The Doctrines of Grace
Part One
by
Dr. Jay Worth Allen
God is sovereign and He does what He pleases. An aphorism, which is one of my favorites. A blunt maxim which articulates clearly what and who God is: independent, autonomous, self-governing, self-determining; nonaligned, free to do as He pleases. God is Sovereign. He rules by the counsel of His own will and no other.
God has foreordained everything that has come to pass; decreeing what is and what is to come; governing the world and everything and everyone in it according to His rule and authority; God has established the world and the heavens according to His divine purpose and not according to some aimless whim; God is never changing; God’s purpose in all things are according to how He will have them. “According to the plan of the One, working all things according to the counsel of His own will” (Ephesians 1:11). God is sovereign and He does what He pleases – most assuredly in the Salvation of men.
God, in His sovereigness, has given us a Book which is complete and divine in its order. God loves order. “God so loved order . . .” (John 3:16). That’s the Greek word here, kosmos — order. The world was in disorder so He sent His Son to bring Order.
God sent His Son in the likeness of our sinful flesh who, was “touched with the feelings of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” to save us. God is good. He saw the prerequisite and filled it Himself. God became one of us to save us. He became sin for us; sacrificed Himself for us; was raised from the dead for us; and now sits at the right hand of the Father making intercession for us — “Salvation is of the Lord” (Jonah 2:9).
Somehow in this day and age, we’ve laid down Truth and picked up experience. So that we are now interpreting the Truth of God with the consistency of our experience, rather than interpreting our experience to make it consistent with the Truth of God. And the reason is simple: Our enemies have stopped fighting us; they’ve joined us and infiltrated us with a gospel of their own invention. Which, in most cases, has absolutely nothing to do with the Bible, but it does nicely illustrate Shakespeare’s point that the “devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”
Today’s Church is being baptized with a scam-artist gospel: A gospel that denies mankind’s depraved and fallen, separated from God, totally dead in trespasses and sins nature. A gospel that seeks to elevate man in the eyes of his Creator, while using Christian terminology to generalize and marginalize the work of Jesus Christ on the cross. A gospel of man’s good-works over the Work of God. A gospel that encourages sinners to accept Jesus in much the same way they Confirm a Facebook friend request. A gospel which has nothing to do with the Gospel of God.
So what is the Gospel of God? “Salvation is of the Lord.” Our Salvation is the Work of God alone. “Lord, You will ordain peace for us: for You also have wrought (shaped) all our works in us” (Isaiah 26:12). This speaks of the Divine work of the grace of God “wrought” by God alone, in the heart of His People. And this text is not alone: “It pleased God, who separated me from my mother’s womb, and called me by His grace, to reveal His Son in me” (Galatians 1:15,16). These passages speak of the inward workings of God’s grace in His saints; from Justification, to Salvation, through Glorification. Our Salvation has been “wrought” by God . . . alone. “Not of works lest any man should boast” (Ephesians 2:9). “Salvation is of the Lord.”
Divine grace works “through Righteousness,” never at the expense of it. God does not make light of sin. God does not condone our transgressions. The Lord is “the Lord that heals” (Jehovah-rophi), but He is also “the Lord, our righteousness” (Jehovah-tsidkneu). One does not work without the other. God is “the God of all grace” and the God of, “be ye holy, for I am holy;” we are saved by Grace and we walk by Faith. One is the saving work of God, the other is the governmental action God requires of His people. Jesus is Lord and with His Lordship comes guiding principles of conduct.
My desire is not to squander typeface by describing in great detail the responsibility of the Saint. My task here is to shed light on God’s sovereign Doctrines of Grace in Justification, Salvation, and Glorification that He “furnished” (“before the foundation of the world”) for His Saints. But, before we venture into that treatise, may I (Spartan-ly) purport a few words concerning the unalterable responsibility of the child of God – thus, adding my two cents to the pot.
A saint is free to fail, but a saint is not free to be irresponsible. Even though “He has not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities” (Psalm 103:10), there are Responsibilities in behavior we Believers are obligated to demonstrate in whatever circumstance we may find ourselves in – we are to manifest, in our living, what our Father is like. We’re free to fail, but we’re not free to be irresponsible. As children of God we are obligated to occupy the place of Responsibility within the world our Father has placed us. In other words: Let’s not “sin so grace can abound.”
Our “Salvation is of the Lord.” Alone. But why? So all the glory might be His. He is the “author and finisher,” of our faith. If we have any part in it, it will not be effectual or secure. Whatever we touch we spoil. But “I know that whatsoever God does, it shall be for ever: nothing can be put to it, nor any thing taken from it: and God does it, that men should fear before Him” (Ecclesiastes. 3:14).
“Salvation is of the Lord.”
written 23 December 2010 / published The County Journal 30 Dec. 2010
© dr. jay & miss diana ministries, inc
