Informed by grace
Central to Christianity is the teaching that we are saved by grace, not by what we do. “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of any works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy” (Titus 3:4-5, NRSV). “By grace you have been saved through faith, and this is not…the result of works” (Eph. 2:8-9). We can never do enough good works to earn our salvation. The gospel tells us that humans cannot do it, but that Christ has done it for us.
We are saved by grace. A related point is that we know only by grace. By ourselves, we humans are not able to figure out the way of salvation. Jesus came not only to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins, but also to reveal the Father (Matthew 11:27). Jesus is “the way, and the truth, and the life” (John 14:6); if he had not come we would not know the way, the truth or the life. We might have a partial picture, based on the Old Testament, but even that is possible only because God took the initiative to reveal himself to Abraham and his descendants.
Without Jesus, we wouldn’t even know what salvation is. Different cultures have very different ideas about whether there is life after death, what that life might be like, and how that makes any difference to the way we live now. We can know what salvation is, and the way it comes to us, only by grace. If we could have figured this out on our own, then we did not need Jesus to reveal it to us. The gospel reveals not just a change in our destination— it also reveals to us something of what that future will be like, as we share in the life and love of the Father, Son and Spirit. There is no point in accepting a future life with Christ if we don’t also want to live in a way that agrees with that future.
The gospel reveals a way of thinking that is characteristic of the divine life. Some call it cruciform love—love shown to us by Jesus in his willingness to be crucified for our salvation. We might call it a sacrificial love, love that is willing to give up our own privileges in order to help others. This kind of love is defined not by human standards, but by Christ.
Humans have all sorts of ideas about what love is. Some are close to the truth; others are far from it. How can we know which ideas are good and right? Which is the way that will make future life enjoyable forever, for everyone? We can know only if we have a benchmark, a standard by which ideas can be measured. That benchmark is Jesus Christ; he is the perfect embodiment of love. He reveals to us what love, grace and truth are.
We each have our own experience with Jesus. Some think Jesus is like this, some think he is like that. Again, we can know only by grace, by what God graciously gives us – in this case in written form. The Bible reveals to us that Jesus existed, how he lived, what he taught, and the significance of his life and death for us. We value God’s grace given to us in Jesus, and his grace given to us in Scripture. Paul tells us that grace teaches us – it trains us “to renounce impiety and worldly passions and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly” (Titus 2:12).
In Grace Communion Seminary we see Scripture as the basis for our understanding of what salvation is and how it is given to us. Scripture is the primary reference point for Trinitarian theology, for ethics, and for ministry. In our desire to follow Christ, we keep these connected.
Theology is a lens through which we read Scripture, and Scripture is a lens through which we view theology; they are mutually informing. But they are not a closed loop in which we see only what we already believe – we recognize that our understanding is not perfect and we need to be open to more growth, as enabled by the Holy Spirit. It has happened in our past and we hope that, by God’s grace, it continues in our future.
“The church must always turn to the Holy Scripture as the immediate source and norm of all revealed knowledge of God and of his saving purpose in Jesus Christ.”
— T.F. Torrance, Divine Meaning: Studies in Patristic Interpretation
(Edinburgh, U.K.: T&T Clark, 1995), 5.
Michael Morrison, GCS News, Summer 2022