God Loves… Himself

Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

Behold the glory of our God in saving sinners. Behold the glory of the richness of His mercy and the greatness of the love with which He loved sinners. Behold the glory of His grace which made sinners alive with Christ and raised them with Him and seated them with Christ in the heavenlies in Christ. One can read the text above in a wooden or rote manner and miss the beauty and glory of it. One can even read the text above in a theological manner (regardless of the theological creed) and miss the glory of it. But the text above strips any concept of righteousness or glory from man and exalts the wonder and glory of God.

Why is God rich in mercy toward sinners? Because of His great love with which He loves them. The focus of why God shows mercy is because of God. Why does God take sinners who are dead in their transgressions and make them alive together with Christ? It is so that “in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” God saves sinners because of Himself and the glory of His grace. There is no room for merit or worth or righteousness from the sinner, but all is from God and is to the glory of His own name and grace. There is no room in this text but a Gospel of grace alone.

When verse 8 starts off the verse with the word “for” which gives us a reason or a cause that links verse 8 with the preceding verses, we can see that the Word of God destroys any hope that sinners have in themselves and the weight of the Gospel is put directly upon grace alone. Why has God saved these wretched creatures and given them life in Christ? He did this to the in order that for all eternity He would show forth “the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Then in verse 8 it gives us an explanation of why and perhaps even how this is true. Grace has saved sinners through faith, but even that faith is not of the people themselves, but faith itself is the gift of God. Faith itself comes to the sinner by grace since it is the gift of God and is not worked for. The glory of grace shines forth in the Gospel that is all of grace.

Verse 8 shows us that this grace that saves comes to the sinner through faith which itself is a gift (of grace) of God, and then verse 9 tells us with great clarity that this salvation and faith are not a result of works. Sinners must grasp this tightly and with great tenacity. Salvation is completely by grace and faith itself is completely by grace as well. If faith is not by the grace of God, then it is the work of the human will and that means men have some room for boasting. Men constantly want to add one work to the Gospel and that is when they want to add the work of faith to the human will rather than have faith be the gift of God by grace alone.

We must fight the insertion of the act of the human will into the Gospel of grace alone or we will be admitting the work of the human will into the Gospel of grace alone and as such will be bringing a work into the Gospel and it is no longer by grace alone. In the modern day many professing Calvinists want to link arms with Arminians in name who are really Pelagians and say that they are preaching the same gospel. Perhaps they are, but a true Calvinist will stand for grace alone and the true Arminian will stand for free-will in the arena of the Gospel and the two can never join hands in reality. The Gospel that is of grace alone will not stand for any work of the human soul and that includes any work of the human will because that intrudes upon grace and allows for one work (at least) to be a part of the so-called Gospel at that point and as such it is no longer a Gospel of grace alone. This insertion of one work into the Gospel should alarm ministers of the Gospel and they should stand firmly in opposition to it.

Ephesians 2:1 And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, 2 in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. 3 Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), 6 and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, 7 so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; 9 not as a result of works, so that no one may boast. 10 For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.

In this passage of Holy Writ, we see how it must be that the Gospel is by grace alone. There can be nothing else but grace that can save the sinner in ways that the sinner needs saved by. Sinners are by nature children of wrath and live in the lusts of their flesh. Sinners are dead in their trespasses and sins. What is there that can take a sinner from deadness and give them life? Only God can do that. What can move God to give those who are dead in trespasses and sins life? Only God can move God to do that. There is nothing desirable about those who are dead in sins and trespasses to God. They do nothing that is righteous and all their words are nothing but the scent of an open grave which has the smell of a rotting corpse because the corpse has not been covered up.

Who can take those who walk according to the course of the world which is set in place by the prince of the power of the air and turn their hearts from that to loving to follow Christ? Only God can take a person and change their hearts that they can and will do this. But again, what will move God to do such a thing? Only the love God has for His own glory and the glory of His own grace. The Gospel is saturated with grace from beginning to end and there is nothing but the glory of God’s grace in this Gospel. God does not start with sinners who deserve anything but His wrath and enmity as they go on in sin and are at enmity with Him.

This passage of Scripture sets out the depravity of man so very clearly but also the utter need for the Gospel of grace alone as well. Those who are dead in sins and trespasses can do nothing to earn the slightest rag of righteousness. Those who are dead in sins and trespasses can do nothing to take away the slightest bit of sin. They must have Christ to save them by grace alone or they will never be saved. These sinners have nothing in them and there is nothing they can do to make them the slightest bit more savable, but instead they are utterly dependent on the grace of God to save them at all points and in all ways.

Verse 4 starts off by giving a glaring contrast between the dead sinners and the only way sinners can be saved. They can only be saved by God. Look at how dead sinners are by nature as they go along in the walk of death that is found in trespasses and sins, but look at the hand of God who makes sinners alive by grace alone. It is by grace alone that God raises sinners from the spiritual dead and makes them spiritually alive. It is by grace alone that God sets His love on sinners and makes them alive in Christ. If sinners could see that they are dead in sins and trespasses and are by nature children of wrath, they would see with clarity that they must have God show grace to them or they will perish. What is there about a dead person that lived a life of enmity toward God that would move God to give them life? What is there about a person who lives in the lusts of his or her flesh and does nothing but indulge the desires of the flesh and mind that would attract God in the slightest to save them? Only the grace of God would be moved to save such vile wretches.

The rest of the passage goes no about the wonders of grace, but for the moment we can behold the beauty of the glory of His grace. Only God can move God to save sinners from themselves and their bondage to sin and the devil. Only the grace of God in Christ can save sinners and nothing else can even contribute the slightest to such a glorious grace. The Gospel that must be proclaimed must be proclaimed to people who are being taught how dead they are in sin and what they are by nature. When those things are seen and felt by the people as true of them, the Gospel of grace becomes beautiful and glorious to them.

You say you cannot believe, you cannot repent. Fitter for Christ if you have nothing but sin and misery. God to Christ with all our impenitence and unbelief, to get faith and repentance from Him; that is glorious. Tell Christ, “Lord, I have brought no righteousness, no grace to be accepted in, or justified by; I am come for Thine, and must have it.” We would be bringing to Christ, and that must not be. Not a penny of nature’s highest improvements will pass in heaven. Grace will not stand with works (Titus 3:5; Rom 11:6). That is a terrible point to nature, which cannot think of being stripped of all, not having a rag of duty or righteousness left to look at. Thomas Willcox

The last part of this statement by Willcox gets at the real issues of the Gospel of grace alone too. Grace will not stand with works. There is no real getting around this vital, vital point. Either Christ has accomplished salvation completely and totally leaving man with nothing to do other than receive or He left something for man to do. This, however, not only means that Christ is not the complete Savior, but that man is partial savior of self and does indeed have something to boast about. The Gospel of Jesus Christ gives us the good news of what Christ has done and does not leave us with something left to do. The Gospel of grace alone leaves us with no works to do for salvation and does not leave us with one work to do in order to be declared just before God.

The least work makes grace no longer to be grace. Again, this point cannot be emphasized too much. The least work turns the Gospel of grace alone into another gospel. “But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace is no longer grace” (Rom 11:6). Grace is only grace when it is pure and unmixed with anything else. In terms of the Gospel of grace alone, it is by Christ alone that sinners are justified and He does this by grace alone. If we add one work to the Gospel of grace alone, we add one work to Christ. If we add one work to Christ, then we add one work to the Gospel of grace alone. Faith is either a work of the Spirit that Christ has purchased and given to sinners by grace alone or faith is the work of the will of man. If it is the work of the will of man, then the Gospel is not Christ alone and it is not by grace alone.

Grace will not stand with works, but the hardest thing for so many people to believe is that grace will not stand with any act of a will that is free (free-will). A will that is truly free is a will that is free of grace and so a free-will cannot stand with the Gospel of grace alone. The Gospel of grace alone does not accomplish all by grace but leave men to come up with faith on their own, but instead faith itself is a free gift of grace. This is so beautiful and so glorious that it is indeed beyond the ability of human language to describe it. This is so utterly glorious that sinners have nothing left for them to do in the realm of justification. They don’t have any works to do in order to be justified and they have no faith and no repentance to work up either. In accordance with the Gospel of Christ alone and grace alone, both faith and repentance come by grace as well. The freeness of this Gospel of grace alone demands that we not add one work to it in order to protect the freedom and freeness of God in giving grace at His pleasure rather than giving it in response to an act of man.

How impossible this is to the fallen nature of man to love the Gospel of grace alone when it strips of all hope in self and of all pride in contributing one thing. It is so attractive the fallen nature of man to at least contribute some little thing and to have salvation according to the will of man rather than totally depend on the pleasure of God (grace alone). As Willcox said, man is left with “not having a rag of duty or righteousness left to look at.” How horrible this appears to self-sufficient and proud man, but how beautiful it appears to those who see that all good things are from God and it is His glory. This is why the older writers and preachers taught that proud man must be broken and to be humbled before man could be converted. The selfish and proud heart will always hang on to some little something, though indeed it is not little in reality. The proud heart that hangs on to one thing is actually holding on faith in self rather than faith in Christ. It is really belief in self that is at the heart of this so-called “faith” regardless the name it goes under.

The Gospel of grace alone stands in the full glory of God and proud man must bow in humility before the sovereign Lord of the universe and ask for grace. There is nothing that man can do to earn it or merit it, but instead he must be stripped of all hope in self and realize that he has not the least shred or rag of righteousness in his own account or even the ability to attain it. True faith is looking to Christ alone to give faith and repentance as a gift and it comes by grace. If we think we have merited even a part, we have no idea of the nature of true grace.

You say you cannot believe, you cannot repent. Fitter for Christ if you have nothing but sin and misery. God to Christ with all our impenitence and unbelief, to get faith and repentance from Him; that is glorious. Tell Christ, “Lord, I have brought no righteousness, no grace to be accepted in, or justified by; I am come for Thine, and must have it.” We would be bringing to Christ, and that must not be. Not a penny of nature’s highest improvements will pass in heaven. Grace will not stand with works (Titus 3:5; Rom 11:6). That is a terrible point to nature, which cannot think of being stripped of all, not having a rag of duty or righteousness left to look at. Thomas Willcox

It is such a glorious truth for those that God by grace alone has given eyes to see and ears to hear. It is a far better (and “fitter”) thing for sinners to come to God with their unbelief and impenitence to seek faith and repentance from Him by grace alone. Sinners have no righteousness, so they should know this from the heart and make no pretence before God as if they had any. They should cry out to Him because they don’t have any. Unbelieving sinners have no grace to be accepted in and as such they should know that and make no pretence that way. Sinners have nothing in themselves to justify them and nothing in themselves to move God to justify them. The grace of the Gospel of Jesus Christ frees sinners from the burden (and sin) of coming to Him with anything from themselves or of themselves. They must come with Christ or they will not come at all in terms of coming in reality.

What will a sinner bring to Christ? What will a sinner think that he can do or merit that he can bring to Christ who is the righteousness of God and the only propitiation for sin? It is far “fitter” to come to Christ as we are and look to Him alone for grace and grace alone. What is it that the sinner can bring to Christ that can move Christ to save him? Will coming up with faith, as if a dead sinner can do that, move Christ to save the sinner? Of course not as all things that come from a dead sinner are dead works. All things that are from the flesh are flesh. The only thing that can move the living God to bring life into the dead sinner is His love for Himself (as triune) and His own glory. It is that love with which He loved sinners and brings them to life (Eph 2:4-5).

The sinner must not come to Christ with any righteousness of his or her own and that includes any faith which the sinner thinks that he can come up with. The sinner have no grace or graces to commend them by and nothing that can possibly contribute to justification or move God to justification. This is so important that I have repeated this in the same post. We don’t bring anything to Christ, but instead they must have all from Him. Sinners, as a result of their proud hearts, always want to bring something to Christ instead of bowing low and confessing that they have nothing to bring Him, but instead they have nothing but ill-merit and demerit on their part. Sinners must receive all from Christ or they will perish. Faith is not what people can do in and of themselves, but instead faith is looking to Christ and receiving grace alone because of Christ alone.

There is nothing of nature (man’s nature) that man can bring to God that is acceptable because man is totally depraved. There is no improvement that man can make to his own nature that will make him more acceptable to God. It should also be pointed out that while there are many improvements that man can make in the outward sense, it is even a greater wickedness to trust in those as righteousness to make one acceptable before God. The Pharisees, who attempted to make moral improvements and think of them as righteousness, were those that Jesus spoke to and of the harshest. Religion will not help a person move closer to God based on the works of nature, of the flesh, and of a person’s own righteousness. Only the grace of God in Christ Jesus can do that.

The Gospel of grace alone, though indeed not thought highly of in the modern world, is still the only Gospel that there is. The Gospel of grace alone should teach us to look for grace at all points and in all ways, but instead many (in the Reformed community as well) want to believe it in terms of words but are always trying to find ways to bring a work or works into it. If faith and repentance are not of grace alone, then the Gospel is not of grace alone. If the sinner looks to self for faith and repentance in order to be saved, then the Gospel is not about the sinner looking to Christ alone and grace alone. Perhaps I am spending too much time on this issue, but it is so neglected in our day that it needs to be stressed over and over again. The issue is not a minor one, but instead it gets at the heart of the Gospel of grace alone. The Gospel is all of free-grace and has nothing of free-will in it. When ministers do not turn sinners from their own wills to grace, they are not teaching a Gospel of grace alone.

You say you cannot believe, you cannot repent. Fitter for Christ if you have nothing but sin and misery. God to Christ with all our impenitence and unbelief, to get faith and repentance from Him; that is glorious. Tell Christ, “Lord, I have brought no righteousness, no grace to be accepted in, or justified by; I am come for Thine, and must have it.” We would be bringing to Christ, and that must not be. Not a penny of nature’s highest improvements will pass in heaven. Grace will not stand with works (Titus 3:5; Rom 11:6). That is a terrible point to nature, which cannot think of being stripped of all, not having a rag of duty or righteousness left to look at. Thomas Willcox

Here is one point (at least) where the Gospel of grace alone shines through and sets itself apart from Arminianism (free-will) and of those who profess to be Reformed but have imbibed too much of Arminianism. The sinner that sees just how depraved (total depravity) s/he is and that s/he cannot repent and believe, realizes that faith and repentance must come from Christ as free-grace rather than coming from his or her own “free-will.” The Arminian (professing Reformed or not) will tell people that they need and even must believe (which indeed they must), but will not tell them that they cannot do it and that they must have Christ give faith and repentance to them by grace alone. This is a huge distinction between the Gospel of grace alone and all other views.

The sinner who understands that s/he has no ability to repent and believe now understands that s/he must have grace as the choice of God and that God must draw that person to Himself or that person will never come. It is grace, grace, glorious grace that must bring the sinner to Christ rather than the so-called free-will of the person, and this grace is an effectual grace and an irresistible grace. The will of the unregenerate sinner can do nothing spiritual or good and so the will of the unregenerate sinner is not effectual (completely impotent and total inability in this realm) and can do nothing apart from grace. How wonderful it is to tell the sinner and show the sinner how Christ is effectual and can give the sinner all the grace needed that the sinner needs and that the sinner can do nothing but receive this glorious grace. Sinners must look to Christ and ask Him to give them a humbled heart that will do nothing but look to grace to bring them to Christ. As Luther wrote, in something of a paraphrase, until the sinner is ready to deny his free-will the sinner is not ready to be saved. As long as sinners look to their so-called free-wills to do something they will not look to Christ and free-grace alone to do what is needed.

Sinners must see that they don’t just have an intellectual unbelief, but that they have an unbelieving heart. Their hearts are at enmity with the living God and they cannot just exercise their will and be saved. The sinner cannot just decide to be saved and so bring himself to God and say that now that s/he has decided to pray a prayer or be saved that God should save the person. Oh no, that is contrary to the Gospel of grace alone. That is contrary to the Gospel of the glory of God in Christ where all the glory and all the works and merits of salvation must come from Christ or it is something the human brings to Christ expecting to be received for. Woe to the man or the woman who comes to Christ with anything in his or her hands expecting to be received by Christ on that basis, even the slightest bit.

As Willcox points out, it is more fit that we come before Christ with nothing but our sin and misery. It is more fit in keeping with the character of Christ and the glory of God in Christ. It is far more fitting that sinners should look to Christ for faith and repentance that He purchased for them on the cross by grace alone and that it is applied to them by grace alone by the Holy Spirit. That is far more fitting for a self-sufficient God who does all for His own name and glory and is moved out of love for Himself than it is to be moved by the sinful desires and hearts of sinful men who make sinful decisions. It is far more glorious for God for sinful men to obtain salvation and all else from the hand of God by grace than it is for God to give them something because of an act of their own will. Oh how beautiful and glorious it is for sinners to look to Christ to give them faith and repentance by grace than for sinners (somehow) to overcome their own sinful natures and come up with faith from their own will and so God gives them salvation in response to that. This is a Gospel of grace alone when sinners come to God because of grace rather than their own merit or will. This is a Gospel of grace alone when sinners look to Christ alone rather than to their wills for all things.