 1995.

Tammy Tkach's articles were published in Christian Odyssey magazine.

Alan J. Torrance is the son of James B. Torrance. He earned his doctorate in Germany and is a professor at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

David Torrance served for 36 years in parish ministry in the Church of Scotland.

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## About the Publisher...

Grace Communion International is a Christian denomination with about 50,000 members, worshiping in about 900 congregations in almost 100 nations and territories. We began in 1934 and our main office is in North Carolina. In the United States, we are members of the National Association of Evangelicals and similar organizations in other nations. We welcome you to visit our website at www.gci.org.

If you want to know more about the gospel of Jesus Christ, we offer help. First, we offer weekly worship services in hundreds of congregations worldwide. Perhaps you'd like to visit us. A typical worship service includes songs of praise, a message based on the Bible, and opportunity to meet people who have found Jesus Christ to be the answer to their spiritual quest. We try to be friendly, but without putting you on the spot. We do not expect visitors to give offerings—there's no obligation. You are a guest.

To find a congregation, write to one of our offices, phone us or visit our website. If we do not have a congregation near you, we encourage you to find another Christian church that teaches the gospel of grace.

We also offer personal counsel. If you have questions about the Bible, salvation or Christian living, we are happy to talk. If you want to discuss faith, baptism or other matters, a pastor near you can discuss these on the phone or set up an appointment for a longer discussion. We are convinced that Jesus offers what people need most, and we are happy to share the good news of what he has done for all humanity. We like to help people find new life in Christ, and to grow in that life. Come and see why we believe it's the best news there could be!

Our work is funded by members of the church who donate part of their income to support the gospel. Jesus told his disciples to share the good news, and that is what we strive to do in our literature, in our worship services, and in our day-to-day lives.

If this e-book has helped you and you want to pay some expenses, all donations are gratefully welcomed, and in several nations, are tax-deductible. If you can't afford to give anything, don't worry about it. It is our gift to you. To make a donation online, go to www.gci.org/participate/donate.

Thank you for letting us share what we value most — Jesus Christ. The good news is too good to keep it to ourselves.

See our website for hundreds of articles, locations of our churches, addresses in various nations, audio and video messages, and much more.

Grace Communion International  
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www.gci.org

### You're Included...

We talk with leading Trinitarian theologians about the good news that God loves you, wants you, and includes you in Jesus Christ. Most programs are about 28 minutes long. Our guests have included:

Ray Anderson, Fuller Theological Seminary

Douglas A. Campbell, Duke Divinity School

Elmer Colyer, U. of Dubuque Theological Seminary

Gordon Fee, Regent College

Trevor Hart, University of St. Andrews

George Hunsinger, Princeton Theological Seminary

Jeff McSwain, Reality Ministries

Paul Louis Metzger, Multnomah University

Paul Molnar, St. John's University

Cherith Fee Nordling, Antioch Leadership Network

Andrew Root, Luther Seminary

Alan Torrance, University of St. Andrews

Robert T. Walker, Edinburgh University

N.T. Wright, University of St. Andrews

William P. Young, author of _The Shack_

Programs are available free for viewing and downloading at www.youreincluded.org.

### Speaking of Life...

Dr. Joseph Tkach, president of Grace Communion International, comments each week, giving a biblical perspective on how we live in the light of God's love. Most programs are about three minutes long – available in video, audio, and text. Go to www.speakingoflife.org.

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Grace Communion Seminary

Ministry based on the life and love of the Father, Son, and Spirit.

Grace Communion Seminary serves the needs of people engaged in Christian service who want to grow deeper in relationship with our Triune God and to be able to more effectively serve in the church.

Why study at Grace Communion Seminary?

 Worship: to love God with all your mind.

 Service: to help others apply truth to life.

 Practical: a balanced range of useful topics for ministry.

 Trinitarian theology: a survey of theology with the merits of a Trinitarian perspective. We begin with the question, "Who is God?" Then, "Who are we in relationship to God?" In this context, "How then do we serve?"

 Part-time study: designed to help people who are already serving in local congregations. There is no need to leave your current ministry. Full-time students are also welcome.

 Flexibility: your choice of master's level continuing education courses or pursuit of a degree: Master of Pastoral Studies or Master of Theological Studies.

 Affordable, accredited study: Everything can be done online.

For more information, go to www.gcs.edu. Grace Communion Seminary is accredited by the Distance Education Accrediting Commission, www.deac.org. The Accrediting Commission is listed by the U.S. Department of Education as a nationally recognized accrediting agency.

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## Ambassador College of Christian Ministry

Want to better understand God's Word? Want to know the Triune God more deeply? Want to share more joyously in the life of the Father, Son and Spirit? Want to be better equipped to serve others?

Among the many resources that Grace Communion International offers are the training and learning opportunities provided by ACCM. This quality, well-structured Christian Ministry curriculum has the advantage of being very practical and flexible. Students may study at their own pace, without having to leave home to undertake full-time study.

This denominationally recognized program is available for both credit and audit study. At minimum cost, this online Diploma program will help students gain important insights and training in effective ministry service. Students will also enjoy a rich resource for personal study that will enhance their understanding and relationship with the Triune God.

Diploma of Christian Ministry classes provide an excellent introductory course for new and lay pastors. Pastor General Dr. Joseph Tkach said, "We believe we have achieved the goal of designing Christian ministry training that is practical, accessible, interesting, and doctrinally and theologically mature and sound. This program provides an ideal foundation for effective Christian ministry."

For more information, go to www.ambascol.org

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