Grace is the expression of God’s loving desire to bless, motivated by nothing outside of Himself. Redemption — the saving of men and women who have separated themselves from God through sin — is the expression of grace, the action of grace rising from the heart of God. Not only salvation but every good gift that we experience is an expression of grace.
God created the universe so He could display His glory. This was an expression of grace. But as we will see, the history of grace begins even before there was a creation.
God created human beings out of the goodness of His heart and gave us the capacity to know Him, to enjoy Him, to behold His glory and praise His glory. He created humanity to be like branches on a vine, drawing life from Him, the Source of all life. God gave us a free, moral will so we could freely choose to worship Him, experience His grace and love Him in return.
But God knew that humanity would eventually exercise our will in rebellion against Him and knew that this rebellion would separate us from Him. God knew that this act of separation would create the reality of death and He knew that this death would be everlasting unless He intervened.
What could God do? In His perfect holiness He could not overlook our sin. In His perfect justness He must judge sin. But in His perfect mercy God did not desire that humanity would perish forever in our sinful separation from Him. So in the ancient councils of eternity, God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit agreed and decreed that God the Son would take human form while maintaining His Deity and as the God / Man, offer Himself as an atoning sacrifice for our sin, taking our sin, His judgment of our sin and our death upon Himself, thereby redeeming us from our sin and the death which our sin created. This was an act of grace from beginning to end.
Through the Apostle Paul the Lord reveals, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved (Eph.1:3-6).
Before the foundation of the world, before God created this universe, the decision was made to redeem lost, sinful humanity. God chose from eternity, before time began, to set His saving grace upon sinners. Time is a part of God’s creation so we can say that there has never been a time when God did not intend to lavish saving grace on fallen humanity. Since God has no beginning and no end, neither does His redeeming grace have a beginning or end.
God’s redeeming purpose began in eternity and continues until the end of time and beyond, as Paul reminds us, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in in Christ Jesus (Eph 2:4-7)
In the ages to come God will continue to pour out the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. Because God’s purpose to pour out His grace is eternal — it began before time and continues beyond time — and because we are eternal beings, our celebration of redeeming grace will have no end. The redeemed will live forever in the presence of God, enjoying His expressions of grace and giving glory to the God of grace. The history of grace has no beginning and no end.
In this study of grace, we will see that the purpose of redeeming grace is not only to reconcile us to God and save us from eternal death but also to restore us to our true humanity, to conform us to the image of Jesus. Accompanying the restoration of the redeemed will also be the restoration of all that was damaged by humanity’s fall. Sin released decay and death into the universe and not only will earth be restored when our Lord returns. More than this, the entire sin-tainted universe will be uncreated, followed by the creation of a new heaven and a new earth in which perfect righteousness dwells (2 Peter 3:13). In that day, all the universe will find its unity in Christ (Col. 1:20). All the universe will express and reflect the glory of God’s grace.
Now to Him who is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy, to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, dominion and authority, before all time and now and forever. Amen (Jude 1:24,25).
Study Questions
1. What is a simple definition of grace?
2. What do we mean when we say that grace has no beginning or end?