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What grace is and is not!

by Jacob Ninan

Some people explain grace like this, "Under the old covenant, there were things we had to do. But the new covenant is about what God will do for us." Some others say, "We are not under law but under grace. Therefore, to say that we must do certain things is legalistic." These kinds of approach to grace show a lack of true understanding. But the fact that such thinking is rather common among Christians shows an extremely serious deviation from the Gospel. It is not that a lack of theological explanation is going to exclude salvation, but certainly a lack of proper appreciation of grace is going to be very detrimental to experiencing salvation. Looking around at the spectrum of understanding of grace among Christians, we see legalism on one end and hyper-grace on the other. Many people seem to want God to take care of them and bless them, but they themselves are not willing to take any responsibility for their lives, either to admit they have been wrong, or to decide that they are going to live differently in the future. I hope that this article will serve to at least start people questioning their own understanding and then to come to experience the true riches of God's goodness and mercy as expressed through His grace. Please read it in full so that you can get the balanced picture.

Grace is generally defined as an unmerited or undeserved favour from God. Through grace, God offers us what we don't deserve at all, and refrains from giving us what we actually deserve. What is that we all deserve from God except His judgment for every sin we have committed, in deed, speech and thought? God has made it very clear through His word that the punishment for sin is death – which translates on His terms to eternal separation from Him and consequent suffering through timeless eternity. We see the extravagant glory of God's grace towards us in that instead of giving this to us, He is offering us life with Him forever and ever.

We are sinners by nature, and we sin because we have that nature. All of us were born like that, including the most cruel or gross sinners and the pious, religious people (Psa.51:5). God knew that with this nature none of us would ever be able to live a life that would be acceptable to Him – His standard of acceptance being nothing less than perfection. Out of His love, goodness, kindness and mercy towards us, He designed a way for us to get back to Him. He could not lower His standards or pretend that we had not sinned, but the novel way by which He accomplished His goal met the requirements of His righteousness and justice – which meant that sin must be punished – and the requirements of His love that did not want any of us to perish. This is the good news or the Gospel that the Lord Jesus Christ brought into the world.

Jesus suffered and died on the cross, the sinless Lamb of God bearing the punishment for the sins of the world. This meets the requirements of God's justice, and now He is in a position to offer us salvation from our sins gratis. It is not just about forgiving our past sins, but also giving us an opportunity to begin a new life that is pleasing to Him. This is grace, and it is offered to anyone who wants that kind of salvation.

What happens when we receive grace?
When we go to God recognising our need for grace, the first thing that He gives to us is an unmerited forgiveness for our sins (Rev.1:5). This is truly unmerited because what we deserve is punishment, and what God gives us is forgiveness, taking away the record of our sins and promising us not to hold our sins against us any more (Heb.8:12). In fact, He cleanses us so thoroughly with the blood of Jesus that the worst of sinners now appear as saints in His sight (Isa.1:18). He gives us a new heart that hates sin and desires to do what is pleasing to Him (Ezek.36:26,27). He brings us close to Him even though we used to be far away (Eph.2:13). The veil that separated the Most Holy Place in the Tabernacle and Temple of Israel was removed when Jesus paid for our sins on the cross (Heb.10:19,20). This gracious acceptance from Jesus gives us the ability to withstand the constant accusations from the Devil (Rev.12:11). This acceptance is not based on our having fulfilled the requirements of the Law, but God's acceptance of the death of Jesus as our punishment in our place. Therefore, we are free from the demands of the Law which we come short of, and we do not have to face such accusations too (Col.2:14). God accepts us now, who used to be His enemies and dead in our sins, as His beloved children (1Jn 3:1). As His children He has given us many brothers and sisters in His family with Jesus as the Eldest Brother (Matt.19:29). These are just a few things to think about among the great things God has done for us through His grace.

How can we receive this grace?
The first thing we need to understand is that even though God is offering this salvation freely, it becomes available in practice only for those who ask for it and receive it. In other words, even though Jesus has died for the sins of every single person who has lived, lives now or will live on the earth in future (1Jn.2:2), all are not going to experience this salvation automatically. This is where people are mistaken who think that ultimately everyone will get saved because of the love of God and His grace. God has prepared this free pardon and a new life for everyone, but He cannot apply it to people who will not even admit that they are sinners who deserve punishment. That would be unrighteous if He did that. But for those who will accept and admit that what they deserve for their sins is eternal death, and who want to be pleasing to God hereafter, God gives salvation.

The glory of God's grace towards sinners is seen in that He does not ask us to earn or qualify for this salvation in any way. Any wretched sinner can go to Him and receive it as a free gift. But the first thing we need to do is to realise that we are sinners who deserve God's wrath upon us and who are far away from Him, even if we have been religious-minded, church members, or generally well-accepted in society. When we hear about the love of God that prompted Him to send His only Son to take our punishment in our place, then we can go to Him and ask Him for forgiveness as a gift of grace from Him, something that we don't deserve. If we have this proper attitude of humility and honesty when we go to God, we will also have a strong desire to somehow stop doing the sinful things that we used to do. God will begin to help us with that too. He will take away what we deserve and give us what we don't deserve.

If we truly understand the value of this grace that God is showing us, our response will be one of overflowing gratitude towards Him. We will be willing to do anything for Him. We will also want to tell others about this great God who has loved us so much and given Himself for us.

One of the tests by which we can see if we have received this grace, is to examine our attitude to others who have done wrong to us and hurt us. If we argue that we can't forgive some of them because of the enormity of the suffering they have caused us, and say that they don't deserve to be forgiven, we immediately indicate that we have not understood the ground on which God has forgiven us. This is why Jesus tells those who refuse to forgive others that they themselves may even forfeit the forgiveness they have received earlier from God. He brought this out very clearly through the parable of the king and the two servants in Matthew 18.

False grace
Just as in the parable of the enemy who sows tares after the Son of God has sown wheat, when the proclamation of the Gospel became clear, Satan too brought in his false gospel (Jude.4). Satan's aim is to downplay sin so that people will not see themselves as sinners or turn away from it, even when they hear the preaching of the Gospel. In effect, as Jude says, grace, when it is wrongly preached, becomes a licence for a careless, sinful life where people believe grace will cover it. This is something we need to examine ourselves about.

Not everyone who thinks they have heard the Gospel and believed in it has heard it rightly. 1. Those who have merely chosen to want to go to heaven when they die because they don't want to go to hell, may not have heard sufficiently clearly about sin and its implications. For them, grace is an insurance policy that assures them a place in heaven, and they are willing to pray a prayer or even get baptised as the insurance premium! 2. Some people do not really see themselves as sinners who deserve hell. They just want to be known as good Christians, and they think that grace has freed them from the need to be careful about obeying God. 3. Some others want forgiveness, but they want to continue to live the way they want, enjoying life and trying to live it to the full in this world. They assume that forgiveness is available for any sin that they commit and are very thankful to God for grace! 4. There are other people for whom God is there to give them all the blessings that they ask for, and their relationship with God is only to ensure this. Sin is not a factor that bothers them much because of their wrong understanding.

There are variations of the above and also other forms of false grace that are being preached these days. It is a matter of life and death to recognise what kind of grace we are following, by comparing it with the true form of grace. True grace has come to transform us to become more and more like Jesus in our practical life, beginning with giving us forgiveness for our past sins (Tit.2:11,12).

Presenting the false gospel
False grace is being preached all over the world in such a way as to make people believe that they are hearing the true Gospel, and also by making it look attractive to people. Bible verses are used in such a way as to make people think that what they are hearing is right. But remember, Satan can also quote from the Bible, as he did to Jesus. One common strategy he uses is to overemphasise some part of the Gospel in such a way as to make an overall imbalance, neglecting other parts of the truth.

1. One way the devil influences preaching is through exaggerating the love of God. By putting up the phrase 'God's unconditional love' he makes a point that our sins and how we live in practice do not change the way God loves us. He makes out that everyone will be equal in heaven and that all will receive the same reward! If this was true, why is it that the Bible records many instances where God was furious with some people? Preachers think that when they speak about the unconditional love of God, they can draw more people to God. But the result of this false gospel is that when people come to Jesus, there is no proper repentance for their sins or a serious desire to overcome sin in their lives.

God places no condition on people who want to come to Him in terms of their level of holiness. The worst of sinners can reach out to God. That is the way 'God's unconditional love' should be understood. But, even though God is willing to receive people just as they are and even before they receive a mature understanding of grace, He can forgive only those who have repented from their sins. Also, after receiving them, God wants to change their lives, helping them to turn away more and more from sinful ways. God rewards everyone according to their faithfulness with what they have received, and some will shine brighter than others.

2. Another way Satan misrepresents God is by promoting love for everyone and unity among all people by ignoring beliefs, behaviour and even truth. This appeals to people because it seems to promote love, acceptance and being generous towards all people. This is the way ecumenism and inter-faith unity are promoted. The common man is taught the cardinal rule behind this, "Judge not!" The problem is that here truth becomes irrelevant. It is tragic to watch Christian leaders who get taken up with unity and downplay truth. This also leads to avoidance of taking sin seriously, talking about repentance and being born again, which are all supposed to be 'judgmental'! As a result, many churches and preachers avoid offending people above all, even when thousands are blindly going on their way to destruction.

Jesus has very clearly taught that the way to life is narrow and very few find it. The reason it is narrow is because we have to give up all kinds of error when we have to choose that way, and people do not like to hear about where they are wrong! All these attempts to make the narrow way broader so that more people can be accommodated are energised by the Deceiver. We need to make sure we ourselves are on the way of life.

3. Since grace is an unmerited favour from God which we can never qualify for no matter what we do, Satan tells people that there is nothing they need to do from their part, except to enjoy this grace. Anything that we need to do is described as 'works' from which we must turn away because otherwise we will be going back under the Law! Some extremists who hold this view even refer to repentance as works. For them, all we need is to 'only believe'. Then God accepts us unconditionally, and we then carry on with our life, and we expect God to do everything for us – protect us, provide for us and finally transform us to become like Jesus in the 'twinkling of an eye' when we die or are caught up in the rapture!

But we only have to turn to the New Testament to see what all Jesus tells us to do and to avoid doing, and also the instructions, exhortations and warnings which the apostle give to people in the church! Does it look like there is nothing we need to do? A variation of this deception is to confine what we have to do to having a quiet time and a family prayer, reading the Bible regularly, attending church and giving money to the church! Do you see that even though this list appears to develop godliness, there is no mention of working out our salvation or cleansing ourselves in order to become more like Jesus right here on earth!

4. A pernicious lie that is believed by many Christians is, "Once saved, always saved." This false teaching is promoted by quoting many verses in the Bible that talk about God's ability and plan to preserve us, while, at the same time, putting aside many other verses that warn us against falling away from God and tell us how we ought to be careful, vigilant, alert and awake. Certainly it is easy to see how this teaching can appear to comfort and encourage people. But it is a false comfort because it places people in a false sense of security where they do not deal with sin seriously and where they obtain for themselves a certain insensitivity towards sin.

We need to remember that we receive salvation when we acknowledge our sinful condition, repent from it and receive forgiveness as a free gift by grace through faith. Then we start living out that salvation and and our lives begin to produce the fruit that God gives to us (Eph.2:8-10). Remember what happened to Israel. They were part of the original 'vine'. But when they fell into unbelief and disobedience, they were broken off as branches, and the Gentiles were grafted in. The apostle Paul makes it very clear that now our connection with the Lord is being maintained only through our faith, and that if we give up our faith, we too can be broken off as branches (Rom.11:19,20). Jesus has said plainly that we have to endure till the end to be saved (Matt.24:13).

In the second part, we want to look certain wrong ideas people have concerning salvation which we need to avoid.

What is God's aim for us?

What is the goal God is aiming for when He offers us grace? It is very important to understand this, if we are to understand the true plan of our salvation through grace. God is not trying to make us happy by giving us what we want. He has not taken away demands of the Law from us so that we can live however we want. He has not planned to give us health and wealth so that our life will be comfortable here. What God really wants is to save us from the bondage of sin and to lead us to a life where we will do His will all the time. He does this in steps. He washes away the guilt of sin from us with the blood of Jesus Christ and accepts us as His children. He is able to do this because the death of Jesus on the cross paid for all our sins, and He has credited the righteousness of Christ to our account. Now the Holy Spirit who has become our Helper helps us to have the desire and the strength to deny ourselves and do His will.

God does not simply want to call us His children, but to help us to live as His children (Col.1:10). He wants us to be those who worship Him in truth and spirit (Jn.4:23). In a human way, we might be tempted to wonder why God needs worship, as if that would make Him feel good about Himself. No. He wants us to become the kind of people who will yield ourselves to Him as living sacrifices to do His will, with the right kind of relationship that should be there for a created and forgiven man and God. So He gives us help through grace to train us to live godly lives, by denying ourselves and doing His will (Tit.2:11,12).

God wants us to have eternal life, which is to know God (Jn.17:3). We must not forget that eternal life is not the same as living forever, because even those who are in hell will live forever. But they do not know God as their Father and Jesus as their Saviour. When we live by being connected to the Vine as branches, we can bear that kind of fruit and live that kind of life. Let us not miss out on that life.

God has provided salvation for all, because He loves everyone and does not want anyone to perish (Jn.3:16). But those who refuse to accept the Saviour because they do not believe in Him will have to finally face God's judgment (Jn.3:18,19). Universalists who believe that because God is so gracious, finally everyone will get saved, are wrong. So are those who believe in unlimited election, by which they mean that God has already sovereignly chosen who will get saved and who will not. No. God offers salvation for all, but only those who turn from sin and believe will experience it.

What happened in Eden?
Adam and Even were given a choice between two trees, the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, with the warning that if they ate from the tree of knowledge, they would die. They could have eaten from the tree of life and enjoyed the life of God like branches connected to the vine. But we know that Eve chose to eat from that forbidden tree, because she was deceived by Satan who told her that they could become like God if they got the knowledge of good and evil. He also told Eve that even though God told them that they would die, they would not actually die. But Adam and Eve died in their spirit immediately and got disconnected from the fellowship they had earlier with God. What they thought would make them like God made them independent of God, now having to struggle and suffer from their limited strength and abilities and their nature which had become corrupted by sin.

Now salvation is God's way of bringing man back to the place where he will depend entirely on God, and be obedient to Him in everything. Now we have to make a choice, to give up our own way of life and live for God. Jesus tells us about the narrow gate through which we have to enter, and the narrow way on which we have to walk all our life. The first one represents the initial choice we make to follow Jesus as our Saviour and Lord, and the second represents the daily life we live, where we deny the sinful desires that come from our flesh and do the will of God. To enter the narrow gate, we need to recognise and admit that we are sinners who deserve the punishment of hell and receive Jesus as our Saviour and Lord. Walking along the narrow way is a lifelong process where we will get transformed into the character of Jesus little by little.

Let us look at some of the wrong ideas people have about salvation and grace.

Total depravity
Eph.2:5 says that we were dead in sins and that when we came to God, He gave us salvation and made us alive together with Christ. Some people wrongly assume that 'dead' here means without any spiritual life at all, and therefore without any ability to make a choice towards God. If it were so, what would be the meaning of John the baptiser, Jesus Himself and the apostles telling people to repent? In this context, 'dead in sin' means that we are disconnected from God and with all our faculties tainted with sin – our nature itself is sinful. However it does not mean that we have no ability to understand the Gospel when we hear it and to respond to it by making a choice for God. The people who listened to Peter preaching on the Day of Pentecost were pierced to their heart when they realised they were sinners standing before the holy God. Then they wanted to be saved, and Peter told them the way, and they responded. If we repent and receive salvation from Jesus, God 'regenerates' us (gives us a new heart and a new spirit, as we saw earlier from Ezekiel). This is the same as being born again. But this concept of total depravity makes us think that we cannot do anything from ourselves and then we leave everything passively to God.

Unlimited election
Seeking to exalt the sovereignty of God, some people have come to this wrong conclusion that God has already determined in His mind (elected) who would receive salvation, and as a corollary, who would not receive salvation but get damned. According to these people, God makes this election not based on any response from people but purely according to His sovereignty. Does this present to us a God who is just and righteous, and loving and caring? On the contrary, this presents God as One who pushes some people into hell without their having any choice in the matter! This is the extent to which cold theologians can misrepresent God based on their warped logic and misinterpretation of the Bible, without understanding the heart of God that comes through from the Gospel.

Limited atonement
This is a mathematical conclusion we have to come to, if we accept that God is not interested in saving all people. Then, of course, this idea tells us that Jesus made atonement only for those whom God has chosen, which is only a small part of the population. In this way, Jesus does not waste His death for those whom God has rejected in His sovereignty. But Jesus has in fact made atonement for the whole world (1Jn.2:2). Even though He has made this provision for all people, He knows that only a few people will choose to experience this salvation. That is their choice, and not His.

Irresistible grace
This is a clever, but wrong way of explaining how totally depraved people, as we saw earlier, could respond to God. First God regenerates them, and gives them the grace to respond. God is supposed to do this forcibly, without their consent! And then He forces them to do His will, by giving them grace which they have no ability to resist! Really, this is a ridiculous explanation of God working in our lives!

Perseverance of the saints
Essentially this says that once God has regenerated someone by His choice and caused him to respond, that person cannot lose his salvation in any way. In other words, once saved, always saved, which we have discussed earlier. Think of actual practical cases which you and I know of, where people came to the Lord in all sincerity, but there is backsliding or falling away, sometimes to a life of sin worse than they were in before! But this false doctrine makes people think that those people will also be there in heaven, because once upon a time in their life, they had accepted Jesus. No, neither can we say in all cases that such people were never truly born again, as these teachers claim.

There is nothing we need to do
Some people have heard the emphasis that it is not by works that we can be saved, but through faith, and they have become so careful about avoiding 'works' that they don't want to do anything, but they want to leave everything to God. Some of them even think of repentance as works. But what we need to understand here is that God is not against works per se, but only against works people do hoping that in that way they can earn some merit with God. In other words, whatever we do in order to find acceptance with God is what is to be avoided, because salvation is a favour God shows us which is based not on our merit but on His grace. Having understood that, we must remember that there are other works that God wants us to do after we have been granted salvation (Eph.2:10). Doesn't God tell us to work out our salvation even as He is working inside us giving us both the desire and the ability to do His will (Php.2:12,13)? Also, if works of obedience to God do not come forth from us, it gives us a warning to see if we have been really born again (Jas.2:26).

Simply waiting for promises
The apostle Peter tells us that the most magnificent promise God has given us is that we can partake of the divine nature (2Pet.1:4). But in case we think that just because God has promised, it will automatically take place for us, he tells us to take the trouble of 'adding' different virtues to our life (v.5). Isn't this the same as working out our salvation?

Conclusion God has shown us grace, done great things for us and promised us great things. Shall we now wait passively for God to do things for us, or shall we actively cooperate with God so that we do whatever He wants us to do? If we have experienced so many blessings which we do not deserve at all, shall we not show our gratitude and love to Him by giving ourselves in submission to Him?