The Relationship Between God's Grace and the Ten Commandments
If there’s anything we need, it’s the grace of God. Paul tells us clearly that it’s God’s grace that saves us.
“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast,” (Ephesians 2:8 & 9).
Because God’s grace is so important, we need to acquaint ourselves with what grace is, how it works, and how to receive it. Let’s begin by answering some questions.
How long has grace existed in the heart of God? Forever!
Can we prove that? Absolutely. Isaiah refers to the New Covenant of salvation as “the everlasting covenant,” and John the Revelator refers to the gospel as “the everlasting gospel.”
“The earth also is defiled under the inhabitants thereof; because they have transgressed the laws, changed the ordinance, broken the everlasting covenant,” (Isaiah 24:5).
“And I saw another angel fly in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting gospel to preach unto them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people,” (Revelation 14:6).
So, was grace in God’s heart before He created anything? Yes—because He never changes.
“For I [am] the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed,” (Malachi 3:6).
“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning,” (James 1:17).
Then was grace in God’s heart before He created angels or people? Yes.
In creating anything that He has made, did God’s creative work ever contradict His grace? Has God’s character of grace and love ever been at war with His work? By no means!
“[He is] the Rock, his work [is] perfect: for all his ways [are] judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right [is] he,” (Deuteronomy 32:4).
Was grace in God’s heart before He formulated His Law—the Ten Commandments? Absolutely.
Then do the requirements of the Ten Commandments in any way contradict or cancel the grace of God? Never! After all, God’s law is perfect, and holy, and just, and good, and spiritual—and established by our faith in Christ.
“The law of the LORD [is] perfect, converting the soul: the testimony of the LORD [is] sure, making wise the simple,” (Psalms 19:7).
“Wherefore the law [is] holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good….For we know that the law is spiritual: but I am carnal, sold under sin,” (Romans 7:12 & 14).
“Do we then make void the law through faith? God forbid: yea, we establish the law,” (Romans 3:31).
(So, when people have trouble with the Ten Commandments, it’s not because those people are holy, and the Commandments are carnal. It’s because the people are carnal, and the Commandments are spiritual.)
Many if not most Christians have been taught that being in the grace of God means that they don’t have to do some of the things that God has told us to do. This teaching is based rather stealthfully on the idea that some of God’s requirements contradict His grace—as evidenced by the notion that His grace cancels some of His moral and physical requirements. But none of God's requirements contradict His grace. After all, God doesn’t make mistakes, and His grace has superintended all He has ever done!
There’s another dimension to this subject that we need to see. Grace is a character attribute of God, NOT a list of requirements. God loves you—and all of us. He wants you to be with Him forever. And absolutely everything that He has ever done with relation to any of us has forever been and always will be rooted in His determination to bless us and give us every good thing He can come up with. He ONLY works for your best good. Always has, always will!
Not even our sin could stop Jesus from steadfastly pursuing our best good. When we crossed the line between life and death, between sin and righteousness, not even that could alter His resolute determination to give us life as abundantly as possible, and forever!
When we sinned, God was faced with one of two choices. He could either change His Law in order to save us—which to do would contradict His grace, since everything that He made was already 100% consistent with His grace (as we have already seen)—, or He could uphold His law of love—which to do would be consistent with His character of grace.
Of course, to uphold His law would mean that He would actually have to enforce it—which would mean death to the transgressor. So, with His gracious intentions unchanged, He chose to enforce His law of love by taking our place and giving His life in exchange for ours! In this way, justice would be met for sins committed, the penalty of transgression would be paid, thus upholding His perfect law (Ps. 19:7), and His gracious gift of life to us in the first place could continue to be given to us, with God’s grace being contradicted nowhere! The grace of God that had ever been in His heart and that had caused Him to give us His Ten Commandment law of love would go on, and so could we!
When people define grace as a change in the requirements of God, they simply do not know what they’re talking about. It’s like what Paul says in 1 Timothy 1:5-7.
“Now the end of the commandment is charity out of a pure heart, and [of] a good conscience, and [of] faith unfeigned: From which some having swerved have turned aside unto vain jangling; Desiring to be teachers of the law; understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm.”
The fact of the matter is that since everything the Lord has ever done or made has been in perfect harmony with His grace, then when we were born, we were born into the very environment of grace. Literally, we are surrounded by the grace of God! But it’s not enough to be surrounded by it. We need to receive it—to believe in it: to believe that the motives in God’s heart toward us are good and only good; that if He has His way, the only things He will do is bless us. When we come to the point of understanding this, our relationship to God’s requirements, to His expectations of us, will change entirely. Instead of seeking release from what the Bible commands, we will embrace its requirements. We will no longer see them as unnecessary and antiquated restrictions of our reasonable liberty, but we will see them as the foundation of the best life we can ever have—and disobedience to them as self-destructive!
“And I will walk at liberty: for I seek thy precepts,” (Psalms 119:45).
“So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty,” (James 2:12).
So, here’s the big question: how do we receive the grace of God? It’s so easy. Once we recognize that the Lord’s only motive toward us is only one of love and good, we then acknowledge that our disobedience to Him was wrong—spurred on by distrust of Him. We then repent of our sins—seeing them as totally contrary to our best interests—and ask His forgiveness. He always freely forgives--freely grants His grace--those that do this; and those who truly believe in His grace return to obedience to the Lord, because they now know that whatever He requires flows out of the very same motive that led Jesus to go to the cross for them.
Sabbath keeping ceases to be a problem for them. Telling the truth at all times makes sense to them. Not being immoral no longer seems like a restriction of enjoyment. Worshiping only the Lord, refusing to bow to images, etc.—none of these are problems any longer for those who receive the grace of God. But those that hover around the edges of God’s grace—people that attend church and claim faith in Christ but are more concerned about what they have to or don’t have to do—will forever be inconsistent in their application of God’s requirements to their lives. They will accept His requirements that make sense to them, and reject others, not acknowledging that all of God’s goodness is behind all of His requirements.
So, whatever you choose to do, don't let it be to hover around the grace of God--picking and choosing which of God's requirements you like and which you don't. Instead, dive into full trust in God, full obedience to all of His requirements. As you do, you'll discover the more abundant life that by His divine grace Jesus came to give!