Faith is a response (Rom. 10:15). Praise is a response. Worship is a response. Obedience is a response (for man can obey God only if God first gives a command). Confession of the truth is a response (to God's revelation of it). Love for God is a response, for "we love Him because he first loved us" (1Jn. 4:19). There is nothing in man that is capable of righteousness; however, "when we were without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly" (Rom. 5:6). Yes, man is without strength to do, say, or think anything rightly; but in Jesus, God lovingly reached down to help man. That is grace.

True prayer is a response to the will of God, because "if we ask anything according to his will, he heareth us" (1Jn. 5:14). God wills it, then we seek it; that is The Way of Grace. The action starts with God's love and will, not with man's need and desire. No prayer that springs from the will of man finds any place in heaven. In the flesh, "we know not what we should pray for as we ought" (Rom. 8:26). In the flesh, we "ask, and receive not, because [we] ask amiss, that [we] may consume it upon [our] lusts" (Jas. 4:3). But prayer inspired by the Spirit of God is prayer "in Jesus' name", and "whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it you" (Jn. 16:23). There is no such thing as an unanswered prayer, when God initiates the praying.

Wise Job suggested that even if God performed that for which he prayed, he would not believe that the Almighty had listened to him (Job 9:16). Job understood that God inspires the righteous to pray for that which He has already determined to do. When Jesus prayed at Lazarus' tomb (Jn. 11:41-42), he was not praying for God to empower him to raise up Lazarus. God had already done that. In this case, Jesus prayed so that those watching would understand that by raising Lazarus up, he was only doing the Father's will.

With Men It Is Impossible

Jesus taught that there is nothing man can do to escape God's wrath. In response to his disciples' sincere question, "Who can be saved?" Jesus' answer is at once terrifying and hopeful. He said, "With men it is impos sible, but not with God; for with God all things are possible" (Mk. 10:23-27).

There is nothing man can do to escape the coming wrath of God! David wrote, "The Lord looked down from heaven upon the children of men, to see if there were any that did understand, and seek God." What did God find when He looked down on man? "They are all gone aside, they are all together become filthy. There is none that doeth good, no, not one."

Man's heart is "deceitful above all things" cried Jeremiah. Then he asked, "Who can know it?" (Jer. 17:9). The answer is that no one can know it. Man's heart is so darkened that, without God's help, he cannot even believe that his heart is darkened. Man doesn't know that he doesn't know. He often claims to possess the knowledge of God, although he is altogether without it. He often thinks he is obeying God, when he is not.

To his disciples, Jesus foretold of a time when "whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service" (Jn. 16:2). Young Saul of Tarsus is the prime example of this. Striving to please God, the zealous young Pharisee breathed out "threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord" and "persecuted this way unto the death, binding and delivering into prisons both men and women" (Acts 9:2; 22:4).

Describing his own hopeless spiritual blindness before God touched him, Paul wrote, "Even though the desire to do good is in me, I am not able to do it." And, "When I want to do good, what is evil is the only choice I have." (Rom. 7:18, 21). Saul was not an exception. No man has never done a righteous deed on his own. With men, as Jesus said, it is impossible.

Mankind's one hope was God. Our only hope was that God would help us; but there was no way for us to persuade God to do so, for God does all things according to His own will (Eph. 1:11). Man's only hope was that God would pity him, and, of His own will, make a way for man to escape the coming wrath of God. That is grace. And that is the story of the gospel. "For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ" (Jn. 1:17). In Jesus, God did something. Of His own will, God helped us. He loved first; He gave His Son; He sent the holy Ghost. He created a way of escape. Man's only part in the gospel is to respond to it. God is the actor, and man, the reactor.

It is at this juncture that millions have misunderstood The Way of Grace, assuming that because salvation is made possible only by God's grace, salvation is by grace alone. However, the fact that God's grace alone pro vides hope of salvation does not preclude the necessity of a proper response from man!

It is only by the grace of God that the gospel is given, but dare we say that God's mere giving of the gospel will save us, when Paul wrote that the gospel is "the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth" (Rom. 1:16)? Must we not respond in faith to the gospel in order to benefit from the gospel? Remember the words of the man of God: "For unto us was the gospel preached as well as unto them [God's Old Testament people]; but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in them that heard it" (Heb. 4:2).

Only by God's grace is a sinner convicted of sin, but dare we teach that "salvation by grace" means that the sinner need not repent, when Jesus said, "Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish" (Lk. 13:3,5)? Must not a sinner respond to God's grace in order to be forgiven? When was an unrepentant sinner ever cleansed from his sin by the blood of Christ?

It is only by God's grace that the holy Spirit is given to those who believe and repent, but dare we teach that the mere possession of God's Spirit will save us, when Paul warned the saints that "If you live after the flesh, you shall die" (Rom. 8:14)? Jesus has indeed become "the author of eternal salvation", but only "unto all them that obey him" (Heb. 5:9).

The hope of eternal life is offered to all by the grace of God; but it is "by grace, through faith" that eternal life will be attained, not by grace alone. Grace is God's part; faith is ours. And only by the operation of both those factors will one attain to eternal life.

I have been careful to say that faith is a response, and that repentance is a response, or that obedience is a response, because there are other responses of which man is capable. Man is capable of unbelief; man is capable of refusing to repent; man is capable, even if he is born again, of disobedience. And just as some responses have blessed results, so other responses have cursed ones. In a parable, the author of Hebrews said (6:7-8): "For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth the herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God. But that which beareth thorns and briers is rejected, and is nigh unto cursing, whose end is to be burned." What kind of response to God's grace are we making? The kind that brings a blessing? Or the kind that leads to the curse of eternal fire? Be careful, my friend. The religious ways of the flesh can confuse us. "All the ways of a man are clean in his own eyes, but the Lord weigheth the spirits" (Prov. 16:2).

It is grace, that there is even a call of God to which we can respond; but (Listen, my dear brothers!) the call of God is always, and only, a call to God. It is not a call to the errors and vain traditions of man. For example, when God convicts a man of the necessity of baptism, the response of true faith is to seek the baptism that is available through God's grace. God does not call us to a baptism that we can perform upon one another. (There is nothing we can do to save ourselves!) Through the sacrificial death of Christ Jesus, God offers the baptism of the holy Spirit to all who respond in faith to what He offers by grace.

When God creates a desire in man to belong to His family, the response of true faith is not to join one of Christianity's sects; rather, the response of true faith is to seek the baptism of the holy Spirit, by which one enters the body of Christ that exists by God's grace (1Cor. 12:13). Christian churches are not offered to us by the grace of God but by the confusion of men. The word of the Lord came to me, saying this: No congregation that can be joined is His! Remember that. The circumcision that true faith pursues is "in the heart, by the Spirit" (Rom. 2:29). The communion that true faith desires is the "communion of the holy Ghost" (2Cor. 13:13). Any circumcision, baptism, communion, or congregation--any religious activity--that is not in the Spirit is not of the grace of God but is "of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man", and it "profits nothing" (Jn. 6:63).

Only that which is initiated by God's grace is "in spirit and in truth". This is the "grace wherein we stand" (Rom. 5:2), and when faith responds to it in truth, this grace is not "received in vain" (2Cor. 6:1).

God sends the rain and the sunshine to all people, both to the good and to the evil (Mt. 5:45), just as he offers His grace to all. Those who respond with submission and gratitude are like the good soil which produces fruit "and receiveth blessing from God." Those who respond to His grace with unbelief are like the soil that produces "thorns and briers". The end of these people, though they are often deeply religious in their own way, is "to be burned".

People of every culture throughout human history have worshipped, and still do, but mankind's ways of worship have always been unclean, for true worship is a response; it is "not of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." We can offer acceptable worship to God only if we are sanctified by the Spirit that God sheds upon those who respond in faith to the gospel (Rom. 15:16). Jesus came to make our lives and our worship acceptable to God, and it is only through the holy Spirit that this is accomplished. "Those who worship", said the Master, "must worship in spirit and in truth" (Jn. 4:24).

Before this truth was revealed, God overlooked much of our ignorance, "but now", preached Paul, "He commandeth all men everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30). Spiritless, ceremonial worship is not of God, but is of the flesh, and we must repent of it if we hope to be saved from the coming wrath of God. Religion without the power of the Spirit is godless, graceless religion, regardless of what men call it. Islam, Buddhism, Shintoism, Christianity--no religion is of God without the sanctifying presence of the holy Ghost.

The Way of Grace is the way of the Spirit, and only those who are being led by the Spirit are being saved by grace. All others are being lost without it, living and worshipping in ways that seem right in their own eyes. Man's ideas of how to honor God are not a response to God's grace. Man's ideas are not of faith. Remember the words of Jesus: "With men it is impossible." Men can't do it alone. In this New Covenant, the way of the Spirit is The Way of Grace, because by God's grace the Spirit is here.

Those who are being saved by grace are those who are being kept by the power of God's Spirit from vain ways of worship and from ungodly lifestyles, for the grace that leads to salvation teaches us to "live soberly, righteously, and godly, in this present world" (Tit. 2:11-12).

Those who are living in God's grace are those who are "walking in the Spirit".

In The Way of Grace, God is the actor; man, the reactor. He initiates; man responds. He declares; man either believes or not. He commands; man either obeys or disobeys. May our responses to His gracious offer of a Savior be acceptable to Him, and may you and I meet someday in that place He has prepared for those who love Him and trust in His grace.