There is no theme that is sweeter to the ears of one who knows he is a sinner and deserves the wrath of God than the doctrine of God’s amazing grace.  Amazing Grace!  Those two words, of course, bring to mind one of the best known and best loved spiritual hymns of all time. Other than the Bible, have any lines ever articulated the wonder of God’s grace better than these from John Newton :

Amazing grace! how sweet the sound,

            That saved a wretch like me!

            I once was lost, but now am found.

            Was blind but now I see.

            ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear,

            And grace my fears relieved;

            How precious did that grace appear

            The hour I first believed!

            The Lord has promised good to me,

            His word my hope secures;

            He will my shield and portion be

            As long as life endures.

            Through many dangers, toils and snares,

            I have already come;

            ‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far,

            And grace will lead me home.

            When we’ve been there ten thousand years,

            Bright shining as the Sun,

            We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise

            Than when we’d first begun.

            We need to admit how sinful we are.  We need to recognize what we really deserve.  Newton’s words are meaningful to all who have made this admission.  Grace is the most wonderful doctrine imaginable.  It says that God saves sinners.  Why?  Because he wants to!  Because He is a God of grace.

Donald Grey Barnhouse wrote:  “Love that goes upward is worship;  love that goes outward is affection;  love that stoops is grace.” (Romans:  Man’s Ruin, Vol. 1;  Grand Rapids:  Eerdmans, 1952, p. 72).  In Jesus Christ, God has shown His marvelous grace by “stooping down” to rescue us.  We serve a God who is gracious to sinners.  If all of the bad things I have thought and done were to suddenly be made a matter of public knowledge—and I mean ALL of them—it would only prove one thing:  I am a sinner.  And Christ Jesus came to save sinners (1 Tim. 1:15).  This is the comfort provided by grace.    

            The gospel of Christ is a wonderful message.  The hope of all mankind is contained in this one story of God’s love expressed to us through the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.  Because we are sinners, Jesus came and took upon Himself our sins and our punishment that we might know the love of God and be the recipients of eternal life (Rom. 5:8,9).  No wonder it is called good news.

            “So Paul and Barnabas spent considerable time there, speaking boldly for the Lord, who confirmed the message of his grace by enabling them to do miraculous signs and wonders” (Acts 14:3, NIV).  The message of the cross is “the message of His grace.”  Without the grace of God, we would be lost and there would be nothing that we could do about it.  Think of that!  Without God’s grace, we would have nowhere to turn.  We would be without help and without hope.  Hopeless and pitiful we would be if there was no divine grace.  But we do not have to live this way, because our God is a God of grace!  “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;  Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.”  (Rom. 3:23-24).  Because we have all sinned, we should be unceasingly thankful for His grace. 

            The word “grace” in the New Testament is from the Greek charis, a word speaking of favor, kindness and goodwill.  Actually the word denotes all that is thrilling and favorable.  The word appears in the New Testament 156 times, which serves to illustrate how prevalent the doctrine of God’s grace was in the minds of the New Testament writers.  Most of the references are used by Paul.  Romans, for example, has it 24 times.  Paul was a “grace-oriented” preacher, as we should all be. 

Grace has been defined as “undeserved favor.”  That is not wrong so much as it is incomplete.  Undeserved favor?  Is that all that God gives us?  No.  A man may knock on your door and ask you for food.  If you give it to him without requiring that he do some sort of work for you, then that would be “undeserved favor.”  But it would not be grace, at least not the kind of which the Bible speaks.  God has not merely given us something that we need.  Grace includes much more than being benevolent toward someone who seeks something from you.

Here is a picture of what God has done:  A person breaks into your home and robs you, injuring someone you love, and then burns down your house before he leaves.  The next day he comes back to where you are and asks you for food.  You give it to him.  That would be grace.  We are sinners and rebels and reprobates who have done far worse things to God than we will ever have anyone do to us in this life.  So how does He respond?  He sends His beloved Son into the world to die for us.

It is not just that we are “undeserving”, although we certainly are.  But more than that, we are deserving.  Grace is not just a matter of what we don’t deserve, but of what we do.  We don’t deserve salvation and forgiveness.  But we do deserve judgement and hell.  This is why grace is more than undeserved favor.  The man who asks you for bread without working for it is undeserving of the bread.  But he doesn’t deserve to have you punch him in the face for asking for it. But the man who breaks into your home to harm you is not only undeserving of your kindness, but he is deserving of your anger and retaliation.  We have trampled God’s goodness under our feet.  The result of that is that we do not deserve His kindness and we do deserve His wrath.  The mercy and grace of God keep us from getting what we do deserve, and get for us things we certainly don’t deserve.    Grace is not just undeserved kindness—but kindness to enemies who deserve to die. 

            Grace is something that we do not deserve and that we cannot earn.  Do we save ourselves by our own good deeds?  “No!  We believe it is through the grace of our Lord Jesus that we are saved...”  (Acts 15:11, NIV).  God is our Savior (Titus 2:4).  He saved us because He loves us.  He saved us because Jesus died for us.  The only “because of” to salvation is the cross of Christ.  We are saved because Jesus died for us.  When we contemplate our salvation, if we do not foremost and primarily think of the work of Christ, then we don’t have “faith” as the Bible would define such, for faith thinks about its object.  Faith looks to, thinks about, and dwells upon Christ Jesus and His work on our behalf.  God says that He sent His Son into the world to accomplish salvation for us, and His Son did just that in His perfect life, sacrificial death, and triumphant resurrection from the dead.  If we think about what God has done, and entrust ourselves to it, then we have faith, for this is what faith does.   

            Faith must act and faith must accept.  God has stipulated the condition of man’s reception of salvation clearly in His word.  The condition of salvation is trust in Christ, which is accompanied and expressed by repentance of our sins, and baptism in the name of Jesus (Heb. 11:6; Lk. 13:3; Acts 2:38; Mk. 16:16).  Repentance and baptism are expressions of trust.  Trust in Christ—faith—is the condition of salvation.  When we comply with this condition, we earn nothing; we simply receive the free gift of salvation by faith.  Salvation is because of the grace of God.  He “made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved”  (Eph. 2:5, NIV).

            In the book of Deuteronomy, God was preparing the Israelites to enter the land of promise when He said:  “After the LORD your God has driven them out before you, do not say to yourself, ‘The LORD has brought me here to take possession of this land because of my righteousness.’  No, it is on account of the wickedness of these nations that the LORD is going to drive them out before you.  It is not because of your righteousness or your integrity that you are going in to take possession of their land; but on account of the wickedness of these nations, the LORD your God will drive them out before you, to accomplish what he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.  Understand, then, that it is not because of your righteousness that the LORD your God is giving you this good land to possess, for you are a stiff-necked people.  Remember this and never forget how you provoked the LORD your God to anger in the desert. From the day you left Egypt until you arrived here, you have been rebellious against the LORD.  At Horeb you aroused the LORD’s wrath so that he was angry enough to destroy you.  When I went up on the mountain to receive the tablets of stone, the tablets of the covenant that the LORD had made with you, I stayed on the mountain forty days and forty nights; I ate no bread and drank no water.”  (Deut. 9:4-9, NIV).

            The land of Canaan was going to be a wonderful gift of divine grace.  God had His reasons for giving the land to the Israelites, but their performance was not one of them.  They were not righteous, and God was not responding to any good that He saw in them.  God wanted to make sure that His people understood who should get the credit for the gift.  Once they entered the land, God did not want them to look around and say, “Look what we have accomplished!”  Rather, He wanted them to realize who was responsible for it and give the glory to Him.

            It is the same way with our salvation today.  Salvation is a free gift of divine grace (Rom. 6:23; Eph. 2:8,9).  If we have received it, we need to give credit where credit is due, rather than credit where credit is not due.  Friend, when you think about your salvation, if you give credit to yourself rather than to God, then you don’t understand God’s grace.  Imagine a man out in the middle of a river drowning.  Someone comes by in a boat and throws him a line, and he is able to grab hold and climb up into the boat.  Then he says, “I sure am glad I grabbed hold of the line or else I would have drowned.”  Now, it is true that he would have drowned if he had not the good sense to accept the help.  But his gratefulness should go to the one who tossed him the line and rescued him, not to himself. 

            Sinners have a tendency to complicate things.  The message of His grace is a wonderful story of love and acceptance from a merciful God.  It is good news.  Why do some refuse to accept it as such?  Why do some refuse to admit that they deserve to die and be separated from God eternally because of their sin?  The justice and holiness of God demands penalty for sin—severe penalty, death—and we deserve to pay that penalty.  But thanks to His grace, we have been pardoned and accepted and made righteous through the precious blood of Christ.  Instead of trying to figure all of this out, why not embrace it and trust it?  Instead of trying to earn God’s favor and acceptance, why not accept it?  Instead of living your life in guilt and despair, why not rejoice in what God has done through Christ?  Be baptized because of your faith in Him, and then thank Him for saving you—that’s what faith does.

            This is fabulous news:  “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ: By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”  (Rom. 5:1-2).  When we realize how great His grace is, we will have the desire to stay faithful to our Lord.  Those who serve God best are those who appreciate His grace the most.  Hear the words of Paul:  “But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”  (1 Cor. 15:10, NKJV).  His grace causes people to go to work.  His grace produces faithful Christians. 

            God’s grace toward us is designed to motivate us to live a certain way.  Friends, there is no such thing as “cheap grace” in the Bible.  God’s grace demands a response.  Our lives should reflect the fact that we have been called by God.  Titus 2:11-12 tells us that the grace of God teaches us to live godly lives:  “For the grace of God that brings salvation hath appeared unto all men, teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, we should soberly, righteously and godly in this present age.”  2 Timothy 1:9 says God saves and calls us with a holy calling.  1 Peter 1:15 admonishes, “But as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct.”

            This is what we find over and over in the New Testament.  God saves, then we serve.  God rescues, we respond.  God reaches down to us, then we reach up to Him and out to others.  “This I say, therefore, and testify in the Lord, that you should no longer walk as the rest of the Gentiles walk, in the futility of their mind, having their understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in them, because of the hardening of their heart;  who, being past feeling, have given themselves over to lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.  But you have not so learned Christ,” (Eph. 4:17-20, NKJV).  Paul went to tell us to “be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness.”  (Eph. 4:23-24, NKJV). 

            What is Paul’s point?  That our life should be different from those who are still in bondage to sin.  We’ve been set free from sin, so we should not live as though we are still captive to it.  Paul made the same point in Romans 6:  “What shall we say then?  Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?  God forbid. We who died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein?  Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death?  We were buried therefore with him through baptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life.  For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection;  knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin;  for he that hath died is justified from sin.  But if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him; knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over him.  For the death that he died, he died unto sin once: but the life that he liveth, he liveth unto God.  Even so reckon ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God in Christ Jesus.  Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey the lusts thereof: neither present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.  For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under law, but under grace.”  (Rom. 6:1-14). 

            He who has died has been freed from sin, so we should not present our bodies as slaves of sin but as slaves of righteousness.  Accept His grace.  If you are a faithful Christian, rejoice in His love and in the fact that God has made you a new creature because of Jesus Christ.  Let go of guilt and fear and praise Him for what He has done for you in saving your soul.  If you are a faithful Christian, you are saved and secure.  “The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all”  (2 Thes. 3:18).

Bryan Dunaway

Grace and Peace Ministries

www.gandpministries.org