Letter to a Man on the Brink of Grace
The following was written to a dear friend in the midst of his struggles to comprehend grace, forgiveness, and the Christian’s battle with sin. I pray it is of use to you.
I have spilled my heart to you in this letter. Please interpret its great length as being a measure of my love and concern, rather than mere prolixity. My aim has been to pour you a river of grace; if even a drop splashes effectually upon your ankles from my Jordan correspondence, I shall thank the Lord, though my prayer is that it may go over your head and submerge you entirely in the love of God in Christ.
Friend, I wish to be clear. Perhaps the tremendous difference between your and our experience of Christian life is that you approach God and godliness with a very different concept of what grace is. You affirmed my interpretation of your words, that grace is “the act or state of forgiveness.” But this is hardly what we understand grace to be at all. Forgiveness is one of many things grace does, but is not grace itself. In fact, forgiveness is only one half of justification. Grace as we speak of it is something else entirely.
Grace refers to the ultimate motivation which lies behind God’s willingness to favor a sinner. It is the ‘why’ of justification and adoption. Such divine favor may be manifested in protection, regeneration, faith, repentance, or gifts, but in all cases, the deeper matter is what decisively motivates God to grant such blessings. On what terms does He grant his goodness to sinners?
The grace of the gospel stands apart from legalism in that it is purely unmerited by the one who receives it. Furthermore, it is positively demerited; it is favor given to ones who have forfeited all claims upon blessings through sin. Unlike the terms of the Law of Moses which required personal and perpetual fidelity in order to secure blessings from God, the good news that grace bestows favor not at all on account of personal sincerity, resolve, contrition, shame, or any other state of the heart or will within man.
This grace, or favor of God, exists from eternity toward God’s elect, having no basis in either their guilt or gratitude. Rather, grace produces as much of these blessings as God wills, purely because God wills to produce them. And grace may be given to one regardless of how well he or she reciprocates the goodness of God. In other words, grace is God’s absolute freedom to be and to do good. It is nothing other than His freedom, sovereign and unrestrained, to be both merciful and benevolent to whomever He chooses, whenever he chooses, to whatever extent He chooses, without so much as casting an eye on a particular sinner’s personal measurement before God’s moral law.
Please carefully note the order of God’s motivation and actions in this passage,
“We ourselves were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another. But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” [Titus 3:3-7]
What we discover in this text is that grace is not the act of justification itself, but describes the free nature of God’s willingness to justify, that is, not only to forgive, but to regard as righteous all those who rest in His goodness through Christ. Grace soars over the heinous sins of its objects, and bestows blessings freely wherever it chooses.
So then, to the matters of assurance, faith, forgiveness, and habitual sin.
You wrote, “How can I believe in God’s forgiveness when I keep doing the same [sinful] things?” I must ask, is your assurance of forgiveness to be grounded on a sense that God has so worked moral transformation, and only then you may finally trust He shows you favor? Your statement implies we may only believe God loves us to the degree we keep the law. While works of love may form a secondary evidence of His inward power, they cannot supplant the place of Christ Himself in the faith of believers. But it seems this is your posture. If so, I am sad to say it is very crooked. Friend, if at all possible, by the grace given to me in Christ Jesus, I would like to help you take up your bed and walk.
To understand the true basis for assurance, or confidence that one is a recipient of God’s favor and forgiveness, we must begin again at grace. Grace is personally unmerited favor. Its basis lies solely in Christ. The favor of God toward His chosen people exists from eternity, unmoved by their faults and victories alike. Forgiveness, however, is received by the power of grace alone, working within the soul to create faith in Christ alone. Forgiveness is not granted decisively because one believes, but rather, assurance of forgiveness is received through belief that nothing more is required than to trust in Christ’s welcoming, outstretched hand. True Christian assurance of God’s favor must then hang upon having true faith.
The miracle of faith, that unspeakably restful trust which the Spirit begets in the souls of God’s elect, is first of all sincere belief in God’s entire freedom to both forgive and love not only others, but oneself, without any account of personal deeds or misdeeds, past, present, or future. True faith says, “all that ultimately stands between myself and God’s saving favor is His will. My fate stands from eternity in his determination, whether to be gracious in Christ or to judge me as a sinner in Adam.” So then, true faith looks entirely away from one’s own conduct under the law as the basis of God’s favor in Christ.
Moreover, true faith entails belief that this freedom of God to love sinners is not unjust, but is justified from eternity by the fact that the Son covenanted to live and die in the place of whoever He willed to save. Every ounce of wrath due for the sins of God’s people has been drunk to the fullest by Christ; every temptation and burden that could be heaped upon mankind was cast upon the Son of man in the place of believers, testing Jesus, and from these trials He emerged victor, having kept the Law perfectly, not for Himself only, but as the Representative of those who look to Him by faith.
Finally, and most importantly—for even demons have all that has gone ahead—true faith rests personally in Christ’s promises to embrace the sinner with all His gifts and love, simply at the moment one takes him up on his free offer to stand forever before God in his or her place. True faith trusts that when asked to give an account of one’s life under the law, Jesus will present Himself instead. True faith adds no cost to the conditions of life. It adds no if-then terms to the good news that grace exists from eternity in Christ, or that it may be trusted by all who receive it happily. Faith rests personally in Jesus’ pledge to have justified once for all those who look to him as gracious savior.
True faith trusts the friendship of God extended in Christ to be free, entire, unreserved, everlasting, and able to accomplish all that it requires.
Having once believed on Christ alone, true faith never again needs to look at one’s will to secure the favor of God. Faith believes that God’s favor was granted from eternity, and received sensibly the moment we rested in it. It reclines lustily in Christ’s willingness to show mercy and kindness, and receives from such rest strength to pray for more grace, so that one might live righteously.
For this reason, whenever a true believer sins, he feels terribly ashamed, yet he does not have to feel condemned or even jeopardized in his salvation. He has the shame of an accepted son, not the fear of a failed worker whose job now hangs in jeopardy. “It is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham,” heirs of the patriarchal promises because they are subsumed in the identity of Christ, the true Heir, through faith. [Gal. 3:7] Of course, if one persists forever in willful sin without the slightest grief, one must question whether the Spirit of the Son dwells in him at all, seeing as God does not bastardize his children by neglecting to discipline them. [Rom. 6, Heb. 12]
Still, even in the face of personal sin, true Christian faith embraces God’s promises that, “there is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus,” and, “if any of us sins, we have an advocate before the Father, Christ Jesus.” [Romans 8:1, 1 John 2:1] If the eye turns at any time from grace to one’s own will and identity, he sets himself again under the Law and has fallen, as it were, from the true faith.
“You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace. For through the Spirit, by faith, we ourselves eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness.” [Gal. 5:4-5]
Here then, we do not yet have the full measure of righteousness imparted to us inwardly, yet we trust by faith that we are received as such in Christ, and shall be transformed completely and finally at the second coming of Jesus. For this reason, we turn away passionately from our own will as the basis of forgiveness and assurance,
“For all who rely on works of the law are under a curse; for it is written, “Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things written in the Book of the Law, and do them.” Now it is evident that no one is justified before God by the law, for “The righteous shall live by faith [in Christ alone as their substitute].” But the law is not of faith, rather “The one who does them shall live by them.” Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us—for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who is hanged on a tree”—so that in Christ Jesus the blessing of Abraham might come to the Gentiles, so that we might receive the promised Spirit through faith.” [Gal. 3:10-14]
Red as sin may be upon the consciences of saints, they trust Christ has “by a single offering…perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” [Heb. 10:14] In fact, the worst grief of the Christian is to know that his sin is against One who loves him with an everlasting love, saves him by a complete sacrifice, secures him with an unshakable inheritance in the family of God, freely and from eternity in Jesus. When the believer sins, the Spirit reminds him that His faith is to be in Christ, not in the degree of his good intentions and resolve. This hope produces joy and confidence in God, who “began this good work in you,” to “finish it to the day of Christ Jesus.” [Phil. 1:6] The Christian declares, “If He loves me so freely, even in my sins, I will trust Him even more to work through me right now to obey!”
Recall the woman taken in adultery, to whom Christ said, “I do not condemn thee, go and sin no more.” [John 8] Jesus’ willingness to freely pardon precedes his command for moral transformation, and is not conditioned on it. Forgiveness is a gift won by Christ alone and thus assurance of salvation is granted primarily through faith in Christ alone. Dear friend, by ‘alone’, I do mean quite solitary of even your best intentions, your most earnest efforts.
It is a poor boast, but I will make it: I am perhaps aware of having committed deeper sins than you have yet recognized yourself to have committed. I say so because mine are against the greater light of his love which I have evidently witnessed through faith. Can you say, “God loves me infinitely and perfectly, this moment and forever.” I can shout it confidently, yet I have sinned many times against him even today. Yet I can also say, “Christ lived perfectly in my place; the love of God toward me is based solely upon the works of righteousness which Jesus performed as my substitute, and which God accounts to me freely. I know this because I depend on Him, and He promises to be dependable to those who depend on Him alone.”
My faith is in Christ alone. You may trust him as well, the moment you are willing to believe his eternal favor is immediately available through no past, present, or future condition of your own, other than to lean upon his free goodness. This is a divine work which you cannot merit or provoke, yet the promise is just as true, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” Resting in Christ means resting once and for all from your own identity before God. It is being reborn to a life absorbed in the identity, the person and work of Christ counted to you. It is baptism, it is burying self-identification according to one’s natural will. It is resurrection, rising in the identity of the Son to live as nothing other than a vessel of Christ by the power of God.
“Unless you are born again, you cannot see the kingdom of heaven.” [John 3:3]
“What is impossible for man is possible with God.” [Luke 18:27]
Your dear friend and recipient of grace,
— Michael:.
