Faith And Grace Inseparable
Kathy
Overshiner
Our salvation comes as a gift of God’s grace
and is assigned by the response of our
faith.
To understand God’s gift of salvation
we must understand the process of faith and
grace.
God’s requirement for receiving his free
gift of salvation is faith in Jesus
Christ. Faith is what we believe about Jesus
and our
heart’s response of trust that causes us to follow Jesus as our Lord
and Savior.
Matthew 16:24; Luke 9:23-26. The New Testament interpretation of
faith comprises four important items:
1. Faith means constantly believing
and trusting in the crucified and
resurrected Christ as our personal Lord and
Savior.
Romans 1: 17;
“For in the gospel a righteousness from God
is revealed, a righteousness that is by
faith from first to last, just as it is
written: The righteous will live by faith.”
The righteous person continues to live by
faith and by doing this he will grow in
faith from one level
of maturity to the next. Because of this,
the believer will progress along the path of
righteousness a fulfilling rich spiritual
life.
It involves believing with all our
hearts, giving up our will and committing
our complete selves to Jesus as he is
revealed in the New Testament.
2. Faith involves true repentance, turning
from sin in true sorrow and turning to God
through our Lord and Savior Jesus.
A repentant faith is always a saving
faith.
Acts 17:30;
“In the past God overlooked such ignorance,
but now he commands all people every-where
to repent.”
In the past before full knowledge about God
came through Jesus Christ, God overlooked
much of man’s sin and ignorance of Himself.
Now that His complete and perfect revelation
has come with Jesus’s appearing, all of us
are commanded to repent and believe in
Jesus. There are
no
exceptions, for God will no longer
overlook anyone’s sins.
We all must turn from sin to God or
be condemned. Repentance is an essential
attitude for receiving the gift of
salvation.
3. Faith includes obedience to Christ and
his Word as a way of life inspired by our
faith, by our gratitude to God and by the
regenerating work of the Spirit. It is an
obedience that comes through faith.
Faith and obedience are therefore,
inseparable. Saving faith without our
commitment to sanctification is impossible.
Hebrews 5:8-9;
“Although he was a son, he learned obedience
from what he suffered and, once made
perfect, he became the source of eternal
salvation for all who obey him and was
designated by God to be high priest in the
order of Melchizedek.”
God’s incarnate son, Jesus, learned by human
experience what it means to obey God when
encompassed by intense suffering and
temptations. Jesus became a perfect Savior
and high priest because his death and
suffering were completed without sin.
Therefore, Jesus is qualified in every way
to bring us all eternal salvation.
4. Faith includes a heartfelt personal
devotion and attachment to our Lord that
reveals itself in love, trust, loyalty and
gratitude. Faith in an extreme sense cannot
correctly differentiate from love. It is a
personal activity of trust and loving
self-giving to Christ directly.
Galatians 2:20;
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no
longer live, but Christ lives in me. The
life I live in the body, I live by faith in
the Son of God, who loved me and gave
himself for me.”
The apostle Paul describes his relationship
to Jesus in terms of a profound personal
relationship (attachment) to and reliance on
Jesus. Those of us who have faith in Jesus
live our lives in intimate union with our
Lord both in his death and resurrection.
All believers in Christ have been
crucified with Him on the cross. We have
died to the law as a means of salvation and
now we live through Jesus for God. Because
of salvation In Jesus, sin no longer has
control over us.
Faith in Jesus as our Lord and Savor is not
only an act of a single moment, but also a
progressing attitude that must grow and
strengthen. Because we have faith in Jesus
who died for us, our faith should grow
greater. With trust and obedience it will
develop into loyalty and devotion and this
develops into an intense feeling of personal
attachment to and love for Jesus. This faith
brings us into a new relationship with God
our Father and exempts up from his wrath.
With this new relationship we become dead to
sin, and indwelt by the Holy Spirit. (I like
to remind myself I am the property of
Jesus).
Grace
means we are given what we don’t deserve;
God’s unearned favor. God’s grace is his
goodness and favor offered to sinners who
deserve his wrath. It is ours by accepting
God’s mercy extended to us through Jesus'
death for our sins. Justice is getting what
we deserve; mercy is being spared what we
deserve. The New Testament highlights the
theme of God’s grace in the giving of his
Son on behalf of undeserving sinners.
God’s grace is multiplied to
believers through the Holy Spirit, imparting
forgiveness, acceptance and power to do
God’s will. Our whole movement of our
Christian life from beginning to end is
dependent on God’s grace.
1 Corinthians 15: 10
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and
his grace to me was not without effect. No,
I worked harder than all of them-yet, not I,
but the grace of God that was with me.
Whether, then, it was I or they, this is
what we preach, and this is what you
believed.”
Grace is God’s presence and love through
Jesus given to believers by the Holy Spirit,
imparting to them God’s mercy, forgiveness
and the power to do God’s will.
God gives a measure of grace as a gift to
unbelievers so that they may be able to
believe in the Lord Jesus
Ephesians: 2; 8-9;
“For it is grace you have been saved,
through faith-and this is not from
yourselves, it is the gift of God-not by
works, so that no one can boast. For we are
god’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus
to do good works, which God prepared in
advance for us to do.”
God gives us grace to believers to be “set
free from sin” “to will and to act according
to his good purpose;” obedience, to pray, to
grow in Christ and to witness for Christ.
God’s grace must be continuously desired and
sought. Some of the ways (means of grace,)
are humbling our- selves before God,
studying and obeying the scripture, hearing
the proclamation of the gospel, praying,
fasting, worshipping Jesus, being
continually filled with the Holy Spirit, and
participating in the Lord’s Supper.
God’s grace can be resisted, received in
vain, put out, set aside, and abandoned by
the believer.
Galatians 5:4;
“You who are trying to be justified by law
have been alienated from Christ; you have
fallen away from grace.”
Some Galatians had transferred their faith
in Jesus to faith in legalistic observances
of the law. Paul states they had fallen away
from grace. To fall from grace is to be
alienated from Jesus; to abandon the
principle of remaining in God’s grace, which
provides life and salvation.
Faith and Grace are inseparable, through
God’s love and mercy, He has given us the
greatest gift mankind does not deserve, but
Because God loved us so;
John 3:16-17
“For God so loved the world that he gave his
only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth
in him should not perish, but have
everlasting life. For God sent not his Son
into the world to condemn the world; but
that the world through him might be saved.”
I have heard people say that they believed
that there were many ways to get to heaven,
including doing just good works. But Jesus
said there was only one way to the father
and it was through him.
John 14:6;
“Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the
truth, and the light: no man cometh unto the
father, but by me!”
