Grace Alone?
by Terry W. Benton
Daily Points of Light from Heaven
Grace is the only reason we can be restored to good fellowship with God, for sin on our part means that we have broken the fellowship and cannot remove that sin by meritorious works on our end. Sin must be removed, and we can’t pay the price to set things right. Grace alone can pay the price, but grace has conditional terms for each man to receive it. So, paying an adequate price does not automatically put that price over to our account. So, since there are terms for being a beneficiary of that adequate price paid in Jesus, it is not all a matter of “grace alone”.
When the Bible speaks of the grace of God, it does not include the word “alone”. To add the word “alone” would give the wrong impression that there are no “conditions” for our access into that grace. We have “access into His grace through faith” (Romans 5:1). In other words, the provisions of grace are available to all men, but not all are in that grace. The access route into His grace is through faith. Without faith, we have no access to grace. We remain outside that grace and receive none of the benefits of what Jesus did for us on the cross. “Grace alone” would mean that you have no part to play in either the reception or maintenance of salvation. The word “alone” perverts every text to which Satan and false teachers add it.
Leave the word “grace” to do what God intended and you find that “grace” actually “teaches” (Titus 2:11f) some necessary actions on our part, and that if we do not respond the way grace teaches us to respond, then we have not taken proper “access into His grace” and have deceived ourselves into thinking we are in His grace when we are still outside His grace. The terms of “access into His grace” are given in Acts 2:36-41, which are done by faith in Jesus. It is also possible for those who took the proper access route into His grace to fail to properly maintain a relationship with His grace. There are rules for coming into His grace and rules for staying in it. Paul warned the Corinthians that they could have “received the grace of God in vain” (II Corinthians 6:1f). So, once in grace, you are not automatically in it for good regardless of behavior. You can receive it in vain.
There are responsibilities for staying in His grace. Now if you can “receive the grace of God in vain” then no one is saved by “grace alone”.
If grace requires anything from us, and it does, and the absence of meeting those requirements means we received it in vain, to no beneficial end, then it cannot be the case that anyone is saved by “grace alone”. If grace demands anything of us, and is “in vain” unless we do something to make it effective, then to claim that we are saved by grace “alone” is clearly false.
Grace is not in vain when we let grace teach us the conditions. It is in vain in our case if we do not listen to and put into practice the terms of access and maintenance.
Some religious zealots are poisoning minds on the topic by not only affirming “grace alone” but some even add a self-contradicting qualifier “by faith alone”. It doesn’t seem to phase them that two “alones” are not “alone.” You can have “grace alone” or “faith alone” but you can’t have two things together and both be “alone.” The text can say “by grace through faith” as the Bible actually affirms, but when you add the word “alone” you have actually made the text contradict itself.
Grace can demand faith, and faith can look in trust toward grace, but “grace alone” can make no conditions for us to meet; else it ceases to be grace alone. Faith can be the channel through which grace comes into our possession, but “faith alone” doesn’t need anything else. It can save us all by itself (alone).
So, when someone adds the word “alone,” you know that they have perverted the Scriptures, and you know that they have been misled and are misleading others. Grace is sufficient to save, but we have to “access” that grace (Romans 5:1f) through the proper kind of obedient faith, such as we see in Acts 2:37-41. We have to do something through faith to have access to His grace, and there are things that we must do to make our calling and election sure (to stay in His grace) and not to have received the grace of God in vain. Are you in His grace?
