by Jacob Ninan
The grace of God is the most important subject in the Bible, and it is what makes the Christian world-view unique. It is crucial that we understand it rightly, because it impacts our salvation and the way we live. But grace is also a very misunderstood term among many people, including Christians. Let us try to understand it as clearly as possible.
"For the Law was given through Moses; grace and truth were realized through Jesus Christ" (Jn.1:17). When it says, 'realised', it means 'came' through Jesus Christ. Grace existed even before, but it was through Jesus that it became the means of salvation. These two – the Law and grace – were two separate steps in God's plan for salvation, the first one leading to the next. The Law was never meant to be the final step and God's plan in His mind always had grace to follow it.
We can understand this when we look at what the Law accomplished. The way the old covenant worked through the Law is explained in Deuteronomy 28 where God told the people of Israel that if they obeyed His laws they would be blessed, and cursed if they disobeyed them. God's holiness, righteousness and justice required that sin should not be tolerated but punished. This old covenant was a way of salvation based on how people actually lived, and it was similar to the way people understood in most other religions too. But God knew, even when He made this arrangement, that no one would be able to keep all the Law and attain salvation through it. He knew that this arrangement was inadequate to bring people into salvation (Gal.3:21)
But God used this old covenant as a stepping stone for introducing the new covenant which He brought through Jesus. The Bible describes it as keeping the people of Israel under the Law as if they were children kept under a guardian till they were ready to receive their inheritance as mature sons and daughters (Gal.3:22-24). The way the Law ultimately led people to grace was like this. Even when some of them tried their best keep the Law, everyone finally discovered that no one was able to keep all the Law. It was when they found themselves utterly helpless to find salvation or to save themselves that they recognised the need for a Saviour. That was when God could introduce grace as an unmerited favour He would show them.
Now He is seen as the God of love who wishes to save us even though we don't deserve it. He wants all people to be saved (1Tim.2:4). He permitted His Son Jesus to sacrifice Himself so that all the sins of the world could be placed on Him. Since our sins had already been punished in this way, God could now offer us forgiveness and acceptance without compromising His righteousness or justice (Jn.3:16,17)! On our part, we can now receive this salvation through God showing His unmerited favour towards us and through us receiving it through our faith in Jesus as our Saviour (Rom.4:4,5).
God offers this salvation freely for all people. But we have a choice to make, whether we would humble ourselves, acknowledge our sins and sinfulness, repent from them and receive salvation from Jesus. "He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. This is the judgment, that the Light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the Light, for their deeds were evil" (Jn.3:18,19). Even though God's grace is open to all, people receive it by their faith or reject it by their unbelief. This is why everyone does not get saved.
By being proud and self-sufficient or self-righteous, people turn against God and reject this salvation, but those who humble themselves before God receive it as free gift even though they do not deserve it (1Pet.5:5,6). This is how true grace works (1Pet.5:12).
Once we understand true grace, we can also see through the claims of false grace. A false grace tells people that since there is free forgiveness available from God, it does not matter even if they sin, and some people also say that even our future sins have already been forgiven. But Paul corrects this attitude very strongly (Rom.6:15). Jesus came to save us from our sins, from our guilt as well as from the dominion of sin over us.
"Let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need" (Heb.4:16). When we now go to God's throne for grace, He is there to give us mercy for forgiveness of our sins. God does not want us to fall, but He knows that we might fall, and so He has already made provisions for our forgiveness (1Jn.2:1). But grace also includes help for us, especially when we need it at the time when we are tempted. The reason why we could not keep all the demands of the Law was that we were weak in our flesh. But now, the Holy Spirit has been given to us so that He can help us to overcome. In this way, what the Law demanded of us can now be fulfilled in us through the power of the Holy Spirit (Rom.8:3,4). Some people wrongly say that Jesus has fulfilled the Law in our place and so we are now free from the Law. But now, a higher law, the law of the Spirit of life in Christ, has come into our heart, and this begins to transform our lives from the inside (Rom.8:2).
Just because grace is available to us, it does not mean that we can experience victory automatically. With the help and guidance of the Holy Spirit in us, we need to put to death the sinful things our flesh would like to do (Rom.8:13). God justifies us instantaneously when we repent and trust in Jesus, but the process of sanctification by which our practical lives become changed to become more and more like Jesus takes a lifetime, and even then it does not completely free us from sinfulness. That kind of total freedom from sin happens when we are with the Lord in eternity and He gives us a glorified body without sin. Till then, while we are still on earth, we will be suffering the consequences of sin (Jn.16:33).
We look forward to that time when Jesus will make everything free from sin, and there will no longer be any suffering (Rev.21:3,4). Till we reach that time, we need to take care of ourselves, building our faith, leaning on the Holy Spirit, and keep enduring (Jude.20,21).