God graciously saves sinners through Jesus Christ.
Graciously. God makes known to us early in Scripture (Gen.3) that the work of salvation is a work of sovereign grace. He does it because He wants to. He is not bound by anything in man, by any sense of obligation to man, or by any sense of need on His won part. He saves guilty, sinful, rebellious man of His own free will (and good will).
Moreover, the word graciously signifies that God saves man without any help from man or any merit in man. The Bible is not the story of how men worked their way into God’s favor, or how they helped God out or earned His blessing by obeying Him. That is true both of unbeliever and believer. We are what we are by the grace of God (1 Cor.15:10). Even in those who “labor abundantly” for the Lord, what they do is thanks to the grace of God working abundantly in them. No one can boast of his accomplishments, only of God’s accomplishments in and through him.
Grace means that God comes to a fallen, guilty, rebellious friend of Satan and reverses all the disastrous effects of sin in him. When Adam and Eve sinned, they rejected God’s counsel and submitted to Satan’s. They became buddies with that Arch Deceiver and Rebel against God. However, God said in Genesis 3 that He would reverse Adam and Eve’s friendship with Satan and put enmity in its place. In other words, their hearts would be changed to hate Satan and the sin they had chosen; and once again love God and His will. That is grace!
This last truth is most important for our understanding of Scripture. When we read of someone doing God’s will or pleasing Him we must understand that it is God Himself who made the difference. God is the One who gave them heart-changing grace and enabled them to obey Him. Such people are not in Scripture because they earned a place in God’s story, but because God dug them out of the miry clay, gave them a new heart, and worked in them to obey Him. “It is God who works in you both to will and to do for His good pleasure” (Phil.2:13). Such people are not examples of what man can do, but examples of what God’s grace can do in us, too.
Remember, it is God who makes the difference.
More to come, with God’s help…
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