by Shane Rosenthal
When forced to choose between salvation by works or salvation by grace, most evangelical Christians, indeed, most Christians of any stripe would probably side with salvation by grace. Many are familiar with Bible passages such as, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3:23), texts which clearly indicate that earning our own way to heaven is just not going to cut it with God. But most Christians go no further than this in their thinking. To them, God has his standard which we fail to live up to, so he overlooks our shortcomings by his grace. But when this very important Biblical term is left in this vague and relatively undefined state, a serious problem can develop; a problem that can in some cases even begin to undermine the meaning of grace itself.
If it is possible to undermine the meaning of grace, it seems important that we start off with a proper definition of the word from the outset. The New International Dictionary of The Bible defines grace as "that unmerited favor of God toward fallen man." I also like . . .the (definition) which describes grace as, "a disposition to or an act or instance of kindness, courtesy or clemency." This is exactly how the Bible describes our relationship with God. We do not earn this kindness or clemency, but it is caused or initiated by God's own character. In his mercy, he is gracious to us. But to say that grace is related to mercy, is to say that grace is totally undeserved, unmerited, and unearned, for if we have received mercy, the implication is that we have received a special exemption from justice. Therefore, one will not sufficiently understand grace and mercy until he or she has acquired a basic understanding of God's holiness, righteous requirements (i.e., his law), and the predicament of human sinfulness. We simply will not have an adequate view of ourselves or any doctrines relating to grace until we have understood these basic concepts.
In the book of Leviticus, God demands that he "be acknowledged as holy by the Israelites," in addition to warning his people against "profaning his holy name" (Lev. 22:32). Although this is a very common theme throughout the Old Testament, many today often push aside such a concept of God in favor of a more "chummy" deity whose chief desire is to make sure that everyone is having a good time. But if we are to call ourselves Christians, we simply cannot brush aside these references to God's holiness in favor of a God of our own imagination. As the Israelites were instructed, we too must acknowledge our God as holy, and in order to do this, we must go to the Scriptures to see what God has revealed about himself. Isaiah's encounter with God's holiness is probably the most instructive for our case. In the sixth chapter of the book of Isaiah, this prophet describes how he was given a vision of the heavenly throne, with cherubim and seraphim continually crying, "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." And what is the prophet's response? Rather than getting "caught up in a wonderful worship experience," Isaiah realizes something is dreadfully wrong. The problem was sin.
"Woe to me!" I cried. "I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the LORD Almighty." Many today are claiming to have ecstatic mystical experiences with God (or simply with the divine), but what is notably missing from all these accounts, from whatever religious persuasion, is the conviction of sin. We simply cannot have a relationship with God until we face the fact of sin head on. Isaiah was not being melodramatic here. He knew that something was intrinsically wrong with the fact that he should behold God in all his Glory, for as God explained to Moses, "no man may see me and live" (Ex. 33:20). But as Isaiah goes on to explain in his case, "one of the seraphs flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth and said, "See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for." God provided a way, not by lowering his standards, but through atonement, "your guilt is taken away." And what God did for Isaiah in this passage was foreshadowing of greater things to come, things that would ultimately find their fulfillment in Christ.
If we are to have a relationship with the God of these inspired words, it behooves us to proceed according to the terms he has spelled out for us. If we do not keep God's holiness in mind, we will ultimately find that there is no need to focus on our sin, guilt, and conversely, Christ's atonement. It is interesting to note that this lack of emphasis on the central redemptive themes of the Bible used to be characteristic of liberal mainline churches, but now has become all too common even in conservative Christian circles. Therefore we must come to grips with God's holy character, and as a consequence, begin to reflect on our own sinfulness as a contrast to God's holiness. Once we engage in this process, the words God spoke to Isaiah can be fulfilled in us, "For this is what the high and lofty One says??he who lives forever, whose name is holy: "I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite" (Is. 57:15).
"Everybody knows that the boat is sinking, everybody knows that the captain lied, everybody's got this broken feeling, like their father or their dog just died." These are lyrics from an old Leonard Cohen song, recently re?recorded by Don Henley. In a similar vein, Bill Mallonee of the Vigilantes of Love sings, "there's a smaller place you go where there's hardly any sound, where the deals have all gone sour and the house of cards comes down, and the damage is costly it's beyond all dollars and sense, you can't measure it with graphs and charts or any instruments, yeah the thing we cannot speak of, the secret we all know...oh this blister soul."
So what exactly is this "broken feeling?" What is this "secret we all know?" The problem is what theologians have called original sin. Our first parents rebelled from God, and as a consequence the children of Adam and Eve are conceived and born in sin. Just as Romans chapter five so clearly sets forth,
"sin entered the world through one man" (v:12)
"The judgment followed [one man's sin] and brought condemnation" (v:16)
"by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man" (v17)
"the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men" (v18)
"through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners" (v19)
Thus, as a result of this, we can all say with David, "Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful at the time my mother conceived me" (Ps. 51:5). But some might respond by asking, how can we be "condemned" by God for the sins of another person? How can the disobedience of Adam be attributed to me? Surely this is unfair and unjust! But it must quickly be pointed out that if this is the case, that is, if it is true that it is unjust for us to be considered guilty for the acts of another, then we will have destroyed the heart and center of the Christian faith. You see, Christ was a man who was credited with our injustice. He took our sin upon himself, and was judged in our place. Therefore, if it is unjust for us to be considered guilty for Adam's sin, then it would be equally unjust for God to consider Christ guilty for our sins, an assertion that essentially destroys the Christian doctrine of salvation. This connection between Adam's sin and Christ's redemption is something that Paul makes explicitly clear, "just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men. For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous" (Rom 5:18-19).
So how can we make sense of original sin? We must look at Adam as our representative. He sinned in our place. When he declared war against God by his defiance, the entire human race (in whose care he was entrusted) became God's enemies. This doctrine is not simply not an excuse to focus our blame on our first parents, but rather we all seem to be co?conspirators in this spirit of self destruction. This is why we can be called "rebels from birth" (Is 48:8). In fact the Bible has a lot to say about the human condition after the fall, "All have gone their own way, there is no one who seeks God, there is no one who does good...not even one" (Rom 3:10?12). We are depicted as "slaves to sin" (Rom 7:14), "enemies of God" (Rom 5:10), "altogether worthless" (Rom 3:12), "powerless" (Rom 5:6), "controlled by the sinful nature" (Rom 7:5), "bound to disobedience" (Rom 11:32), "captive to a dominion of darkness" (Col. 1:13), "corrupted both in mind and conscience" (Tit. 1:15), "foolish, disobedient, deceived" (Tit. 3:3), and "dead in sins" (Eph. 2:1?2). . .To ignore the Biblical imagery of man's bondage to sin would be to miss one of the most important and clear doctrines of the Bible.
Many Christians will readily admit that they are still sinners. They realize that they have not lived up to God's perfection and continue to trust in Christ's blood and righteousness for their only hope. Such is the Christian confession. But still, many get confused about how the whole process of salvation was initiated, a confusion that can utterly destroy the doctrine of grace. Think about it for a moment. Why is it that you think you are on your way to heaven and many of your neighbors are not? Is it because you "decided" to trust Jesus? Now although this is much less blatant than an outright salvation by works, it is nevertheless a works based, rather than a grace based theology. . .The question I have for you is this, Is choosing to trust in Christ a "good" thing? For the sake of argument I think all of us would readily admit that it is. But if sinful men and women have the power to do this admittedly good thing, then what do we do with Paul's stark words? Obviously this presents a problem.
The simple truth is that no one has the power to do "good" in and of their own strength. Jesus himself. . .taught that men would not have the ability to choose or trust in him apart from God's regenerative power, "Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed" (John 3:19?20). We must begin to understand that Jesus is referring to all of us here. All of us do evil, for "no one is good, not even one. Now, this is certainly pessimistic, but it is from the perspective of God's holiness, which none of us lives up to (see Prov. 20:9, Prov. 21:2, Eccl. 7:20). But if Jesus left us with those words alone none of us would be Christians, for no one would "come into the light." But the text continues, "But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God" (John 3:21). In other words, when you see someone come to faith in Christ, just understand that they did not do this by their own power, but rather, it was done through the power of God.
But if there is no free will in the matter of salvation, doesn't that make us robots? Well again, we must consider the role of our first parents. Adam and Eve did have free will to choose to obey God, or to rebel against him. But because of their decision we are all born rebels (Is. 48:8, Eccl. 7:29). Notice for example the following instructions Paul gives to Timothy regarding the proper disposition of Christian teachers and evangelists,
The Lord's servant must not quarrel; instead, he must be kind to everyone, able to teach, not resentful. Those who oppose him he must gently instruct, in the hope that God will grant them repentance leading them to a knowledge of the truth, and that they will come to their senses and escape from the trap of the devil, who has taken them captive to do his will (2Tim. 2:24?26).
Do we really believe this? Do we really believe, first of all, that God must "grant" us repentance? Secondly, do we really believe that before we were regenerated by the Holy Spirit that we were held captive by the devil "to do his will?" If we are to believe Paul's words here, then we must abandon this idea of a "free will" in the process of our salvation. The hard truth of the matter is that no one can move his or her will toward God because a) as children of Adam we are all rebelling from him (Is. 48:8, Is. 53:6, Is. 64:6?7), and b) our wills are held captive by a "dominion of darkness" (Col. 1:13, Gal. 3:22, Tit. 3:3, 1John 5:19, 2Tim 2:26).
Once a person gets a grasp of the gravity of the problem, the solution to the problem becomes all the more glorious. Yes, man in this view goes down in our estimation, but our view of God and his mercy to save us goes way up. If man is totally helpless and powerless to save himself, then clearly, if anything is to be done to save him, it must be done by God. . .A good example of this is found in the book of Acts during one of Paul's presentations of the gospel message. "One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul's message" (Acts 16:14). In many Christian circles this emphasis is completely lost. We have become so used to the phrase, "Invite Jesus into your heart," and other similar sentimental expressions that we have forgotten the heart is the seat of human wickedness (Jer. 17:6) that must first be liberated by God before it can do anything of spiritual value.
The simple fact of the matter is this; we cannot boast about our own part in salvation because it is all of God's grace from start to finish. We cannot merit our acceptance before God by the things we do, or by the choices we make. We are all dead in sin, and must first be made alive before we can accept the grace of God. The Scriptures are clear on this. And what is also clear throughout the Scriptures is the fact that faith is a gift. It is not based on "human decision," or "desire" (John 1:13, Rom 9:6), but is the result of God's grace and mercy.
Unfortunately this is not the common teaching about grace in the church today. Often grace is presented as God's niceness or his benevolence; even more often it is simply never defined at all. But if we are to accept "unmerited favor" as an appropriate definition for grace, then we must abandon any concept of meriting our salvation by our works, by our choices, or by anything we do at all. Indeed, if by our choice or faith or decision, we acquire God's favor, we would have in effect merited unmerited favor.