God’s grace is so central to who he is that he won’t let humans come to him in any other way.
The primary purpose of this series of articles about the gospel of Jesus Christ is not to learn the gospel or how to be saved. Our purpose is to learn about God, to learn about him through the lens of the gospel that he designed.
For he designed the means of salvation for humans based on who he is, what is important to him, what he hates, and what he loves. The gospel is what it is because God is who he is. He determined the way of salvation before he created anything. Therefore the gospel is not a workaround or a mere fix, such as what the NASA engineers did when they repurposed various objects on Apollo 13 to save the lives of the astronauts. The gospel and the means of salvation is what God wanted it to be.
And therefore it is perfect. It perfectly reveals the glory of God. It perfectly reveals how to relate to him in a way fully acceptable and pleasing to him.
In fact you cannot understand the rest of the Bible properly without it. Without the gospel, other aspects of God’s nature and ways can easily be twisted and misused.
God’s grace
The first quality we will address is what the gospel teaches about God’s grace. Shortly we will go beyond the essential but familiar truth that God’s grace is his unmerited favor toward sinners, but let’s first lay that foundation.
It is no less sweet for being familiar. One parable of Jesus makes the meaning of grace perfectly clear. A young man rejects his father. He requests his inheritance and moves away. He wastes his money on the pleasures of parties and sex, until the cash is gone.
“And when he had spent everything, a severe famine arose in that country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired himself out to one of the citizens of that country, who sent him into his fields to feed pigs. And he was longing to be fed with the pods that the pigs ate, and no one gave him anything. But when he came to himself, he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have more than enough bread, but I perish here with hunger! I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Treat me as one of your hired servants.”’ And he arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And the son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.’ But the father said to his servants, ‘Bring quickly the best robe, and put it on him, and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet. And bring the fattened calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate. For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.’ And they began to celebrate” (Luke 15:14–24 ESV).
That is the grace of God. It is a picture that becomes more sweet and dear with every reading. It is perhaps the fulfillment of the greatest longing of the human heart. A loving Father joyfully, unexpectedly receives home is his evil, unworthy, but repentant offspring, and all is now well between them.
What God wanted from the beginning
God designed the way of salvation to magnify his grace. He wanted all creation to know what a wonderful thing is his grace and what endless joy there is in experiencing it:
“He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us” (Ephesians 1:5–8).
He didn’t become gracious because he had to in response to mankind’s fall. God doesn’t change. He is gracious and has always been gracious for all eternity. But toward fallen humanity he chose to display it. We are the masterpiece of God’s grace, the expression of his grace whose beauty is never exhausted.
Moreover, we must understand that he did not manifest this grace reluctantly. It pleased him to do this. It is as natural and pleasing to him to show grace as it is for an eagle to soar.
When God revealed his name and glory to Moses on Mt. Sinai, “The LORD passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The LORD, the LORD, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin’” (Exodus 34:6–7).
When the apostle John described Jesus, having walked with him for over three years, he said, “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth…. For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known” (John 1:14, 16–18).
Jesus made the grace of the Father known.
The writer of Hebrews describes God’s throne as “the throne of grace” where Christians “may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:16).
So God not only delights to show undeserved favor to lost sinners, but also to his redeemed children.
Grace alone
We don’t understand how important God’s grace is to him until we also recognize that he will not let it be set aside. We must experience grace on his terms, and his terms are narrow. His grace comes only to those who come to him through a living and active faith in Jesus Christ, not by good or religious works, not by trying to earn merit through any religion of our choosing:
“6 Even when we were dead in our trespasses, [God] made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—… 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast” (Ephesians 2:6, 8, 9).
(See also John 3:16–17; 1 John 5:10–12; Acts 4:10–12; Romans 3:10–26)
The bane of self-righteousness
The opposite of the gospel message that we are saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ is the false gospel of self-righteousness. The gospel of self-righteousness is that we can be saved—we can become acceptable to God—through our own efforts at keeping some moral code or following some religious system with its rituals. That code could be “Do to others what you want them to do to you,” or, “Love your neighbor as yourself,” or, “Be kind,” or “Be good,” or, “Leave the place better than you found it,” or, “Work hard and pay your taxes,” or, “Keep the Ten Commandments.”
Any good thing you do, or any success you have in avoiding bad behavior, that you trust in as your merit before God actually makes you unfit for God. That’s because you are setting aside your need for grace. You are setting aside your need for Jesus. If by self-righteousness you reject grace and reject Jesus, God will reject you.
Grace is so important to God that he will not save a self-righteous person. It is a form of extreme pride, and pride is evil. That is the message of another parable of Jesus:
“He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt: ‘Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: “God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.” But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted’” (Luke 18:9–14).
(See also Romans 10:1–4 and Galatians 1–2.)
Our way and God’s way
Our way: We think that surely in the end God will save a person who believes in God and tries hard always to be good, even if he or she rejects Jesus as Lord. Surely he will save a good Hindu or a good Muslim or a good Buddhist.
God’s way: He joyfully delights to accept people, forgiving all theirs sins, by his grace through their faith in Jesus Christ. And he accepts people only in that way, because he saves by grace, not by being religious or following moral codes no matter how good. If we think otherwise, we don’t understand grace, and it is even possible we ourselves are believers in the false gospel of self-righteousness. It is possible we ourselves presume that God’s grace expressed in Jesus and his cross were ultimately unnecessary.
Life principle: Meditate on God’s grace until it affects you as God intended. God is gracious, and he wants you to appreciate it. Rejoice in it. Revel in it. Worship him for it. Rely on it. Renounce self-righteousness. Reject moral pride. You don’t know God’s grace well enough if you have not been moved to worship him wholeheartedly and continually for his grace. The point and purpose of grace is worship and the complete abandonment of moral pride and self-righteousness.
Jeremiah 9:23–24: “Thus says the LORD: ‘Let not the wise man boast in his wisdom, let not the mighty man boast in his might, let not the rich man boast in his riches, but let him who boasts boast in this, that he understands and knows me, that I am the LORD who practices steadfast love, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things I delight, declares the LORD.’” (ESV)