Grace within a dispensation was one thing, a dispensation characterized solely by grace is something else altogether. Grace is the foundation on which Paul’s entire ministry was built, and grace covers all the bases for the believer’s life. There is a glory that belongs to God’s grace, and it is to be praised on the bases on what God’s grace has accomplished.
Paul had been given special divine authority with the understanding that he is our apostle, and that authority carried with it the details of what God expects people to believe today, concerning the salvation Jesus Christ purchased for them with his sacrifice.
Therefore, God in his infinite wisdom devised a plan whereby he could take the very faith belonging to his son, along with its resultant faithfulness, and credit that faith and faithfulness to the account of those who believe. It is Christ’s faith that is freely credited to the account of the one who believes the good news message given to the apostle Paul to proclaim to us in this age of grace.
Paul wants us to know how a person is saved. He wants us to understand the basis by which God provides eternal security, not only has provided the gift of salvation; but provides eternal security to all those who place their faith in what the sacrifice of his son accomplished. It is our faith in the accomplishment of Jesus Christ’s faithful sacrifice that is the means whereby God acknowledges that we have accepted the gift his son purchased.
When Paul refers to us as the called, he is referring not just to the fact that God is extending a call to us, an invitation or summons. Paul’s also referring to the fact that God’s calling us to participate in that to which we have been called, the Body of Christ. The Body of Christ is an expression denoting the point when God began to judicially join believers to his son, the Body of Christ is not about program, but about judicial identity.
God forgave us, not because he had to, but because it was his desire too. God accomplished through Christ what we could never do on our own. God did not wait for us to do the first step. God had a choice, Jesus Christ had a choice, and they chose to do it. Christ believed that his sacrifice would settle the sin issue once and for all, and that God would raise him from among the dead.
What an ingenious salvation plan, to take someone else that is righteous and join us to that person. Sin causes a debt to God so large that it can never be paid by ourselves, but the person who knows what Jesus Christ really accomplished, exist in a completely new relationship with God. Justification is a legal act, wherein God deems the sinner righteous on the basis of Christ’s righteousness.
Justification is not a process, but is a one-time act, complete and definitive. God could only declare us to be right on the bases of who and what he is, not on the bases of who and what we would be apart from him. God had to devise a way to see us that way, and the way he devised to do that was by joining us to, hiding us in our perfectly righteous savior, thus freely crediting to our account Christ righteousness.
The realization that God’s love accomplished some fantastic things on our behalf. God is anxiously awaiting his own inheritance, which happens to be us, God considers believers to be his own inheritance, he purchased us with the blood of his son, we are God’s valuable inheritance. We find the amazing and comforting truth that God’s love for those who are joined to his son, is the same unalterable and unending love God has for his son.
That is how closely connected we are to Christ, nothing will ever be able to diminish God’s loving attitude towards those who are joined to his son. We are called “saints” today, “set apart ones,” that is the word God uses for those who have placed their faith in the all-sufficiency of the sin-resolving sacrifice of his son, Jesus Christ. We are the saints of a brand new program, to be identified in Christ makes a person a saint, because we have the very righteousness of God himself freely attributed to our account.
Grace is that which God does for the human race through his son, which the human race can not earn, does not deserve and will never merit. Grace is God’s work for people, and encompasses everything we receive from God, he is free to do now for ungodly people who take him at his word. We must understand that God has predetermined to glorify us. In fact, he has predestined us to that glorification, we are objects of God’s purpose, because God had a purpose in mind where grace age believers are concerned, and he predetermined through his own decree that his purpose would stand, it will come to pass no matter what.
The inevitable result of God’s grace to the believer is true peace, because every believer is without blame before him in love. God sees us in Christ, and Christ was blameless. The only reason God could say through Paul, “Grace and Peace be unto you” is because God’s son fully paid the price. Justification by grace through faith, what a marvelous thing God has done, and who would have thought of a salvation in the sense that God’s plan would call for him to join a person to his son, therefore, what belongs to the son would now belong to believing people who have been joined to the son.
