GRACE AND US

“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).

The best definition of grace that I know of is this: Grace is God giving us what we need, not what we deserve.

The teaching of grace has been controversial in churches of Christ for over a century. Among ideas suggested is that God has done His part in salvation, so we now need to do our part. In that thinking, many articles and sermons emphasized man’s response to God. What then happened is that we began emphasizing the plan of salvation: we believe, repent of our sins, confess Jesus as Lord, and are baptized. Then we spent a lot of time on baptism as immersion for the remission or forgiveness of sins. It got to a point that Jesus was hardly mentioned in this effort. What was also emphasized is that we are baptized into the “right” church.

There were a number of preachers and editors who did not agree with this emphasis for various reasons. They thought that in our desire to get to and emphasize baptism, we lost something along the way. In the 1930s, a preacher who had held the majority view about baptism in his early years, penned the book, The Way of Salvation, asking, “Is it the man or the plan?” K.C. Moser stirred things up with this. He stated that it is Jesus who saves us and that we should be emphasizing that. Our plan was missing something very important. He was criticized for years but he had influenced a number of young men who would eventually agree with his thoughts (1).

The controversy continues to today. In 1990, Rubel Shelly, a preacher in Nashville, Tennessee, wrote in a bulletin article, “It is a scandalous and outrageous lie to teach that salvation arises from human activity. We do not contribute one whit to our salvation” (2). The reaction to this was strong and Shelly was accused of many things (3). This led to a number of comments surrounding the idea of what part man plays in his salvation. Some asked if those who are dead in sin can contribute anything and others asking if there is a sense in which man is seriously involved in his salvation.

John Mark Hicks has written a paper seeing if we can find a mediation between this polarization on grace. He looks at Ephesians 2:1-10. There is much in his article that is worth reading and I would encourage you, if you can, to go to his web site and read it. I will be summarizing this article. According to John Mark, Ephesians 2:1-7 is a single sentence in Greek. “It describes our sinful condition before God, God’s act in Christ to save us according to his mercy and grace, and his goal of glorifying us along with his Son” (4). We have been made alive with Him when we were raised with Him. It is clear to me that Paul is speaking of baptism here (see also Romans 6:3-5; Titus 3:3-8).

Verse 8 summarizes what verses 1-7 described. “First, grace is the ground of our salvation. Salvation is God’s work, not ours.” Through God’s grace, His wrath is averted by the activity of Jesus. It is God’s gift to save us from our sins. When we look at the verbs in verses 1-7, it is God who is the subject of those verbs. Salvation is neither from us nor out of our works. Our works do not contribute to our salvation nor are they the source of our salvation. The concern here is in boasting. If we can boast in what we did, then it excludes Christ from salvation. His once for all sacrifice (as the Hebrew writer expresses it) becomes meaningless. Salvation is God’s activity in saving His creation, and in particular humankind.

Salvation is by faith. “We are saved through the instrumentality of faith.” “Faith is the human response to God’s gracious offer of salvation.” The idea is that we trust in what God has done in Christ. It is not trusting in my response; rather it is a humbling before God in seeing His activity at the cross and bowing before that in humble obedience. “Human response is required for salvation. No [one] is saved without faith.” Only those who receive grace through faith are saved.

Maybe the example of Naaman will be helpful (2 Kings 5). Naaman had leprosy and found out that he could be healed by a prophet in Israel. When he got there, a servant from the prophet told him to go and dip himself seven times in the Jordan River. Naaman complained saying that the waters of his country were cleaner. Then a servant of his said that if the prophet had asked him to do something great, would he not have done it? Why not something simple as this. He goes to the Jordan and dips seven times and is healed. There is no boasting here; simply obeying what the prophet asked him to do. Of course this was from God.

So what about baptism, which seems is the central argument when grace is discussed? “Baptism saves, not as a work, but as an expression of faith in the work of God. Baptism is fundamentally God’s work -- he forgives, he raises up, he makes alive. We simply entrust ourselves through faith in his power.” When we think about it, what do we do in baptism? Nothing. We are not self-baptized. Rather in baptism we receive everything. Baptism is connected with the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is here that we connect with Christ (Romans 6:3-5; Colossians 2:11-12). “And God raised us up with Christ…” (Ephesians 2:6). God did this! “It is a human response which arises out of faith, expresses faith and receives God’s gracious salvation as a gift.”

“God saves us by grace, not works.” “Good works are the result of salvation.” The order that Paul expresses is grace, faith, salvation, and then works. When we do good deeds, develop holiness, and become disciples of Jesus, that is because of our salvation, not the cause of it. We have been raised or created by God to do good works. We do not always do this well, but we are already saved. This is not to say that we can do anything we want. Paul addresses this in Romans 6:1-14. The good works show that God is working in us.

We do not put works first. It is not how much I can do and God making up the rest. Jesus has done everything necessary to save; God doe not need our help in salvation. Rather through trust in the work of God at the cross, we respond in humble obedience; faith. There is no boasting, not even in works. God is creating us to do good works. We do works to His glory not ours.

American individualism, the pull yourself up by your own bootstraps might be a cultural emphasis, but it is not Biblical. God created and God saves, then He recreates us to His glory. Hopefully this will help us understand salvation in Christ better.