The Overcomer Trust

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GOD’S GRACE REIGNING THROUGH RIGHTEOUSNESS.

By Marcus Rainsford.


All God’s ways, in government, in judgment and in providence are but the handmaids of His ways in grace, “so also grace might reign through righteousness to bring eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord” (Rom. 5 v21). Grace reigns enthroned among all the other attributes of God. God’s justice and holiness, faithfulness and power all cast their crowns before that throne of grace in which Jehovah sits to dispense salvation to us. Yet, God’s ways in grace are about the least understood and believed of all His wondrous ways. 

Moses was astonished by the amazing grace of God, who in answer to his prayer, had promised that His presence would go with Israel. He was determined to get a peep into God’s heart and said, “show me Your glory.” The Lord answered, “I will cause all My goodness to pass in front of you”. In Exodus 33 v13 we see God’s ways, in v17 God’s grace, in v18 God’s glory and in v19 God’s goodness. “Show me Your glory.” Had he not seen it at the bush? Had he not seen His glory in ransoming Israel out of Egypt and carrying them through the Red Sea and through the wilderness to the place where He had promised He would one day gather them around Him? Yes, but Moses still  felt there was more to see. 

“Show me Your glory.” And God promised to show him His glory (v21-23). In the fifth and following verses of the next chapter we read, “Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him and proclaimed His name, the Lord. . . . The Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet He does not leave the guilty unpunished”. And Moses fell in worship. Do you wonder that his face shone when he came down from that interview with God?

In Colossians 1 v19 we read, “For God was pleased to have all His fulness dwell in Him (Jesus)”. “All fulness”, and in chapter 2 v9 “For in Christ all the fulness of the Deity lives in bodily form”. In John 1 v16 we read “From the fulness of His grace we have all received one blessing after another”. Grace for grace is the fulness of the Godhead in Christ, grace to be communicated in time and throughout eternity in glory, to sinners saved by His blood, inhabited by the Spirit, and raised in His likeness to enjoy fellowship with Him for ever. Grace is not given apart from Him but in fellowship with Him. “God, who has called us into fellowship with His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, is faithful” (1 Cor. 1 v9).


Grace seeks our need.

God’s grace seeks our need, not our merit. God’s grace seeks our ruin  in order to save us, our death to quicken us and our emptiness to fill us. The difficulty of grace is not our sin and unworthiness, the difficulty of grace is our self-righteousness and our unbelief. Grace is God’s strength made perfect in human weakness. Grace is God’s salvation bestowed upon the lost. Grace is God's life imparted to the dead. Grace is God’s fulness supplying our emptiness. Grace is God’s heaven instead of our hell. Grace is God’s righteousness instead of our guilt. Grace is God’s self freely bestowed, our inheritance for ever and ever. God has not been idle in a past eternity, “My Father is always at His work to this very day, and I, too, am working”. How little we grasp His ways. But whatever were His ways in government, in judgment, or in providence, His ways in grace are the climax and crown of all. His ways in grace seemed “hidden in God" till man, God’s darling, fell and lost his God. Whatever may have been God’s ways before time we cannot tell, but this was the climax of all God’s ways, Christ died. He gave Himself for us, died to save poor, guilty, lost, unworthy and helpless sinners.


God is Love.

When God created our world He gave the water to the fishes, He gave the earth to the animals, He gave the air to the birds and He gave His heaven to the angels, and when all was done God said, “Let us make man in our image, in our likeness”. “What is man that You are mindful of him?” And Adam was created in the image of God, in the image of Him who is “the brightness of His Father’s glory and the express image of His person”. We were not only created in His image, but were chosen in Christ and blessed in Christ with all spiritual blessings, and given to Christ as a love-gift from His Father, to be united to Him, to be filled with His fulness and to be kept by His power. But seeing what it cost God to redeem us, we can only wonder at the boundless grace that ever induced Him to create us. Great was the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ when He sat in council as one of the eternal three, and undertook to be the head of His church, and to carry that church, through all the changes and chances of its being, up to the throne upon which He sat. Great was His grace when in Eden He stood by and saw mankind overcome by Satan. Great was His grace when in the fulness of time, when there was no other saviour, He left His throne in heaven, and came down into this wilderness of sin and sorrow, descending from the bosom of God into the womb of a young woman and assumed the nature that He loved. He was born in it, lived in it and served in it. He fulfilled all righteousness in it, brought it to the Jordan, was baptised in it, brought it to the wilderness and was tempted in it, prayed in it, suffered in it, brought it to Gethsemane and sweat drops of blood through it. He brought it to Calvary where the Roman spear went into His side, and “the fountain” was opened for sin and all uncleanness. 

Great was His grace when He brought our humanity out of the tomb in resurrection life, light and glory, to the heaven from whence He had descended, and having made it His own nature for ever in resurrection life, sat down in it at the right hand of God. When Job saw Him there was a rainbow round about His throne. Surely the crowning of His grace will be when as God-man, Emmanuel, He returns the second time to take us to Himself for ever and give us a body like the body of His own glory, “by the power that enables Him to bring everything under His control”. 

We do not think enough about grace. Some people have a notion that God became estranged from us by reason of our sin. I believe so far was that from being the truth that when He saw us go down into helpless ruin His compassion for us enhanced His love. It was the fact of our ruin, and the divine consciousness that He alone was able to help and deliver us, that caused Him to empty Himself of His glory and take our place that grace might be extended to us. It was “while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom. 5 v8). It was “when we were still powerless” (Rom. 5 v6), it was when we were yet enemies. It was not when we were in our innocency, there was no need then, nor in our recovery, it was too late then. It was in our condemnation, in our guiltiness, in our rebellion. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.” I believe that never did God love this world more than when He was down here amongst us, labouring for us, learning our sorrow, tasting our temptations, suffering our privations, and made the victim for our sins.

Paul writes to the Ephesians, “Saved by grace”, “chosen in Him”, “blessed in Him”, “accepted in Him”, “to the praise of the glory of His grace”. Having “redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of His grace”. Loved “when we were dead in sin”, “quickened together with Him”, “raised up together with Him”, and made to sit together at God’s right hand in Him, to the praise of His grace. The God of all grace has called us to His eternal glory by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. “Where sin increased grace increased all the more” (Rom. 5 v20). Here is an invitation for us all, more grace than sin. “God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work” (2 Cor. 9 v8).


Some Attributes of Grace.

Grace and God’s ways in grace do not begin with our repentance. Nor with our redemption. They do not even begin with the atonement. They provided them. God’s ways in grace do not begin with our reconciliation. They accomplished it. God’s grace is bestowed freely on us, without any motive or any other reward than the delight God Himself has in bestowing it. That is grace. And God’s grace is not only grace for us, grace abounding for us, it is grace abounding in us. Think of the gifts of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit. They are all of grace. Remember the list in Galatians. What is love? Grace abounding! What is joy? Grace exulting! What is peace? Grace in repose! What is long-suffering? Grace enduring! What is gentleness? Grace in its strength! What is goodness? Grace in action! What is faith? Grace on the battle-field! What is meekness? Grace in its beauty! What is temperance? Grace in its self-control!


The Pleadings of Grace.

Listen to the pleadings of God’s grace. “Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11 v28). “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters . . . Give ear and come to Me, hear Me, that your soul may live” (Is. 55 v1-3). “This cup is the New Covenant in My blood” (Luke 22 v20). People make a mistake when they overlook that it is the cup, and not the blood. The cup, full of mercy, full of grace, full of salvation, full of pardon, purchased and bestowed by virtue of the blood it contains. He took my cup, “Father, if you are willing, take this cup far from Me” (Luke 22 v42). He gives me His cup, "This cup is the new covenant in My blood, which is poured out for you” (Luke 22 v20). “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord” (Ps. 116 v13). 

It is the new covenant cup full of blessings. Come, it is all of grace. Come with nothing, just as you are, and come for everything. Listen to new covenant grace. It does not bid you see, but only to look. It does not bid you love, it bids you believe. It does not require you to give anything, it asks you to receive everything. It does not ask you to conquer, but only to call. It does not bid you triumph, but to fly to Christ for refuge. It does not require you to understand, but only to trust. It does not say, “Who will ascend into heaven? that is, to bring Christ”, He did it without your prayer. It does not say, “Who will descend into the deep? that is, to bring Christ up from the dead”, He rose without your power and beyond your expectation.

Grace does not await your call, it is God Himself who calls, “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock” (Rev 3 v20). In how many ways has He been calling us to Himself from the beginning? First as Creator, when He created Adam, “Rule”, He said (Gen 1 v28). Alas, how soon Adam listened to Satan’s lie instead of believing in his generous Benefactor. Then God manifested Himself in a new way, a Deliverer, promising a descendant of the woman to bruise the serpent’s head. Need I remind you how we treated Him when He came? Our unbelief denies the relationship. ‘God does not love me. God has not saved me. God will not have me’. We do not believe in the Father, although we call Him Father. 

Do you believe He is our Father? What father is there of you who if his child ask for a fish will give him a scorpion? or if he shall ask for bread will give him a stone? (Matt. 7 v9). Again He came into our nature, to be our brother, the first-born among many brethren, the first-born from the dead, and He brought us up again, raised up together, in resurrection life and resurrection glory. 

Do we believe Him? We talk about His resurrection, we talk about His life, we talk about His triumph over death and hell. Why have we not all fled to His arms, rejoicing in His truth, and drinking from the river of the water of life which He has given us?