I grew up with this mental image of God as an angry judge searching my life and casting me off for my mistakes. Because of this idea of God being this angry righteous judge, I could never measure up to what I knew such a God would expect of me. I drove myself with an obsession to earn His favor and I did a lot of religious works, good deeds and tried my best to adhere to a list of do’s and don’ts as I felt the Bible and my denomination instructed. I had one problem. I wasn’t perfect and I kept falling into sin. I also felt burnt out because I was driven to meet the expectations that I thought this God demanded of me. Each time I sinned, I felt rejected by God and felt cast off. I would grow weary of doing the good deeds that were required to please God. My life was a constant struggle of climbing the holy hill of the Lord only to slide down again just as I felt I was making progress. I could never maintain that intensity long enough to feel like I was pleasing God. I don’t think this image or my feelings are unique. Over the years I have found similar ideas about God expressed by others. I also read quite a few testimonials about people ‘escaping from Christianity’ that were in a collection published by a humanistic group. One common pattern I noticed is that each of these so called ex-Christians is that they all expressed similar feelings that I experienced or they grew up with parents in the ministry who demanded this kind of lifestyle and lived as I did. This view of God is a major problem and is sapping the strength of well-meaning people who desire to know God.

I walked this dusty road for years and felt the same frustrations that these ‘escaped’ people felt. Several times I began to slip and gave up in frustration and let myself slide down the hill. The problem is that I was no better at the bottom than when I was climbing. The hopelessness that I felt was more than I could bear and I tired quickly under the weight of the command I found in Philippians 2:12, "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling". In this study I want to look at the first step in working out our salvation. Everything in the Christian life is built on a spiritual foundation. If that foundation is faulty, your entire spiritual life will be faulty and in danger of collapsing. Instead of escaping our collapsing religion, maybe we should examine the foundation and create a strong basis for our salvation. Ephesians 6 tells us to put on the whole armor of God. The helmet of salvation is a critical part of that armor. It is no mistake that Paul put salvation as the head of the armor. Salvation must come first and everything else follows. Salvation is built on grace, so our understanding of the grace of God is the cornerstone of our foundation.

We must get beyond this idea that God is sitting in heaven watching and condemning our mistakes. God is never appalled or surprised at our mistakes. He knows before we act what we are going to do. That is why He calls for us to follow His lead. He will always make a way of escape if we let Him lead us (1 Corinthians 10:13). 1 John 1:9 tells us that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Notice this verse did not say that we must be punished for our sins, or did it say that we must do something to make up for our sin. The requirement is only that we confess and allow God to cleanse us. The problem with sin is that we find ourselves constantly rebuilding our relationship with God and we have a hard time getting to the point of walking with God. Habitual sins keep us in a never-ending rebuilding stage. It is not the judgement of God that calls us to God, but it is God’s goodness. Romans 2:4 says, "…do you not know that the goodness of God leads you to repentance?" Sin does not bring down the judgement of God. Refusing to allow God to cleanse you and clinging to your sins is what God judges. God will deal with our sins. The choice boils down to two options: repent, turn to God and let Him cleanse you, or cling to your sins and force God to judge your sins. Receiving forgiveness or the judgement is not God’s choice; it is ours. God has chosen to provide a way out. We are the ones who must choose sin over grace.

Look at Lamentations 3:22-25,

Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.
²³ They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
²⁴ "The Lord is my portion," says my soul, "Therefore I hope in Him!"
²⁵      The Lord is good to those who wait for Him, To the soul who seeks Him.

This is not a picture of an angry God looking for someone to punish. The accurate picture of God is that He is looking for someone who will accept His compassion and goodness. In Genesis 6 God stated that He would not strive with man forever but there is a limit to His days. It is the rejection of God’s mercies that gains His judgement. I can’t count the number of times I have been told that a just God would not send anyone to hell. I agree. The real question is, "Will a just God over ride our decision we made with our free will?" The answer is, "No." If you see someone sliding toward disaster and you offer deliverance and they fight you off, how long will you plead with them before you let them have it their way? God has given us a free choice. God knew from the beginning that designing man with a free will has a risk. If you give someone a choice, you must allow them to choose even if you know it is the wrong choice. God does that with us. We have a free choice and God gives us all the information about that choice in His word. He then extends His love towards us and beckons us to take His hand until the point when we harden ourselves so there is no chance we will hear His call.

God gets a lot of blame for our choices. Schools remove prayers; they ban the Bible; they are not allowed to even reveal the 10 commandments; students are warned not to pray or have any religious activities; they are taught that there is no God but we are products of chance; abortion is ok because life is only valued when it fits our ideas. Then I hear people ask "how could God let these tragedies happen?" Doesn’t sound like God was anywhere in the picture. Then you hear these same people say that the presence of anything godly is forcing religion down their throats. We want the freedom, but we don’t want responsibility. When something goes right then we take the credit and God is left out of the picture.

I want to take a few minutes and look at the grace that God offers to each of us. The Bible teaches that man was created with the ability to choose. Sin was introduced in the world and we are heirs to that sin. This principle of inherent sin is questioned by the world and by other religions. The truth is self-evident when you look around. A good example of this is a child. A child is born in complete innocence. When my kids were born I didn’t take them aside and give them instructions on how to throw a fit; how to hit their siblings; how to sneak toys that belongs to someone else; I didn’t teach them greed and selfishness; I didn’t teach them to disobey and back-talk. I could go on for a long time. Where did they learn these bad behaviors? It is a part of our self-centered, self-serving sinful nature. We are born into sin. No one has to teach us to sin. We have to be shown how to get out of sin. It is part of our nature from the beginning. The Bible clearly teaches that sin by definition is anything that opposes the character of God. Sin can’t abide in God’s presence. All the good works and all the religious practices will not root sin out of our lives. You can’t clean up molded apples by throwing good ones on top of it. Our lives are the same way. All our good works don’t change the fact that we have a sinful nature. Look at Isaiah 64:6, "But we are all like an unclean thing, And all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags; We all fade as a leaf, And our iniquities, like the wind, Have taken us away." Our good works will never clean up our lives or our nature. We need a new nature. That is the whole point of grace. We can’t measure up so God had to make a way. You can never make your character measure up to the character of God. The problem is that unless your character is as holy as God’s character, you can’t have a relationship with God nor can you go to heaven since God is the measurement for the worthiness of heaven. The only solution is for God to build the bridge to us because we can never build a bridge to Him.

This very principle is why I frequently refer to Romans 4:4-5. Verse 4 states that if we work to earn God’s favor, we can’t obtain His favor or His grace. As we saw in Isaiah 64:6, all of our righteous deeds are filthy rags. Mixing some clean rags into a of a pile filthy rags will never make a pile of clean rags. It is just the opposite; the clean are made unclean. But Romans 4:5 says, "to him who does not work, but believes on Him (this refers to Jesus, see Rom. 5:6) who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness. On these two verses pivot the principle of grace. Works don’t clean us up nor do they earn God’s favor, cleaning must come from being cleansed from our unrighteousness. This is done by Jesus Christ who justifies the ungodly. He justifies us by the goodness of His own life offered in exchange for our filthy rags. The difference is that He is clean and was clean from the beginning. The Bible teaches that Jesus did not inherit the sinful nature because God made Himself flesh through a virgin named Mary. John 1:14 we are told that God became flesh and dwelled among us. This is Jesus Christ. We are told that this Word (Jesus) was with God and was God. There is not mistaking the deity of Jesus Christ. The virgin birth takes little faith when you consider the God who created us would have little trouble creating a body for himself without sexual reproduction. It is also a foundational principle.

The birth of Christ had to be a virgin birth or Jesus would have been born with the same sinful nature we were born with. Then works would not have changed that nature. It is this sinless nature that gives us our hope. The gift of grace is born in the birth of Christ. The power of the cross is that Jesus bore our sins and the sacrifice is that He offers His life to us in exchange for our sins. A man born into sin cannot offer himself as a sin offering for others. Works do not change the nature. But Jesus was born as a man with the same godly nature He had from the beginning. Because of His divine nature, He was able to live a sinless life and died as a sacrifice for our sins. The gift of grace is that His life and His nature are offered in exchange for ours. The greatest pain of the crucifixion was not the physical pain Jesus endured. It was the separation from God. Jesus was heavy in heart and prayed for another way before He was taken to be tried. God created us and knew what pain was like, but Jesus had no way of knowing what tearing apart His nature would be like. When Jesus was on the cross, He cried, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?" What a beautiful verse this is. The supreme sacrifice was made and the pain was enormous. This is the point that sin was laid to Jesus’ account. 2 Corinthians 5:21 tells us that Jesus knew no sin but became sin for us. Sin cannot abide with the nature of God so the nature of God was torn apart and the sacrifice was made. That sacrifice is what gives us life.

What literally transpired is that Jesus, on the cross, took each of our sins upon His account and in exchange He offers His righteous, holy and perfect life to our account. If we will receive it, we become as righteous before God as Jesus Himself. Not because of our works, but because of His completed sacrifice on the cross. A gift is not a gift until it is received. Until then it is just an offer. God offers His grace to anyone who will receive it. Only sinners can receive God’s grace. Of course we are all sinners, but humility is a requirement. If someone is not willing to acknowledge their sins and their need for forgiveness, they can’t be forgiven. The religious leaders opposed Jesus at every point. In Matthew 9:13 Jesus told these religious elites that He did not come to call the righteous, but the sinners to repentance. Those who think they are good by their own merits cannot see their sin and can’t receive His grace. We know that they were sinners because He later warned them that their religious burdens were preventing people from receiving God’s grace and they were not going to heaven and were preventing others from going as well. Humility – seeing your need for God’s grace, repentance – choosing to leave your lifestyle of sin behind and turning to God, and faith are the requirements for the foundation of grace.

Belief is not faith. Faith is trusting what you believe to the point of acting upon that belief. In James chapter 2 we are told that faith without works is dead. You must act upon that faith or it dies into a mere meaningless belief. Acting upon faith is what the Bible teaches in Romans 4:5. When this verse says that our faith is accounted for righteousness it means active faith. Faith is looking at the sacrifice Jesus made on the cross and saying I put my trust in that sacrifice. By faith I give my sins, failures and lifestyle to Jesus and in exchange I by faith receive His righteousness into my life. I am now completely cleansed and justified before God, have become a son of God and an heir to His kingdom, Galatians 3:26. If I sin, the process of cleansing does not change. Humility, repentance and faith knowing that when I confess these sins, He is faithful and just to forgive me and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.

We have a tendency of abusing repentance. Repentance is not sinning with the attitude thinking that I can confess and all is well. Repentance is not asking for forgiveness with the attitude thinking I can go back and fulfill my sinful desires when it is convenient. Repentance is a commitment to a lifestyle change with Christ at the center. Committing to living a life that focuses on pleasing God and allowing Him to fulfill my desires. When I sin and fall short of living a God-focused life, I offer God true repentance and try again. Our old nature is well ingrained and this isn’t an easy task, but if we commit our works to the Lord, He will honor that and establish our thoughts, Proverbs 16:3. This commitment must be love based. The key is to know that God loves you as His own and that you are a valued treasure. The Bible calls us the apple of His eye. He loves us regardless and we serve and obey Him out of love. We don’t serve to gain love, but we do works because we love God and want our lives to please God knowing that He loves us while we were sinners (Romans 5:8). Out of love, I follow God and answer His call. As I grow closer, my desires change and I want to do the works He has called me to do.