Grace: The Only Means of Salvation
Grace: The Only Means of Salvation
Here are two important truths. (And I want you to take it and the next time you hear a professor or a preacher say otherwise, go to him and remind him of this.) The first truth is that no one ever was saved, no one is now saved and no one ever will be saved except by grace. Before Moses nobody was ever saved except by grace. During Moses’ time nobody was ever saved except by grace. After Moses and before the cross and after the cross and since the cross and during all that dispensation, during any dispensation, anywhere, any time since Abel offered his first lamb before God on the smoking altar—nobody was ever saved in any other way than by grace.
The second truth is that grace always comes by Jesus Christ. The law was given by Moses, but grace came by Jesus Christ. This does not mean that before Jesus was born of Mary there was no grace. God dealt in grace with mankind, looking forward to the Incarnation and death of Jesus before Christ came. Now, since He’s come and gone to the Father’s right hand, God looks back upon the cross as we look back upon the cross. Everybody from Abel on was saved by looking forward to the cross. Grace came by Jesus Christ. And everybody that’s been saved since the cross is saved by looking back at the cross.
Grace always comes by Jesus Christ. It didn’t come at His birth, but it came in God’s ancient plan. No grace was ever administered to anybody except by and through and in Jesus Christ. When Adam and Eve had no children, God spared Adam and Eve by grace. And when they had their two boys, one offered a lamb and thus said, “I look forward to the Lamb of God.” He accepted the grace of Christ Jesus thousands of years before He was born, and God gave him witness that he was justified.
The grace did not come when Christ was born in a manger. It did not come when Christ was baptized or anointed of the Spirit. It did not come when He died on a cross; it did not come when He rose from the dead. It did not come when He went to the Father’s right hand. Grace came from the ancient beginnings through Jesus Christ the eternal Son and was manifest on the cross of Calvary, in fiery blood and tears and sweat and death. But it has always been operative from the beginning. If God had not operated in grace He would have swept the human race away. He would have crushed Adam and Eve under His heel in awful judgment, for they had it coming.
But because God was a God of grace, He already had an eternity planned—the plan of grace, “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Revelation 13:8). There was no embarrassment in the divine scheme; God didn’t have to back up and say, “I’m sorry, but I have mixed things up here.” He simply went right on.
Everybody receives in some degree God’s grace: the lowest woman in the world; the most sinful, bloody man in the world; Judas; Hitler. If it hadn’t been that God was gracious, they would have been cut off and slain, along with you and me and all the rest. I wonder if there’s much difference in us sinners after all.
When a woman sweeps up a house, some of the dirt is black, some is gray, some is light-colored, but it is all dirt, and it all goes before the broom. And when God looks at humanity, He sees some that are morally light-colored, some that are morally dark, some that are morally speckled, but it is all dirt, and it all goes before the moral broom.
So the grace of God is operated toward everybody. But the saving grace of God is different. When the grace of God becomes operative through faith in Jesus Christ then there is the new birth. But the grace of God nevertheless holds back any judgment that would come until God in His kindness has given everyone a chance to repent.