What Does It Mean to be “Saved by Grace”?
What Does It Mean to be “Saved by 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. For we are God's handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. (Ephesians 2:8-10)
While I was in the United States Marine Corps, stationed in Honolulu, some 70 years ago, I was led to accept Christ by some fellow Marines.
I was given the famous Ephesians 2:7,8 as an introductory verse. I believed what I was told. We are unable to keep God's commandments. So God, in order to bring us to Heaven, has issued grace. Grace means that God overlooks our sins, seeing us through Christ.
I suppose this means that when we lie, God sees the truthfulness of Christ.
I believed this for a few years. Then, I think, God gave me a gift of understanding the Bible. As this gift developed in my mind and spirit, I realized that there were inconsistencies in what I was being taught.
A significant part of the New Testament is devoted to urging us to put away the old nature with its deceitful lusts, and to put on the new mature which is created in godliness of character and behavior.
Why is there such an emphasis on righteous living if God sees us through Christ?
Then the answer came to me. Christian teaching and preaching has an incorrect goal.
While I was in public education I became interested in the new emphasis on goal-centered instruction. It makes so much sense, but it is a threat to the teachers who believe that just their presence in the classroom accomplishes what the public believes the public schools are supposed to do.
The idea of clearly defined goals and ways of testing progress toward those goals is not always welcomed.
I discovered in Christian preaching and teaching a somewhat similar similar situation. Goal confusion!
The venerable goal of Christian (and other religious institutions) preaching and teaching is to attain to residence in Heaven, and not in Hell, when we die. While residence in some sort of paradise may be the goal of other religions, such as the "Happy hunting grounds" of the American Indians, and the dancing girls of the Muslim religions, residence in Heaven as the goal of salvation is not found in the Christian Bible.
Paul, Peter, James, John, and the writer of the Book of Hebrews, spoke quite a bit about our change in God's image, but they never once presented eternal residence in Heaven as the goal of salvation.
Can you grasp what a radical statement I just made?
If you think about it, the great cloud of witnesses, of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, already are in Heaven. But they are waiting for us so we can be made perfect together. Evidently they are marching along with us in the Divine plan of redemption.
If this is true, merely being in Heaven is not the goal of salvation.
If attainment to eternal residence in the spirit Heaven is not the goal of our salvation, then what extensive changes would have to be made in our preaching, teaching, and hymnology?
If I am not mistaken, it is time now for a reformation of Christian theology!
What, then, is the goal of the salvation brought to us by the Lord Jesus Christ?
The goal is to be created in the image and likeness of the Father of our Lord Jesus, which are the same as the image and likeness of the Lord Jesus Himself.
Our goal has not changed from the first chapter of the Book of Genesis. God has set out to create a new race of creatures, creatures who will form a Kingdom; creatures who will provide for Himself a house, a resting place, and a location for His Throne.
These creatures, male and female, are to be in His moral image; and in due time, when their moral image approaches perfection, in His likeness. That likeness may be seen in the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel and the Book of Revelation.
There may some modifications, but those likenesses are the general idea of what is meant when God says His sons and daughters shall be in His likeness.
Such a goal is far, far superior to that of going to Heaven to live in an unscriptural mansion, praising God for ten thousand years, and doing nothing else of significance or value for eternity. Most of us would not care for this sort of destiny, as much as we may bleat about it in church..
According to the Book of Isaiah, it will be the responsibility of Christ, Head and Body, to bring righteousness to the nations of the earth. This is not possible for us to accomplish until we have made some progress in becoming the image of God.
Can you see now why I maintain that we are in need of a reformation of Christian thinking and teaching?
Viewing residence in Heaven as our goal, and viewing conformation to the image and likeness of God as our goal, are as different in their demands and outworking as possibly can be envisioned.
In the Heaven goal, after we have "accepted" Christ as our Lord and Savior, there is little else crucial to our redemption, that we are obliged to do. We are waiting to die and go to Heaven. As Ephesians states, "our salvation is not by works lest any man should boast."
In the "image-of-God goal," every moment of every day is to be dedicated to pressing into the rest of God, into that state of being in which we are conscious of the will of God for us, and have the strength, wisdom, and desire to do that will.
We are to keep asking the Lord Jesus if we are where He wants us, and doing what He wants us to do. If at any time we hear "No" as an answer to either or both of these questions, we must go to the Lord in prayer until He works our circumstances so that we hear a Yes."
Otherwise we are considered to be a rebel against God and are neither qualified nor competent to be resurrected and ascend with all the other of Christ's warrior to the staging area in the air, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus.
In this essay, I am contrasting the traditional definition of "grace," that it is God's solution for those of us who do not live as righteously as we should, with the manner in which the Apostle Paul used the term.
We go to Heaven by grace, we say, although nowhere in the Scriptures is it stated that we go to Heaven by grace.
Paul used the term, "grace" to tell us about how God's program operates apart from our religious efforts. There is a terrible difference between these two definitions of grace.
For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith.
"Grace,", as I stated, is God's program of salvation apart from our religious efforts. This is a key to moving the Jew from the Law of Moses to the Law of the Spirit of Life in Christ Jesus.
"Grace is a manifestation of favor--favor shown in granting a delay or temporary immunity" (Dictionary.com).
This means that while you are in the program of confessing and turning away from your sin, the atoning blood is covering those actions of yours that as yet have not been dealt with.
Please notice carefully that grace is not a permanent way of having fellowship with God. Rather it is a temporary provision until God has dealt with all the sin and self-will in our personality.
Therefore, "Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you." (II Corinthians 6:17)
"Salvation" is deliverance from wrath, and also is qualification for entrance into the new world of righteousness.
"Faith" is our conviction that God is good, and He faithfully is bringing us to eternal righteousness, love, joy, and peace. There is no faith for yesterday, only for now!
Putting these three definitions together we have:
God's program of salvation apart from our religious efforts delivers us from wrath and qualifies us to be brought forward to the new world of righteousness. God's program operates as we hold fast to our conviction that God is good, that He faithfully is bringing us to righteousness, love, joy, and peace this very moment.
And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God .
God's program of salvation is not our idea, it is God's gift to us. Even the faith necessary to enter this marvelous salvation is a gift to us.
I can remember when I was about nineteen years of age, the way of salvation through Christ was pointed out to me. I did not have enough faith to receive it.
So one night I prayed for faith. The next morning I had the necessary faith; so I believed what I had been told and entered eternal life.
I am assured from the New Testament that any person who wants to be saved from God's wrath and, after the final resurrection and Day of Judgment, be admitted to citizenship on the new earth, is welcome to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be baptized in water on the basis of his or her new faith. Such shall be "saved," the Bible states.
The opportunity to thus gain eternal life is as a tree of life, which the members of the Church become when they attain to "waters to swim in." It is their responsibility to bring eternal life to those people who are not called to be part of the Church.
Swarms of living creatures will live wherever the river flows. There will be large numbers of fish, because this water flows there and makes the salt water fresh; so where the river flows everything will live. (Ezekiel 47:9)
However, there is a sovereign working of God in the case of the members of the Church, the Royal Priesthood.
I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. (John 17:6-9)
The term "church" itself means "called out." So we understand that God brings to the Lord Jesus Christ those whom He desires to have as His own family, we might say. It is their responsibility to be a witness of God to the remainder of mankind. They shall be kings and priests in the future, so that Paradise may be restored and maintained.
The fact that God has called His priests out of the world with the intention of raising them to glory does not mean there is nothing they are to do. They must follow the Lord Jesus Christ at all times, obeying Him in every situation. If they are not careful, it is possible for someone to take their crown.
So we see that in the case of the members of the Church, it is especially true that their salvation is altogether of the Lord, in that He has called them to glory from the beginning of the world. They belong to God in a special way.
I am stressing in this essay that we do not save ourselves by any type of religious striving. Our religious striving can move us away from the true salvation of the Lord. Consider the Pharisees of old!
At this point I wish to discuss the dreadful error that permeates Christian teaching.
Because the Apostle Paul stressed that our salvation is not produced by our religious striving but is the gift of God, modern evangelical teaching leaves the distinct impression that we no longer need be concerned about whether or not we sin; whether or not we deny ourselves, take up our cross of deferred desires, and follow the Lamb of God wherever He leads.
When we read through the Epistles, we discover that this is not the case at all!
Next Part Writing to the Christian people in Rome: