The gospel teaching of “salvation by grace through faith,” is one of the central doctrines of Christianity. Growing up, I don’t personally remember hearing a massive amount about it, though, which may just mean I was not listening like I should have been. Consequently, for a long time I lacked an understanding of what it means to be “saved by grace.” However, as I have grown, this beautiful concept has come into clearer view and I know why God emphasizes it so much in the Scriptures.
In Romans 4:3, Paul uses Abraham as a case study for being saved by grace. Quoting from Genesis 15:6, he writes, “Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him as righteousness.” Two words stand out here to help us understand how it is that God saves by grace.
The first is “believed.” In Greek this word is the same as “to have faith.” Many people today incorrectly think that having faith/believing just means to acknowledge God with their mind. However, we know from James 2:14-26 (specifically vv. 22-23) that Abraham’s “saving faith/belief” was the combination of trust with obedient actions. Thus, when Abraham is said to have “believed” it means that he had a trust which resulted in obedient action.
The second word is “counted.” Other translations of this would be “to impute” or “to credit to one’s account.” Imagine going to the bank and discovering an extra $1000 in your balance that you had not gone to work for, but it had been deposited there by a dear friend. That money would have been “credited” or “imputed” to you, not out of obligation on their part, but out of love and kindness.
Put the ideas together. Abraham was not a perfectly righteous man on his own. We are fully aware of his sinful shortcomings. However, when God revealed Himself to the patriarch, Abraham was left with a choice. He could trust God’s word, guidance, and work, OR he could keep doing things his own way. Wisely, Abraham chose to trust God’s way of doing things and did them (that’s belief). When God saw that obedient trust, He credited that to Abraham as complete righteousness (or rightness) even though Abraham was a flawed human being.
You and I are not perfectly righteous. We lost that status the moment we first sinned. What’s more, no one in their right mind would claim that I would have paid my dues for those sins by letting someone dunk me in water! However, when I am baptized as an act of submission to God’s will and am looking to Jesus’s sacrifice as the substitution for my own death, the Bible calls that belief or faith. When God sees that kind of trust, He credits me with complete righteousness before Him, even though I am still a flawed human being. There is no amount of sweat equity I could invest in my life that would earn such a status. It is a gift…paid for by the substitutionary death of Jesus…received through my trusting obedience…and kept by a life lived in continued trusting obedience until He calls me home. That’s what it means to be “saved by grace.”
Cory Waddell