God Does Everything By Grace, Only Our Faith Can Receive Grace

Seeing the Bible as Law – Means me doing the best I can to comply with God’s standards, as my head understands them, set out in the scriptures. In other words me trying to keep God’s commandments. That’s the Old Covenant which man by human nature couldn’t keep.

Seeing the Bible as Grace - Means my believing: That the words of the Bible are living seeds containing the life and nature of Jesus Christ in dormant form. (Just as natural seeds contain the life and nature of plants in dormant form). That these words are God’s grace, which His Spirit will speak to me, reveal to me, and, as I believe them, write them in my heart. That these living words will transform me into their likeness, so imparting the nature of Christ, for He is God’s grace. This is the New Covenant which, with Christ in me now doing it, I can keep.

To begin to receive God’s Grace, His word, the nature of Christ, we must believe His word:

The Law is God’s word initially written on stone and which is now written with ink on paper.

Grace is God’s living word lifted off the paper and written by the Holy Spirit on our hearts.

2 Cor 3:3 And you show that you are a letter of Christ …written … by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts ESV

Our relationship with God began, and we were born again, the moment we believed in our

Hearts, not our heads, the first words of the gospel of grace brought to us by the Holy Spirit:

Acts 20:24 ...The gospel (God’s words) of the grace of God.

1 Pet 1:23 Being born again of incorruptible seed, by the word of God (believed)... KJV

Eph 2:8 For by grace (by God’s words) are you saved through faith... KJV

That’s initial Grace; God wants us to have abundant Grace, as we believe more of His words

2 Cor 9:8 And God is able to make all grace abound toward you, that you, always having all sufficiency in all things, may abound unto every good work.

Rom 5:17 ...Those who receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness will reign in life through the One, Jesus Christ (Grace has to be received).

But we could only receive God’s initial Grace, His word, when we believed that word with

our hearts. Natural seeds only spring to life when planted in soil, our hearts are the spiritual

soil in which the spiritual seed of God’s words spring to life. In order to receive more Grace,

more of Christ’s nature, more of God’s words, so that we can reign in this life over all our

spiritual enemies, we must believe those words, not with our heads, but with our hearts.

Without such further belief there can be no more Grace and hence we cannot please God.

Rom 4:16 Therefore it is of (our) faith that it might be (that it can be) by (God’s) grace...

Rom 5:2 ...We have access by faith into this grace...(and there is no other way)

Heb 11:6 But without faith it is impossible to please Him (for there can be no Grace)

God can do nothing for us apart from His Grace, we can only receive His Grace by faith:

Everywhere in the Bible we are told that our faith, that truly believes God, that whole heartedly trusts Him, is essential for God to do the work in our lives that He wants to:

Ps 37:5 Commit your way to the LORD, Trust in Him, And He shall bring it to pass.

Matthew 9:29 …According to your faith be it unto you.

Mark 9:23 …If you can believe, all things are possible to him that believes.

Matthew 21:22 ...Whatever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.

James 1:6-7 But let him ask in faith, with no doubting...he that doubts...let not that person suppose that he will receive anything from the Lord;

God desires and must have our trust, our belief in the words He speaks to us, in order for Him to fulfill any of His promises in our lives. He can’t bless us unless we believe His words. Otherwise our salvation would be based on our works. You would think that since receiving anything from God depends on first believing God, that we would all diligently study and learn what God has to say about faith. So that we could all trust God for everything in our lives and therefore live by faith. Most of us don’t do this and when we are unable to receive something from God, because we don’t understand our need for faith or we don’t know how to get more of it, we may complain and judge God, falsely assuming He withheld His Grace.