John the Baptist, bearing witness to Jesus Christ, declared that ‘of his fullness have all we received, and grace for grace’, or grace in order to receive grace. It is of God’s grace that the sinner is made aware of his need of the Saviour and again. It is of God’s grace that he is enabled to receive Christ as his Saviour. It is not by obedience to the law that any will be saved from sin but by the free grace of God. Salvation is all of grace. The law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ (Gal. 3:24) and that schoolmaster was sent by our heavenly Father in order to apply the rod to our conscience, showing us our need. It was an act of His grace, for He did so out of His free unmerited favour. The hymn writer John Newton described his own call by grace, when he wrote:

T was grace that taught my heart to fear,
And grace my fears relieved;
How precious did that grace appear
The hour I first believed!

Behind this simple verse of Newton’s lies a wealth of Biblical truth and sound theology that is sadly absent from some churches today. For example, as in the first line our Lord Himself said, ‘It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me’ (Jn. 6:45). If Newton had been rendering this first line in prose, rather than in verse, he would have written something like the following: ‘It was God, by His free unmerited favour to me the poor sinner, that taught me that I was deserving His eternal wrath and indignation, and then He revealed His Son to me in all His redeeming love’. In another of his hymns he gives us some idea of what he had experienced of that self-knowledge that is the work of the Spirit:

O Lord, how vile am I,
Unholy and unclean!
How can I dare to venture nigh
With such a load of sin?

‘How can I dare to venture nigh with such a load of sin?’ said Newton, but the Lord did not leave him thus mourning his sin; for he tells us that the same grace that taught him to fear also relieved him of his fear: ‘And grace my fears relieved’. God, by His free unmerited favour to him granted him faith in order that he might put his trust in Jesus Christ. Such was God’s teaching of Newton that he had confidence in God’s grace. We read in another of his hymns:

T was grace that call’d our souls at first;
By grace thus far we’re come;
And grace will help us through the worst,
And lead us safely home.

If there was one man in the whole world who knew about the grace of God in salvation it was John Newton. In another of his hymns he wrote the following verse:

Yes; though of sinners I’m the worst,
I cannot doubt thy will;
For if thou hadst not loved me first
I had thee hated still.

Sadly many today think with W. E. Henley (1849-1903):

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Men forget who they are; they are not the master of their fate, nor are they the captain of their soul. Worse still they do not know who Jesus Christ is.

Matthew states that an angel of the Lord appeared unto Joseph in a dream and told him that Mary should bear a son, and that he should be called Jesus (Saviour), for He would save his people from their sins. Now, after some two thousand years there are a great number of people who do not know who Jesus is, nor indeed who it is that are referred to in the Scriptures as ‘His people’. Those who remain ignorant to this, sad to say, are not confined to the world but are to be found within the visible church.

Who are His people?⤒🔗

But who are His people and who was it that He came to save from their sins? John writes: ‘He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not’ (Jn. 1:10-11). Here again we see the fulfilment of the prophecy of Isaiah: ‘He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not’ (Is. 53:3). Both the world and the Jews rejected Him. Nevertheless we are told, ‘But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name’ (Jn. 1:12).Why did they not all receive Him?

To answer this question we must turn to Romans 8:28-30. If we are to begin to understand what Paul is teaching in these verses we must first realise that God foresees, purposes, and does all things according to His immutable, eternal and infallible will. All things must indeed work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose (v 28), since He purposes, and does all things according to His immutable will. It also follows that those that God did foreknow and predestinate were not chosen because God foresaw that they would, by their own free will, receive Jesus Christ; for God foreknows nothing by contingency, but He purposes, and does all things according to His immutable will. But what did God purpose in those that He foreknew? Paul tells us that they were predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Thus, since Christ is the brightness of God’s glory, and the express image of His person, then, by this, those whom God has predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son will be restored to the image of God from which they fell in Adam. The question that some may ask is, ‘Can any of those who have been predestinated fail to be glorified?’ The short answer is a definite No! The observant reader will note that this passage is couched in the past tense because it is as though it has already happened.

In Romans 9:18 the Apostle reminds us that God has ‘Mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth’. Those persons to whom the Sovereign God has shown mercy, are born again of the Spirit of God and are the recipients of the fullness of His grace. When God in His Sovereign mercy drew them by the cords of His love to Christ, most likely at the time they were unaware of the hand of God, for it was like the bringing of the blind by a way that they knew not. Afterward they could say with Jacob: ‘Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not’.

They were recipients of His grace when His Spirit convicted them of sin and of judgment to come, and they were brought to see that their only hiding place from the righteous wrath of God was in Jesus Christ. The law was applied by the Holy Spirit to convict them of their sin (Gal. 3:24). John the Baptist said that the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. This surely was to remind his hearers that the law, in all its holiness and perfection, can only condemn the sinner. Paul wrote, ‘There is none righteous, no not one: there is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God’ (Rom. 3:10-11). It is a regenerate soul that understands and seeks after God, hence the words of the Psalmist: ‘Give me understanding, and I shall keep thy law; yea, I shall observe it with my whole heart’. It is necessary that God in His grace would give the understanding that is required in order that we might know to seek after God, and then that God in His free unmerited favour would follow with the revelation of His mercy toward us in Christ Jesus. Christ’s righteousness must be imputed to us; for that is the only righteousness that will make us free from the law and all its eternal consequences. This is a great blessing: ‘Blessed is the man unto whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile’ (Ps. 32:2). In the days of our blindness we were oblivious to those facts that are so important, that in our sin we earn the wages of death, but if we are in Christ we are the recipients of the gift of eternal life (Rom. 6:23).

Although the law that was given through Moses cannot justify the sinner, yet it has the role of bringing the sinner to Christ. It must not be ignored, otherwise sinners remain ignorant of their true state by nature, and oblivious to their inability to conform to the perfect righteousness which God requires of us in the law. The Jews thought they were keeping the law and did not realise that the law accused them of sin and despite all their righteousness they could not meet its standard. Jesus told them, ‘Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings how shall ye believe my words?’ (Jn. 5:45-47).

Perhaps the clearest statement on the actual place of the law is found in Luke 16:31: ‘If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead’. If the sinner does not know his true state by nature there is very little else that will persuade him of his need of the Saviour, and how is he to know his true state by nature if he does not believe Moses? If Sinai with all its terror proves ineffectual in persuading him, it is hardly likely that miracles, however wonderful, will persuade him to flee from the wrath to come. There hangs over every man that great threat of damnation found in the words of our Lord Jesus Christ: ‘Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned’ (Mk. 16:15-16).

Faith←⤒🔗

This belief referred to is far more profound than the mere opinion that something is true. John the Baptist reminded his hearers that no man has seen God at any time, but the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him (Jn. 1:18). Fallen man tends to believe only what he can see; how then can he be saved? We are told in the Epistle to the Hebrews just how necessary faith is: ‘Without faith it is impossible to please him (God): for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him’ (Heb. 11:6). Here is the first great barrier with regard to becoming a Christian. How do I believe that God really is, and that He is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him? The simple answer is that in such a case to believe is impossible, but what is impossible with man is possible with God. The gift of faith is not given to all, hence Paul remarked that not all have obeyed the Gospel. Obviously without faith they will not obey the Gospel and he pointed out that Isaiah prophesied that it would be so (Is. 53:1). He writes: ‘So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God’ (Rom. 10:17). Just as the heavens and the earth were created by the word of God, so the hearing that begets faith is created in the soul of man by the same word of God. The word that begets faith is more than that of the letter, which can only kill, but is by the Spirit who makes alive. Paul states: ‘For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us’ (2 Cor. 4:6-7) This was a principle that Paul loved to draw from the works of God: ‘But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things that are mighty’ 1 Cor. 1:27), and the reason is this: ‘That no flesh should glory in his presence’.

Without the power of God working faith in the soul of man not a single soul would be saved. The fall has so twisted and corrupted man’s nature that he will not repent. This is clearly seen in the words of our Lord to the Jews: ‘And ye will not come to me, that ye might have life’ (Jn. 5:40). A sinner is never saved by an act of his own will; he is saved by grace through faith, and both grace and faith are the gift of God. As Stephen told the council: ‘Ye stiffnecked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did so do ye’ (Acts 7:51).What we are dealing with here is the apostolic witness of Christ and His Apostles, which is resisted and rejected by the world.

Those who saw Christ in the flesh and believed on Him saw God: ‘He that hath seen me hath seen the Father’ (Jn. 14:9). Speaking to Philip who had requested that Jesus show them the Father, Jesus said: ‘Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father; and how sayest thou then, Shew us the Father? Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me?’ (Jn. 14:8-10).

Purpose in sending Christ←⤒🔗

We return to the topic that we began with: What was God’s purpose in sending His Son that we might receive of His fullness grace for grace? God created man in His own image. But man disobeyed God and fell into sin, and by it marred the image in which he was created. But God, according to His foreknowledge, and before the foundation of the world chose in Christ some whom He predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son that He might be their elder brother.

John writes generally to Christians and says: ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is’ (1 Jn. 3:2). Thus we see that those who are Christ’s will be restored to the image of God. And what obligation does this impose on those of us who are His? John says: ‘And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure’ (1 Jn. 3:3).

And what obligation does this impose on the unconverted? The unconverted are yet without hope, ‘But now (God) commandeth all men everywhere to repent: because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man (Jesus Christ) whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead’ (Acts 17:30-31). The warning to such as are at the present time unconverted is to flee from the wrath to come; the resurrection of Christ leaves them no room for excuse. Responsibility does not presuppose ability, as indeed some are tempted wrongly to think. God must save, and God alone.