“God has imprisoned all in disobedience, so that He may have mercy on all” (Romans 11:32). “He Himself (Christ) is the propitiation for our sins, and not only for ours, but also for those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2). God, by His mercy, has made the forgiveness of sins available to the whole world through Christ’s death and resurrection. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16).

While we were still sinners, dead in our sins, Christ died, the righteous for the unrighteous. This was the rich display of God’s love and mercy to all who were imprisoned in disobedience. This was God’s compassion upon those who had no merit and were only deserving of death. This is God’s love and mercy that He extended to the whole world.

However, God only bestows this forgiveness that Christ died for on those who, by exercising their faith to believe in Christ, repent and turn back to Him. By exercising their faith to believe in Jesus, these believers actually receive the forgiveness of sins for which Christ died.

Jesus tells us, “Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God” (John 3:18, HCSB). Only those that believe and obey are blessed with actually having their sins forgiven. They are no longer condemned.

Those who do not believe are already condemned and will remain condemned unless they believe in the name of Jesus. Their sins will not be forgiven unless they receive God’s free gift of mercy by believing and repenting.

Now that we have obeyed the good news, the gospel of the kingdom, we begin to receive of the many blessings that God has prepared for us in Christ. Being reconciled to God, justified by the blood of Christ, having our sins forgiven by His love and mercy, God begins to pour out His grace richly upon those that have obeyed the gospel and joined works of obedience to their faith. It is by this grace that we are now being saved. This grace is God’s gift freely given to all who obey Him by exercising their portion of faith to believe in Jesus, the One He sent.

This is the “much more” that Paul speaks of in Romans 5:8-10. “God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through Him. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.” (NASB).

Paul declares, “For by grace you are being saved through faith which is not your own but instead is a gift from God” (Ephesians 2:8, TFLV). We have been saved by His mercy, having been, by it, reconciled to God through the blood of Christ. We are now in the process of being saved by Christ’s life within us. We are now being saved by grace.

This grace is what God is using to save us now in this new and ongoing phase of the salvation process. It is by God’s grace that we are being brought on to maturity in Christ and are being purified, sanctified, and enabled to live a godly life in the midst of this corrupt sinful world. We are, right now, in this life, enabled by the leading and empowering of the Holy Spirit to live as Jesus lived, to walk as Jesus walked, fully pleasing to the Father.

This, now, is where we need to exercise the portion of faith that God has given to each of us. We believed God for our initial salvation of being restored to fellowship with God by the blood of Jesus. We now need to exercise our faith to continue to believe God. We must believe that the life of Christ indwelling us as the Holy Spirit in our spirit, is able to, not only liberate us from the bondage to sin, but to lead us to walk in continual obedience, abiding in Christ, doing the will of the Father, and not fulfilling the lust of the flesh.

This indwelling Holy Spirit will teach us all that is ours in Christ. He will cause us to know the hope of glory that is ours. “Christ in you, the hope of glory” (Colossians 1:27). As we look to Jesus, He will cause us to know the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings that we might attain unto the first, or best, resurrection (Revelation 20:5-6).

This is God’s grace, the gift of His Holy Spirit given to live within every born-again believer. This power of God, working mightily within us to accomplish His will, produces within us a deep lasting sense of love, joy, and peace.

Once anyone responds to God’s compassion, His free offer of love and mercy, by obeying God and believing in the one He sent, God immediately pours out His grace upon them. He cleanses them from their sins. He sets them free from the condemnation of slavery to sin and fills the cleansed vessel with His Holy Spirit. This power of God works in the believer’s life filling them with unexplainable joy, restoring them to fellowship with God by empowering them to hear God and obey God.

They are baptized by the Holy Spirit into Christ and thereby baptized into the death of Christ. They are buried together with Him by baptism into His death.

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? May it never be! We who died to sin, how could we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him through baptism into death, that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. 

“For if we have become united with him in the likeness of his death, we will also be part of his resurrection; knowing this, that our old man was crucified with him, that the body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be in bondage to sin. . . . Thus consider yourselves also to be dead to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6: 1-6, 11).

God shows His favor, His grace, to the righteous, to those that love Him, to those that obey Him, to those that humble themselves before Him. God’s favor is demonstrated to them by Him giving them His power, the power of the resurrection, in the person of Christ, as the Holy Spirit, to dwell with in their spirit.

This indwelling Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, enters into the believer’s spirit and makes it alive, filling the believer with an indescribable deep, lasting inner joy. This blessing bestowed by God on those who, by believing, have found favor in His sight, and the resulting joy produced in the believer’s heart is referred to in the scriptures as grace.

It is this grace that works in the believer’s heart to produce the experience referred to in Romans 5 as the “much more” than being reconciled to God. This “much more” is the process that we begin to experience after we are saved, after we are born again. This is the life of Christ working mightily within us through the indwelling Holy Spirit to transform us and conform us to the image of Christ (Ephesians 3:16-21).

This is the beginning of the process referred to in scripture as the salvation of our soul. “You love Him (Jesus), though you have not seen Him. And though not seeing Him now, you believe in Him and rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:8-9). This is the goal of our faith!

When the entire context of scripture is considered with an open and honest heart, humbling ourselves by laying aside all preconceptions and the doctrines of man, it becomes obvious that the one thing that is never meant by the word ‘grace’ is ‘unmerited favor.’

Let’s try demonstrating this by substituting unmerited favor for grace in a few verses. Genesis 6:8-9 says, “But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord . . . Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” This passage could be rephrased as “But Noah found unmerited favor in the eyes of the Lord . . . Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.” This does not make sense. Unmerited does not fit with righteous, blameless, and walking with God.

Luke 2:40 says, “The child (Jesus) was growing, and was becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him.” This verse could be rephrased as “The child (Jesus) was growing, and was becoming strong in spirit, being filled with wisdom, and the unmerited favor of God was upon him.” It is hard to believe that Jesus, The Son in whom God was well pleased did not merit God’s favor. Truly, God’s favor bestowed on Jesus was merited. God was well pleased with His Son.

Galatians 5:4 says, “You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from grace.” This verse could be rephrased as, “You are alienated from Christ, you who desire to be justified by the law. You have fallen away from unmerited favor.”

If God’s favor is unmerited, how is it possible to fall from it? You fall from God’s favor when you do something that is displeasing to Him.

Grace is never unmerited favor. God’s unmerited compassion toward a sinful world is His mercy sent to us in the person of Jesus Christ. Grace is God’s merited favor made freely available to those who, by exercising their faith, believe in Jesus.

The teaching that grace is unmerited favor leads professing Christians to believe that it does not matter how they live. It turns the grace of God into promiscuity, and a license for immorality. This is exactly what is happening in many churches today.

Jude testified to this very fact. “For some men, who were designated for this judgment long ago, have come in by stealth; they are ungodly, turning the grace of our God into promiscuity and denying Jesus Christ, our only Master and Lord” (Jude 4, HCSB).

Some that have embraced the idea that grace is unmerited favor believe that they received eternal life at the time they first believed. However, scripture records Jesus saying, “Most certainly I tell you, there is no one who has left house, or wife, or brothers, or parents, or children, for God’s Kingdom’s sake, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the world to come, eternal life” (Luke 18:29-30). If they remain faithful, they will receive eternal life in the next age, the world to come.

Paul writes, “Laying up in store for themselves a good foundation against the time to come, that they may lay hold on eternal life” (1 Timothy 6:19). Why would we need to lay hold of something that we have already received?

Paul continues, “He poured out this Spirit on us abundantly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that having been justified by His grace, we may become heirs with the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:6-7). Why would we be hoping for something that we already have received?

Again Paul explains, “Just as sin reigned in death, so also grace will reign through righteousness, resulting in eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Romans 5:21). How can grace reigning through righteousness result in eternal life if we have already received that eternal life?

Many also believe that all their sins, past, present, and future are forgiven at the moment they believe. Therefore, they believe that they, as those that are in Christ, will never experience condemnation. God will never convict them for any sin that might be in their lives. Therefore, they believe they will never experience guilt for sin.

The apostle John exposes these lies, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous, so that He will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:8-10). If all our sins, past, present, and future have been forgiven, why does John, writing to believers, tell us that we need to confess our sins so that He will forgive us our sins?

Unfortunately for these people, the scriptures do not say all our sins, past, present and future are forgiven when we first believe. In fact, we are told that it is our sins committed previous to believing that are forgiven. “The person who lacks these things is blind and shortsighted, and has forgotten the cleansing from his past sins” (2 Peter 1:9, HCSB).

If they ever experience any guilt or condemnation for sin, they might say, “It must be from the enemy, the accuser of the brethren,” and therefore reject it as an attack from Satan. Some even claim that they never need to repent for any sin after being saved. If, in fact, all their sins, past, present, and future have been taken away and forgiven by the blood of Christ that was shed for them, it would be a demonstration of unbelief to repent of any sins ever again.

However, in chapters two and three of the book of Revelation, Jesus sends letters to seven churches. In five of the letters to these believers, He commands them to repent. If all of their sins, past, present, and future have already been forgiven and they never again need to repent, why would Jesus command them to repent?

Many people that believe that grace is God’s unmerited favor are not overly troubled by sin in their lives. In fact, they justify their sinful lifestyles by the teaching that Paul’s account in Romans 7:13-24 is his testimony of his life as a born-again Christian. Paul states in this account that he is unspiritual, a slave to sin, that he has no ability to do the good that he desires to do, and that he practices the evil that he does not want to do.

Therefore, those that follow this teaching of grace will say, “See I am not so bad. Paul’s Christian life was a continual struggle with sin. I myself sin all the time. I am continually sinning. This is the expected life for a Christian living in this sinful world.”

As we have seen in a previous chapter, Paul was writing in Romans chapter seven about the merely natural man, the unspiritual man, who had agreed with the law of God that it was good and set out to do that good. He found that he was enslaved to sin. He found that he had no ability to do the good that he desired to do. Ultimately, he realized that rather than doing the good that he wanted to do, he ended up practicing the evil that he did not want to do.

Those that profess to be Christians, but have never been born again, being unspiritual, merely natural men, find themselves in exactly this same predicament that Paul describes in Romans chapter seven. It is not until they realize the hopelessness of their situation and cry out in desperation to God for deliverance that they can be liberated by the power of God in the Spirit of Christ coming into their spirit and making it alive.

Because they do not understand the scriptures or the power of God, those that believe grace is unmerited favor are badly deceived. They have totally missed the fundamental essence of the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ. They do not realize that Jesus died to destroy the power of the devil. Jesus died and was raised up by the power of God to set us free from bondage to sin and empower us to live holy lives in all humility and obedience now, in the midst of this sinful world.

By baptism into Christ’s death through the Holy Spirit, we died with Christ and have been released from bondage to sin. Sin no longer has dominion over us. By the power of the resurrection, we have been raised up with Christ to walk in newness of life. It is the gift of God, the indwelling Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified Christ that now empowers us to live holy lives, lives pleasing to God in all obedience.

God is no fool. He gives His grace to those that are pleasing in His sight. He gives His grace to those that believe Him, to those that by faith obey Him. He rewards the righteous, the faithful that endure to the end. We are told in Acts 5:32, “We are witnesses of these things; and so is the Holy Spirit, whom God has given to those who obey Him.”

What greater favor can God bestow on believers than to give them His Holy Spirit? Notice, however, that God gives His Holy Spirit to those that have merited it by obeying Him. What an incredible blessing for simply obeying Him by repenting and turning from darkness to light, from Satan to God!

He punishes the unrighteous, the disobedient, the rebellious, those that practice sin. God is righteous and His ways are just. “God is no respecter of persons” (Acts 10:34, KJV). He rewards each person with what their lives merit, with what they deserve based on what they have done in the body, whether good or bad.

Paul writes to the believers in Corinth warning them to be careful about how they live. “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10, NIV).

A person’s belief in God is demonstrated by his obedience to God. John reveals this truth, “We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did” (1 John 2:3-6).

Mercy is God’s unmerited compassion offered freely to the whole world. Grace is God’s favor to those that merit it; to those that believe Him, to those that obey Him, to those with whom He is pleased.

Words have meaning. To understand scripture, we must understand the meaning of the words used in scripture according to what the author, directed by the Holy Spirit, intended them to mean. We must not assign some other meaning to words to support some doctrine of men that we may have been taught and embraced.

We must turn away from any teaching that the scriptures have demonstrated to be false. If we repent, change our mind about and turn away from these false teachings, and return to the truth of scripture, purifying ourselves, we will become useful vessels for our Master. Paul assures us, “So if anyone purifies himself from these things (false teachings), he will be a special instrument, set apart, useful to the Master, prepared for every good work (2 Timothy 2:21, HCSB).

God expects His people to live holy lives. He expects this because He has given us His Holy Spirit to enable us to do this. Peter reveals this glorious truth saying, “His divine power has given us everything required for life and godliness through the knowledge of Him who called us by His own glory and goodness. By these He has given us very great and precious promises, so that through them you may share in the divine nature, escaping the corruption that is in the world because of evil desires” (2 Peter 1:3-4, HCSB). 

It is not by our power, but it is by the power of God within us. When we walk by the Spirit, we are empowered to live holy lives. “Walk by the Spirit, and you won’t fulfill the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).

We must continue to believe God. We must continue to believe that He is able to do everything He has promised. We must believe that the power He is causing to work mightily within us as believers is fully able to empower us to live holy lives in full obedience to Him.

All God is asking from us is to live by faith, remaining in Christ, trusting in His mighty power to work according to His great strength to transform us and conform us to His image, doing His will through us as we endure to the end, fixing our eyes on Jesus. As we do this, His grace will fill us with a deep, abiding joy, and that joy will be our strength. It will enable us to remain steadfast to the end!

Are you walking by faith? Are you believing God is able to empower you to live a holy life in the midst of this crooked and perverse world? Are you finding God’s grace to be sufficient for your every need, or are you still struggling with sin in your life?

Have you experienced the liberation from the power of sin that God’s grace provides, or are you still a slave to sin? If you are still in bondage to sin, perhaps you should test yourself to see if you are truly in the faith.

Paul commands professing Christians to test themselves to see if they are truly in the faith. “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you not realize that Christ Jesus is in you—unless, of course, you fail the test?” (2 Corinthians 13:5, NIV). “If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Him” (Romans 8:9, NASB).

Writings By Jon von Ernst

The Lord of All Things Series - A Trilogy of Truth 
Books in this series:
Book 1 - The Gospel of the Kingdom
Book 2- The Victorious Christian
Book 3 - Walking in the Light  -  Following in His Steps

*- Audio of these books are available free of charge at thepureword.net.