BY GRACE ALONE (PART 28)
Obedience to the law of God, or the laws of religion, cannot save you. Your obedience to whatever it is you believe you must obey, WILL NOT SAVE YOU! A man’s obedience cannot even get a man a glimpse of Heaven, let alone walk him through the Gates of Pearl. Those who believe the home-made doctrine that salvation is based on what they do, are either ignorant, or willingly ignorant of the Biblical teaching: “For I testify again to every man that is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law” (Gal. 5:3). “Knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law: for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16). “…as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse…” (Gal. 3:10 cf. Deut. 27:26). Any man who seeks to obey in order to get saved, or who thinks his obedience will keep him ‘saved’, is a man who has rejected salvation by grace alone through faith in the Righteousness of Christ alone. “Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace” (Gal. 5:4). These two Scriptures show that works and grace cannot work together to produce salvation. God’s grace and mercy are the parents of salvation. If you seek salvation by your own personal obedience, then you are bound to keep the whole law of God, and, therefore, the Lord Jesus Christ will be of no profit to you. To believe in salvation by grace alone, is to believe that salvation is only by the Righteousness, the obedience, of Jesus Christ alone. Salvation is only by the grace of God through the Person and Work of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. If there was anything a man could do by way of obedience, prior to being saved, prior to being made alive—in order to get saved, in order to get God to make him alive—then surely salvation would be by works, for salvation would be conditioned upon an act of man, and grace would not be necessary. Spiritual life cannot come via an act of a spiritually dead man, but only by a miraculous work performed by the Living God. “The law cannot give life, spiritual life to a dead sinner; God only can do this, Father, Son, and Spirit; so far is the law from giving it, that it is not so much as the means of it; it is not made use of this way; God makes use of the law to kill, but not to make alive; He makes use of the law to strike dead all a man's hopes of happiness, by the deeds of it; but it is the Gospel He uses to quicken and comfort; that is the Spirit that giveth life. 'Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith. But after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster. For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus' (Gal. 3:24-26). The law requires as much of a dead sinner, as it did of Adam in innocence, but gives him no life, activity, and strength to perform; could it quicken him, and enable him to do all its demands perfectly, then there would be Righteousness, and so justification by it, as by the promise; whence it appears that there is no contrariety in the law to the promises: the reason why there is no Righteousness is, because it cannot give life, spiritual life and strength; and if so, then not eternal life; which is the free gift of God, and not the merit of men's works: this is directly contrary to a notion of the Jews, who cry up the law as a life giving law.”
What would be the point of salvation by grace, if God had built into, equipped, man with what was necessary to get him saved? Grace merely enabling a man to do, would be like God saying, ‘Do this, and then I will save you’. What would that be other than salvation by works? Salvation according to the works of a man, and not the Work of Christ! Salvation by grace does not depend at all on works, but only on God. Salvation by that which is undeserved can only be dependent on the one giving it. Salvation by grace depends on Christ Jesus and what He has done, not on what a man has done. God does not save because of anything you have done, but only because of what He has willed. Salvation is based on God’s love for a person, and not on anything they have done for Him, or in obedience to Him. God, by the very presence, the essentiality of grace, is saying, ‘You can do nothing to save yourself. There is no condition you can meet, which is why only My grace can save you’. Salvation after a man has performed some act, or after he has made a certain decision, is salvation by works, not grace. Man doing is works, God doing is grace. Joining the two is simply a cancellation of both. QUITE SIMPLY, THOSE WHO ARGUE FOR WORKS ARE THOSE WHO DO NOT BELIEVE IN GRACE. Man doing is against grace, man doing is intrinsically and eternally opposed to God giving. Man doing to get saved, or remain ‘saved’ is the antichrist gospel of antichristianity. Man doing teaches salvation by the law; God doing is salvation by grace. Man doing is not God doing, and, God doing is grace, therefore, it cannot be works which save. If man was equipped to meet any condition salvation was based upon, if a man has been given what he needs to meet the demands of God’s law and justice, how could salvation be by grace alone, by God alone? How could salvation be founded upon the Righteousness of Christ, if a man is saved after something he himself has done? How can salvation be by God helping you meet the demands of His Law, when He has already provided the only Righteousness which saves: the Righteousness of Christ. Only Jesus Christ the Saviour can, and has met, the demands of God’s law and justice. CHRIST HAS ALREADY ESTABLISHED THE ONLY RIGHTEOUSNESS THAT SAVES. And the only way to get this Righteousness is only by grace alone. “…Christ is the end of the law for Righteousness to every one that believeth” (Rom. 10:4). Salvation is by grace according to what the Lord Jesus has done, not what a man claims he himself has done. The madness in trying to establish one’s own righteousness is not lost when seen in light of the inexorable fact that Christ Jesus the Lord has already established the Righteousness that saves. It is Christ we should be looking to, not ourselves. A man once asked, ‘What must I do to be saved?’. The gentleman to whom the question was posed, replied, “‘It’s too late!’ The young man became alarmed asking ‘Do you mean that it’s too late for me to be saved? Is there nothing I can DO?’ He was told, ‘Too late! It’s already been DONE! (IT IS FINISHED!) The only thing you can DO is BELIEVE by the grace of God” (see Rom. 8:1,34).
If salvation is conditioned in any way on any man, then salvation would be by works, and not by grace; it would be through a man’s will, and not God’s will. Salvation is inextricably connected to the Sovereign will of God. Grace saves, and grace saves only those whom God is willing to save. The saving grace of God is only sent out to those whom God is willing to be gracious toward (see Ex. 33:19). This is Sovereign grace. When you bring works into the picture, you shift the condition for salvation from what God wills, to if a man wills. All Sovereignty, including predestination and election, is stripped away. Salvation by grace can only be preceded by what God has done. If salvation follows what a man has done then it would not be a salvation by grace, but one of works. However, it is translucently clear from the Word of God that “…by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified” (Gal. 2:16), therefore, “Where is boasting then? IT IS EXCLUDED. By what law? Of works? Nay: but by the law of faith. Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law” (Rom. 3:27 cf. Gal. 6:14). There it is as clear as day: justification is by the gift of faith given by grace, and NOT AT ALL BY ANY PERSONAL OBEDIENCE TO THE LAW! No matter what a man does, no matter how much a man does, nor how religiously and sincerely he does it, nothing he does can ever justify him before God. Where there is no boasting nothing has been done. There can only be no boasting by man in a salvation which is wholly of grace. Any salvation plan which includes works, which conditions any part of salvation on what a man does, does not exclude boasting, but includes it. Salvation by grace through faith is the only salvation plan which totally excludes any and all boasting, therefore, anything done by man. Salvation cannot come by works, for a saved man is justified WITHOUT works. There are no deeds of the law of which a man can boast. There is nothing a man can do which justifies him. It is only faith given by grace by which a man is justified before God, for these things come from God and are given by Him to whomsoever He wills. God is Sovereign, therefore, God saves whom He wills by His grace alone. A man is saved because he has been given the gift of faith to believe in what God has done. No man is saved who believes in salvation by a grace that enables him to perform any act before, and so that, salvation can subsequently occur. A man’s works do not make him eligible for a salvation that is by grace alone. Salvation does not include man’s works, for it is by God’s grace. “Not unto us, O LORD, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy, and for Thy truth's sake” (Psa. 115:1). “Not unto us, O Lord! not unto us, but unto Thy dear and adorable name be the praise! We were enemies in our minds, and by our wicked works; but Thou hast redeemed us unto God by Thy Blood: all our choicest actions were polluted and unclean, but Thou hast worked out for us a Perfect and Everlasting Righteousness." THERE CAN ONLY BE NO BOASTING WHEN THERE ARE NO ACCEPTABLE WORKS PRESENT. Man has nothing to boast of in his works, for they are all imperfect, stained with sin, and, therefore, wholly unacceptable before God. “For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Rom. 3:23). Man has nothing to boast of in his salvation, for salvation is not conditioned on his works, but solely upon God’s grace. Any works done by man prior to salvation are called dead works, in Scripture (see Heb. 6:1; 9:14), and are to be repented of. This, combined with the Biblical impossibility that there is anything which can be performed by man that can cause God to elect anyone by grace, shows clearly that no part of salvation by grace can possibly be based on any man’s works.
The saved man is saved by grace through faith in what Christ has done, and not in any works of his own. Faith in God’s grace for salvation can never be coupled with faith in one’s works for salvation, for the gift of faith given by grace to God’s elect believes exclusively in the Righteousness of Christ as the ground of salvation. There is no boasting in a saved man in what he has done, because he knows he has done nothing. There can only be no boasting when a man believes only in salvation by grace alone. A man who believes works are essential to salvation, does not know grace nor the God Who saves by grace alone. The lost always speak about what they have done signalling faith in their works, rather than in Christ’s Work alone. What can a man do before God has made him alive? How can anyone who is dead in sins possibly believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, much less do anything through which he can be saved by Him! Prior to grace, a man cannot believe. The grace that saves makes a man believe, not before he is saved, but from the precise moment he is saved. Grace and faith are two sides of the same coin. You cannot have one without the other. You cannot have saving grace and yet not believe exclusively in the Gospel of salvation by grace alone. Likewise, you cannot savingly believe the Gospel of Sovereign grace if you have not been blessed by the saving grace of God. The only true God’s grace saves His people from their sins, while the counterfeit grace of false gods is said to enable a man to be saved by works. You cannot be saved by grace if you have any faith in your works. You cannot be saved by grace alone if you desire to be found having your own righteousness, for the man who wants to take his own righteousness to Heaven will not be standing before God with the Righteousness of Christ.
A man is saved by grace through faith, not without faith. A man is saved by grace without works. A man is saved by grace through faith, not himself. A man is saved by grace alone. A man is neither saved by works, or through works, but by grace alone through faith alone. A man is not saved by himself through works, but by God through grace. A man is not saved by his faith, but by grace through the gift of faith which believes salvation is not by works at all, but by grace alone. Believing does not produce salvation, for it is salvation by grace that produces belief. Salvation does not come by belief, but by the grace of God which brings the gift of faith. This is not to say that a man is in a saved state, however momentarily, without believing. This would be like saying a man was breathing, but was not yet alive. A man is not alive because he breathes, but he breathes because he is alive. You do not breathe so as to make yourself alive, but the fact you are alive is evidenced by your breathing. Breathing does not precede life, but life is what always precedes, and produces, breathing. A man is not spiritually alive because he believes, but he believes because he is made spiritually alive by grace. You do not believe so as to make yourself alive, but the fact you have been made alive by God is evidenced by your believing. Believing does not precede life, but life is what always precedes believing. Without physical life there can be no breathing, and without spiritual life there can be no believing. God does not say to anyone, 'Breathe, and I will then make you alive', for God makes them alive according to His will and purpose, and so they breathe. So too, God does not order a man to believe so that He can then make him alive, but God makes the man alive ensuring that he will believe. ONLY THE NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST BELIEVES THE ONLY GOSPEL OF CHRIST. God is just as responsible for the effect as He is the cause of a man's salvation. Grace is a gift as faith is a gift. With the grace comes the believing, with one you always have the other. Saved by grace through faith, not through works. God reconciles His people by His grace through the gift of faith, not their works. Salvation by grace through faith completely rules out any need for works. Salvation by grace through faith completely rules out any and all works, but Christ’s. Salvation by grace through faith completely rules out any and all righteousness, but Christ’s Righteousness. The faith a man has by nature believes in works, the faith a man is gifted always believes in grace alone. The works which grace produces always come AFTER salvation, and never before. Salvation is the result of grace that produces works. Works are never that which produce salvation. “Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name give glory, for Thy mercy, and for Thy truth’s sake” (Psa. 115:1). The saved man boasts only in what can be boasted of, and that is, what God, by grace, has done for his soul: “Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what He hath done for my soul” (Psa. 66:16 cf. 1 Cor. 15:10). The words He hath done are a synonym for grace. ‘Come and hear, all ye that fear God, and I will declare what GRACE has done for my soul.’
The lies of lost men who have created and sustain a pseudo-Christianity say, ‘God does love all, but only gives those to His Son whom He knew would choose Him’. They attempt to support their blasphemous lie by employing 1 Peter 1:2: “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father…” Such a grossly misinterpreted verse is used to convince the simple that God elected people unto salvation according to His seeing into the future those who would choose/love Him first. Firstly, God does not need to see into the future, for He has created and planned the future right down to the very last and minutest detail (see Isa. 46:9,10). The word foreknowledge appears only twice in all of Scripture. In the above quoted verse from 1 Peter 1, and also in Acts 2:23 “Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God…” This verse speaks of God not merely foreknowing the crucifixion of His Son, but also predetermining that it should be. Romans 11:2 speaks of God foreknowing His people whom He did not cast away. These are they who were “chosen by Him from everlasting to be His people” according to the election of grace (see Rom. 11:4-6). The words foreknew (Rom. 11:2), and foreknow (Rom. 8:29) each appear only once in the whole of Scripture, and have to do with God knowing intimately, because of an affinity or kinship with His people, rather than a mere seeing into the future. Not incidentally, why would a God Who is Omniscient need to ‘see into the future’ anyway. Why would the all-knowing God need to do anything in order to know something? Why would the Sovereign God need to refer to something, before He could do anything concerning that something. The Biblical reality is God chose His people before He laid the foundation of the world. God does not seek counsel from anything or anyone before He does something. “Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being His counsellor hath taught Him? With whom took He counsel, and who instructed Him, and taught Him in the path of judgment, and taught Him knowledge, and shewed to Him the way of understanding?” (Isa. 40:13,14 cf. Dan. 4:35). There isn’t a thing, or being, which God consults, seeks permission from, or awaits the cooperation of, before He does anything. The word, foresaw, also appears only once in all of Scripture. It appears in Acts 2:25, and is taken from the Messianic Psalm 16:8 which talks of Christ’s “…dependence on the Almighty power of God to support and protect Him”. God seeing into the future who would ‘choose Him’ presupposes His needing to see into the future in order to know those who would be His, which implies that God is just as much in the dark concerning the future as man is. This would mean that God would have to do something before He could know something which would rule out the Biblical fact that God is all-knowing: Omniscient (see Psa. 147:5; 1 Jn.3:20; Psa. 139:1-4; Isa. 46:9,10). The entire premise of God seeing into the future to discover who would be his, denies the clear teaching of Scripture which says, “…He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love” (Eph. 1:4). Notice that God did the choosing before the world began, before any man was created and before there even was a man to do anything. God’s choosing those He would be gracious and merciful towards precludes any deeds being done by them. He chose them TO BE holy and without blame, not because they were holy and without blame. If God had chosen any because they were holy and without blame there would have been no need for grace, or mercy, or compassion, or the Saviour and His Righteousness. The utter absurdity of all this is highlighted by the fact: God created the future, and needs not look into it in order to know what is to come. The Lord did not need to look into the future, to find out ‘who would choose Him’ for God is Omniscient, and in any case it is He Who chose before the foundation of the world all those whom He wanted as His own. God has adopted those whom He has chosen by grace alone.
Christ’s people, His brethren, and not every individual in the entire world, are the adopted sons of God (see Eph. 1:5; Heb. 2:17). Adoption is intrinsically about choosing the child, or children, you have elected to love, and not about loving and choosing every child there is, and then hoping that some might accept your love, and agree to come home with you. Neither is adoption about the child choosing you, otherwise he would be the adopter and you the adoptee. This immediately brings to mind the ridiculous teaching which insists upon man’s choosing God. Such a doctrine makes man the adopter, and God merely the helpless adoptee. Man has not elected God, but God is the One Who has elected those whom He has chosen to save. Moreover, God has “…predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will” (Eph. 1:5). The choosing, the adoption, is done according to the will of the one who is choosing, adopting, and never according to the will of the one being chosen, or adopted. It is the chooser who initiates the entire event. It is the chooser, or the adopter, who selects whom he will love according to his own will, and no one else’s. There are no protest marches outside adoption agencies where people go to choose a child, etc., no outraged news presenters, or front page headlines in newspapers which decry the adoption of one, and not another. Yet, man, by nature, is outraged at the thought of God’s choosing those whom He has willed to adopt and love forever, and not others. Go figure. God has known and chosen His people from before the foundation of the world, for they are His loved ones (see Acts 15:18). Again, if God based His choosing upon His foreseeing who would choose Him, then we would have the situation where salvation as well as God’s love, would be conditioned on man in that God could ‘elect’ only those He foresaw would love and choose Him first. God would then be a follower and not the Leader. He would be merely a reader, and not the Author. Man choosing God is yet another teaching in the endless Arminian arsenal of blank ammunition which ignorantly tears at the very heart of the Sovereignty of God. It is a teaching which makes no Biblical sense whatsoever, and is only seen as logical and fair to the carnal mind of Scripturally illiterate lost men. ‘God saved me by equipping me with grace to do what needed to be done for me to be saved’, does not give glory to God. How can a man be saved after he has ‘decided for God’, when it is God Who has chosen man before the world began.
How can salvation be an offer, how can a man choose to love God, when the Word of God states quite clearly that His people love Him, only because He chose to love them first (see 1 Jn. 4:19). God loving His people first, before anything done by them, is the very essence of what grace is all about. The choosing has been done, and the Righteousness required has already been established in God’s loving His people first. “THE GRACE OF GOD DOES NOT FIND MEN FIT TO BE ELECTED, BUT MAKES THEM SO. Here undoubtedly falls to the ground the vain reasoning of those who defend the foreknowledge of God in opposition to His grace, and affirm that we were elected before the foundation of the world, because God fore-knew that we would be good, not that He Himself would make us good. This is not the language of Him who says, 'YE HAVE NOT CHOSEN ME, BUT I HAVE CHOSEN YOU…' (Jn. 15:16).” God’s choosing His elect unto salvation is God appointing His elect for salvation. Notice also the extremely powerful and profoundly revealing words of Peter who wrote that God’s chosen are “Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, UNTO OBEDIENCE and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ…” (1 Pet. 1:2 cf. Rom. 1:5; Eph. 2:10; 1 Pet. 1:22). God’s chosen ones are not elected by God because of their foreseen obedience, but UNTO OBEDIENCE!, an obedience that is post-salvation, and not before it. Salvation is unto obedience, not because of obedience. The order is grace, salvation, obedience, not obedience, grace, salvation. How can grace come after something has been done? Grace is undeserved. You cannot do anything to make grace come. Salvation comes by that which is undeserved. Salvation comes by grace, not works. God is the one Who makes His people obedient, so how can it be that He needs to see who will be obedient before He chooses them, or so that He can choose them? How can it be that the Chooser needs to wait for the chosen to somehow choose Him! God’s chosen are elect through sanctification of the Holy Spirit UNTO obedience and not because of their obedience foreseen or otherwise. God’s elect were chosen TO BE obedient, not because He foresaw they would be obedient. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works…” (Eph. 2:10), not through, or because of, good works. The fact they were chosen not because they were obedient proves conclusively that they were chosen according to God’s will in accord with His undeserved favour (grace) so that they would be obedient, not in order to become saved, not so they would work their way to Heaven , but to show they were the saved of God by grace alone. STUNNING! The very verse of Scripture used by those who seek to promote the lie that the chosen are those whom God foresaw would be good, would be obedient, would perform good works, is one of the very Scriptures which destroys this fable by showing clearly that Christians were chosen UNTO obedience and not because of any foreseen personal obedience. The doctrine that says God has chosen people according to what He foresaw they would do is inextricably connected to the lie that salvation is by works only. God makes His people Righteous solely by the obedience of His Son the Lord Jesus Christ (see Rom. 5:19). Everything done in salvation is because of Christ the Substitute of His people, and not by what the people themselves have done.
Salvation is God’s decision which is why salvation is only by Sovereign grace, only by God. No man can influence God to be gracious unto him. Grace is determined by God, and given to whomsoever He wills to be gracious to. Grace comes because of God’s will, not because of works. Grace comes because of God’s choice, not man’s will. Salvation is not man’s choice, but God’s choice. It is not God and man’s choice, but God’s choice alone. If God did not create His chosen to be new creatures in Christ, if He did not ordain the good works they were created to perform, none could walk in them, none would be born again. “…we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and we all are the work of Thy hand” (Isa. 64:8). Here we see confirmation that a saved man is the workmanship of God, “…we are His workmanship…” (Eph. 2:10). A saved man is born of God, he is a new creature created in Christ Jesus by God, born of the Spirit of God, made alive by God, born of the Word of God—His Gospel. “Of His own will begat He us with the Word of truth…” (Jas. 1:18). “Being born again…by the Word of God….which by the Gospel is preached unto you” (1 Pet. 1:23,25). To be born again, born of God one must be borne by God, given birth to, made alive by, made a new creature in Christ, by the workmanship of God. This is why none but the new creation will see the Kingdom of God. Spiritual life can only come from God by grace. It does not come from our works, it cannot come by anything a man dead in his sins can do. “We enter the Kingdom of God through faith, but in order to enter the Kingdom, we must first be born again, or made spiritually alive.” The faith by which a man believes is that which is given to him by grace. The faith of the elect comes from God, and not from within man. Being born again is a work of God, and not something achieved by man. “If we are not FIRST born again, we CANNOT enter the Kingdom of God.” A man is elected without works, saved without works, born again without works, made spiritually alive without works, and enters the Kingdom of God without works. A saved man enters Heaven ONLY with the Righteousness of Christ which is given him by grace, in which He has trusted through the gift of faith which comes by grace alone.
Before a man is made spiritually alive by God, he has no works, after he is made alive by God he needs no works. The saved man repudiates, and repents of any and all past works of his own done in an effort to recommend himself to God, for he now knows his acceptance with God is based solely on the Righteousness of Christ imputed to him by grace (see Phil. 3:7-9). No one is saved who claims to believe in salvation by grace alone, and yet considers themselves, or others, saved before, or without exclusively believing, the Gospel of salvation by grace alone through faith alone in the Righteousness of Jesus Christ alone. No man can enter the Kingdom of God except the man who has been made alive by God according to His grace. “This same issue is certainly addressed by Jesus in John 6:44, when He said, ‘No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day’. (we should note that the one drawn by the Father to the Son is also raised up on the last day to eternal life, (see John 6:39,40). In John 6:65, Jesus said, ‘…therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto Me, except it were given unto him of My Father’.” Notice, the only way a man can come to Jesus is if the Father draws him, and not if the man does this or that first. It is grace at work, not the production of works that saves a man. Coming to Christ is something which is given to a man by God, and so cannot be something a man can do by his own will or works. A man is drawn to God by the love of God. A man is drawn to God by God undeservedly. It may appear to many that it is man who comes to God, for no one can actually see the inner workings of grace and mercy upon the soul and spirit of the chosen vessel. What humans see as a man coming to God, is in reality the result of God having come to the man first. None of Christ’s apostles came to Him before He came to them commanding them to follow Him. “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee” (Jer. 31:3). “We love Him, because He first loved us” (1Jn. 4:19). God is always first, God’s love is always first and God’s grace is always first. They are always first for they are eternal. Salvation is by God not by man.
A man’s coming to the Lord Jesus is not some free will act of his own, it is not an act of volition which originates in the sinful nature of a wretched man dead in trespasses and sins, which is perennially at enmity with God, but is that which must be given unto him by Almighty God (see Jn. 6:65). A man is made alive by God. A man is made willing by God. No man can come to the true God from his own desire for Him, for he has none, “…There is none that seeketh after God” (Rom. 3:11). A man’s willingness to come to Jesus is given to him by God. It is an act of God within the man. He must be drawn by the Father, for no man can draw the Father to himself. A man is drawn to God by the love of God. A man’s love for God can only come out of God’s love for him. A man’s love for God can only ever follow God’s love for the man, for God’s chosen love Him only because He first loved them. God saving a man is God loving first by grace. Only saved people love the only true God. A man must be made alive by God, for it is impossible that any man can come to God in order to be made alive by Him. Lazarus did not go to Jesus, but the Lord came to him and commanded him to come forth, before the presence of life was evidenced. God comes because man cannot. God saves by grace because no man can be saved based on his works. A man “…shall be willing in the day of (God’s) power” (Psa. 110:3). A man shall, and can, ONLY ever be willing in the day of God’s power, for without the power of God no man would ever seek Him (see Rom. 3:11). A man is born again “…not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but OF GOD” (Jn. 1:13), or of God’s power. A man is saved only by the will of God. THAT is where salvation comes from. Salvation comes from the will of God according to the purpose of God by the love of God delivered through the grace and mercy of God. Salvation is “NOT BY WORKS of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us…” (Titus 3:5).
God saving His people is God saving them according to that which is His. He does not save according to what men do, but according to that which comes from within God Himself. God saves His people according to His will, by His grace and mercy. How much clearer could God have made His Message? Salvation is not by works. Any works performed before or during one’s salvation is not what a person is saved by, therefore, grace is the only thing that salvation can be conditioned on. Salvation is not by man but by grace. Salvation is not by works, but by God. Salvation is by the grace of God, not the works of men. If salvation is by the grace of God then it cannot be by the works of men. It is not the obedience of men that gets them saved, but only by the obedience of Jesus Christ the Lord is a man saved. The only righteousness which grace saves in accordance with and because of, is the Righteousness of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. There is no such thing as grace saving you according to your works. God saves His people by one Man; God saves His people by that one Man’s Righteousness; God saves by the perfect obedience unto death of His glorious Son, the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Grace does not save by any other righteousness but Christ’s Righteousness alone. Otherwise, salvation would be by a man’s works, and not the grace of God imputing the Righteousness of His Son to him. Why would anyone need Christ’s Righteousness imputed to them, if by their works they could fashion a righteousness which God would save them by. “…by the obedience of One shall many be made Righteous” (Rom. 5:19), shows that it is His Righteousness not yours by which God saves you. If it is His Righteousness, then it by His grace, not your works. It is His obedience, not your obedience which makes the difference between saved and lost. Christ’s obedience is imputed to every person the Father gave to the Son, and so, Christ’s Righteousness is now their Righteousness. “…their Righteousness is of Me, saith the LORD” (Isa. 54:17). Salvation does not come after a man has done something, for salvation is only by the Righteousness of Christ, and, therefore, by, and only after, what He has done. Salvation comes by elective grace, not from an elected God. Salvation comes by the only true God Who Sovereignly elects His people based on His will to be gracious and merciful toward them. Salvation cannot come after a man has done something, for it only comes because of what Christ has done: His Righteousness. The only righteousness that saves is the Righteousness of God, therefore, salvation comes by what God has done, by grace, not by what a man believes he himself has done, by works. The obedience for salvation has already been established by the Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, what need is there for any other’s obedience to be established before one is saved? Only the dead seek a righteousness of their own. The Word of God declares: “…by the obedience of One shall many be made Righteous” (Rom. 5:19), thus the Scriptural basis for Righteousness without works is clearly established.
Just as a father precedes his son, so too, salvation by grace alone produces, and, therefore, precedes, any act of a man appointed to salvation. Good deeds do not produce salvation, therefore, they cannot precede salvation, for they are, and can only be, produced by salvation. Any works done before salvation are called ‘dead works’ in the Bible. The good works that follow a man’s salvation are all a gift from God that have nothing to do with gaining or maintaining salvation, but everything to do with the fact a man has been saved. The Biblical reality is that a free will decision on man’s part is not possible, let alone necessary, for in his natural, spiritually dead state, man can do nothing to come to the true God, let alone seek Him, or choose Him. “…no man can come unto Me…there is none that seeketh after God…Ye have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you” (Jn. 6:65; Rom. 3:11; Jn. 15:16 cf. Psa. 14:2; Rom. 8:7,8). “…man thinks himself a very wise and understanding creature, though he is born a very ignorant one: true indeed, he has not lost by sin the natural faculty of the understanding, so as to become like the horse and mule, which are without any; and it must be allowed, that natural men have some understanding of things natural, civil, and moral; though there is none that understands even these, as Adam did: but then they have no understanding of things spiritual; no spiritual knowledge of God; no true sense of themselves, their sin and misery; nor do they truly know the way of salvation by Christ; nor have they any experience of the work of the Spirit of God upon their souls; nor any experimental knowledge of the doctrines of the Gospel: no man can understand these of himself, by the mere strength of reason, and light of nature; nor can even a spiritual man fully understand them in this life.” With man, salvation is impossible, this is why if salvation is to take place it can only come by grace through faith. Both are gifts given by God. God saves His people by grace, and He grants them the faith with which to trust solely in Christ for their Righteousness. The works of a man cannot produce the Righteousness that saves, for this can only be done and has been done by the Lord Jesus Himself. The only Righteousness that saves is Christ’s Righteousness. Man is dead in sins, and no man can raise himself. He must be made alive by God, saved by grace alone. “Even when we were dead in sins, (God) hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved;) And hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:25,26). Unless it is given to a man by God, no man would come to Him, because no man could come to Him. How can a blind, lost man ever find his own way to the true and only God? No man dead in trespasses and sins even knows who the only true God is.
The concept of a man lost in his sins, dead in his sins, coming to God by what the man does is utter fantasy, for the only way a man can come is if the Father has chosen him and draws him by His loving grace. Nothing man can do, nothing a man can will and nothing a natural man can conceive of can ever draw him to the true God. Nothing ever has, and nothing ever will. Simply look at every religion and their message and you will see that they all contrast with what the Gospel of God declares. It is only by an act of God that can draw a man to God. It is God’s free will alone which saves a man. God would not have any free will to save whomsoever He willed, if man had the free will to choose God. Every Christian is “… born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but OF GOD” (Jn. 1:13). “OF HIS OWN WILL begat He us with the Word of truth…” (Jas. 1:18). “…it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but OF GOD that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:16). People say ‘whosoever will’, but how can they will when they are dead in sins! ‘Whosoever will’ means Jew or Gentile. It does not even remotely suggest that salvation is conditioned on a man’s choice. It is God Who makes the difference between saved and lost by His will. Salvation is of God Who shows mercy, not of man performing works! So we can see by this how God’s will and the will of man, by nature, are contrasted, they stand in eternal opposition. One is in accord with grace, the other with works. This is why unless God Causes a man to come to Him, unless God makes a man willing to come to Him, no man could ever come to Him (see Psa. 65:4 & 110:3). Hopeless people cannot be saved by what they do, otherwise they would not be hopeless, they would not require mercy, or a salvation which is based on Another’s obedience. Most people think that salvation can be achieved by a man’s good works, a man dong his best, etc., but what such people fail to realise is the fact that salvation does not only require a perfect Righteousness, but also a solution to a person’s multitude of sins and the fact that they are sinners. Salvation comes not because of character or conduct. Salvation does not come from the ones who need to be saved. Rescue does not emanate from what the person who needs rescuing does, but from the rescuer. Salvation comes not because of family lineage, or one’s status in society, nor from personal devotion, but only by the will of God to be merciful. Salvation is not by merit but only by mercy. In other words, salvation is of God and comes as a direct result of His mercy, and not a man’s decision. "(Salvation) is not to be ascribed to the most generous desire, nor to the most industrious endeavor of man, but only and purely to the free grace and mercy of God."
Salvation is not something which is determined by the prerequisite of a man’s ‘decision’, seeing that God has chosen those whom He calls His own from before the foundation of the world, and predestinated them according to His purpose, “…Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will” (Eph. 1:11). The word counsel here, means “Will, purpose, intention as the result of reflection”. To say that salvation waits upon a decision of man’s to choose God is a blasphemy against the fact that God by His will according to His purpose has already done the choosing, even before He made the world. “…He hath chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world…” (Eph. 1:4). The doctrine of a man’s choosing God belies an ignorance of the fact that God has already done the choosing. It denies God’s factual free will and replaces it with man’s fictional ‘free will’. Pure Satanism. God works all things “according to the decision [or plan]of His will”. Base any part of salvation on man, cause any part of salvation to be dependent upon what a man does, or that it must be preceded by some act of his will and resultant obedience, including faith, and you have a gospel of works, and not grace. If there is anything a man must do before he can be saved, including his believing, then salvation cannot possibly be by grace, for such a phantom salvation is clearly conditioned on a work of man’s. If salvation is by grace then all of salvation must be all of grace. Such was Paul the apostle’s reasoning in his Letter to the Christians at Rome. If it is by grace then it is not by any works at all. If salvation is by grace, then it cannot be conditioned on man. If salvation is by works then it is not by grace at all (see Rom. 11:6). If salvation is by God then it is not at all by man, if it is by man, then it is not at all by God. It is one or the other, it cannot be by both. If God was obliged to save any based on their obedience, then salvation would not be by a gracious act of God, but a wage earned by man. A wage is given after a person has worked. A gift is given without any work being done. IF SALVATION IS BY GOD THEN IT IS BY WHAT GOD HAS DONE, AND NOT BY THAT WHICH HE ALLEGEDLY ENABLES A MAN TO DO. The elect of God are not enabled by grace to be saved, but are appointed by grace unto salvation. The elect are ordained by the will of God to be saved by grace. Salvation is not at all by works because it is all by grace. Salvation is not conditioned on a man’s decision to do, but solely upon the will of God and what He has done.
Man’s insipid, hopeless condition prevents him from even knowing the true God, let alone desiring the true God, so how in the world could salvation ever be conditioned on what a man does? BEFORE SALVATION, NO MAN BY NATURE WANTS THE ONLY TRUE GOD! NO MAN PRIOR TO SALVATION WANTS TO BE SAVED THE TRUE GOD’S WAY. No man, by nature, wants salvation by grace alone. No man, by nature, seeks God because all men are dead to God, dead in their sins. Again, the need for grace, mercy and a Saviour is the loudest, clearest evidence of all which shows that there is nothing a man can do to either gain or maintain salvation. Salvation has to be, and is, ALL of GOD by GRACE ALONE. All the glory for salvation belongs solely to God, therefore, all of salvation must be all of God. This is what the Word of God calls grace, or being saved by grace. People have gone on about grace, that they were saved by grace, and praise God for His grace, etc., never realising that what they believe is only Satan’s imitation of grace, and not God’s grace at all. True grace has no attachments, it requires no supplemental acts of man to help it achieve its goal. GRACE DOES NOT NEED YOU, IT SAVES YOU. Just as there are false gods and false gospels, so too, there is also false grace which has never saved, but only deceived. When it comes to doctrine, do not simply look at the label, but inspect the contents. Do not allow yourselves to be fooled, for whatever reason, by a man who uses the word grace, but always find out what he means by grace. If he attaches any works to grace, then it is not the grace of God he is teaching you. Salvation is a gift. Grace is a gift, and faith—that by which a man believes—is also a free gift—something which a man cannot do anything to earn. The Faith that saves is a gift, it can neither be something which can be earned by a man, nor that which emanates from a man. Saving faith does not come from within man, but only as a gift given by God to a chosen man, therefore, salvation does not await a man’s decision to believe, for the believing is a gift which comes from God by grace, and is given to one who is wholly incapacitated by sin to ‘decide to believe’. The decision for one to be saved is made by God. Salvation is, therefore, by the gifts of grace and faith. The ones who come to Jesus are they whom the Father has given to the Son, “All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me…” (Jn. 6:37). As long as a man who has known nothing but darkness sits in darkness, he cannot know what is light, he cannot imagine what light is. Paul the apostle did not choose to see the light on that road to Damascus, but was chosen by God to see the light. Paul did not choose to see, but was chosen to see, he was given eyes to see. Salvation is not about choosing to see, but about God choosing to reveal His glorious Light to you. The spiritually dead are spiritually blind. The Light of the glorious Gospel of God exposes the lies which deceive all men by nature, and fills His chosen with the Light of Life.
A man’s salvation is decided on by God, not by the ones He has chosen to save. Salvation is only by grace, and, therefore, only by God. There is no other reason for God to save a person apart from His will. Grace comes from the will of God, it does not come because of a decision of man’s. “For He saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom. 9:15,16 cf. Ex.33:19). If salvation is dependent in any way on what a man does, then it can no longer be by grace. Free favour does not come after anything else is done first. A man is saved by grace because he cannot be saved by works. A man cannot be saved by works because he can only be saved by grace. Salvation is either by God, or by man. It cannot be by a combination of God and man, therefore, by grace and works. Grace is God saying, ‘You cannot do’. Any work of man is stubbornly, stupidly, saying, ‘Yes, I can do’. That is what makes works for salvation such a blasphemous thing, such a horrid thing, for it is man shaking his fist at God, and echoing Satan’s own words, “ye shall not surely die”, with the equally blasphemous, ‘I am surely not dead’. Salvation by grace is God saying, ‘You can only be saved by Me, for you are dead in your sins, you do not seek Me, for you do not even know Me. You are so dead in your sins that there is nothing you can will or work that can possibly save you. Only through My will, and only through My Work can a man be saved’. Grace is God saying, ‘There is nothing you can do which can save you’. “Grace is free for God’s chosen, but it was of the utmost expense to God. What God’s chosen could never have afforded to buy came to them completely free because Christ paid a debt He did not owe for a debt no one could ever pay.” Salvation is not about a man becoming a better person, but of God making a man a new creature in Christ! A saved man is a new creature, a new creation made so by grace. There is no such thing as a ‘better sinner’, in God’s eyes. The concept of a ‘better sinner’ is as real as a leopard gradually being able to remove his spots, or an Ethiopian changing his skin color (see Jer. 13:23). If salvation is by grace then it is solely dependent on grace, it is ONLY by grace and, therefore, requires nothing to be added to it, nothing to be done by anyone else than God. Those who insist that a man's works are necessary to salvation, that the obedience of Christ alone is somehow deficient—lacks the necessary power to save—that being made a new creature in Christ is not enough, and that grace alone is insufficient to save anyone without the augmentation of a man's works, i.e., his free will decision and moral rectitude in maintaining his 'salvation', do not have grace at all, they do not have Christ at all. What they do have is a monstrous hybrid of distorted grace and works: a gospel filled with doctrines of devils, whose god cannot save. Anytime you add a work of man's to the grace of God you automatically cancel out grace. This is why there can never be a coalition, ‘an alliance for combined action’, between grace and works for the one shuts down the other. Like oil and water, grace and works simply will not mix because they are not attracted to each other.
As salvation is by grace alone, any attempt to add what a man has done to grace immediately changes the means to salvation from the grace of God to the feeble, unacceptable, works of man. The addition of works immediately dissipates grace. Like oil and water, grace and works simply will not mix because they are not attracted to each other. They are mutually repulsive. Grace is attracted only to grace, and works to works. Salvation is attracted, it is drawn to a man, only through the will and grace of God. The damned are only attracted to works, or a grotesque combination of works and grace, as a means to salvation. The reason why grace and works are immiscible, why they will not mix together, is because the force of attraction between the 'molecules', if you will, of grace, and between the 'molecules' of a man's works is greater than the force of attraction between the two elements, which is zero. In other words grace sticks to itself and works stick to themselves and, as with east and west, never the twain shall/can meet. Salvation is either by grace or by works, therefore, salvation can never be a collaborative effort between God and man. If salvation is by works then it cannot be through faith in Christ’s Work. Salvation is not by amalgamation, but solely by imputation. The merging of God’s grace and a man’s works will not produce salvation. Salvation is produced by the will and love of God, and only comes to His chosen by grace alone. It is the One Who saves, not the one who is saved, that is responsible for all of salvation. Salvation is by the obedience of One, not two. Salvation is exclusively by the Righteousness of One, and not two. Salvation is exclusively by the Righteousness of Christ only, for no other righteousness can save. Salvation only by grace is salvation only by Christ. Salvation is either all of God, or all of man. It is, and can never be, a case of grace and works, never a case of God and man. The apostle Paul states: “…if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace…” (Rom. 11:6). “…there are but two possible sources of salvation—men's works, and God's grace; and that these are so essentially distinct and opposite, that salvation cannot be of any combination or mixture of both, but must be wholly either of the one or of the other. The best commentary on Romans 11:6 is the argument of chapters 3 and 4. Nothing could be clearer than Paul’s anxiety to give an absolute denial to the whole idea of antecedent human merit as a factor among the causes of salvation. Grace, to be grace, must be entirely uncaused by anything of meritorious claim in us.” One of the principle reasons why grace and works cannot be joined is the fact that any claim to salvation by what a person has done is immediately negated by grace which says salvation is undeserved. What cannot be obtained by works, can only be obtained by grace, and if only by grace then not by works at all. “The first part of Romans 11:6 excludes works, the second establishes grace (comp. Rom. 11:5).” You cannot arrive at two more opposite things, two more opposing forces, than grace and works: Grace says salvation can only be free and undeserved, while works declare salvation can only be earned. Salvation is by election according to grace alone, and if by grace alone then not by any works at all. If election and salvation are by grace, then they cannot be by works at all, they cannot be by man at all. This aligns perfectly with God telling Adam he would surely die in the day he ate of the fruit. The only people who can be made alive are the ones who were dead. Salvation being by grace alone is inextricably connected to the spiritual death of mankind. No works can be done, therefore, salvation can only be by grace alone.