GRACE IS PAST TENSE

Saturday 30 November

For we who have believed do enter that rest, as He has said: “So I swore in My wrath, They shall not enter My rest, although the works were finished from the foundation of the world. Hebrews 4:3 (NKJV)

All who dwell on the earth will worship him, whose names have not been written in the Book of Life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. Revelation 13:8 (NKJV)

The grace for the believer is centred around one ultimate theme: the finished work of Christ which is the essence of salvation. The common denominator between these two verses is God’s mind and intention in the plan of redemption. Hebrews 4:3 isn’t saying that God’s works were finished literally because there would be a process of time, space and matter to creation. What the writer was communicating was in the mind of God, He had finished the work of salvation. This reflected His forethought and intent in Christ.

Revelation 13:8 confirms this when it says Jesus was slain before the foundation of the world. In other words, in the mind of God, He had already decided that Jesus would be sent to bring salvation to man again clearly showing that Christ was always His redemptive work for humanity. When we understand that ‘the works’ that were finished and ‘the Lamb’ that was slain from before the foundation of the world are both referring directly to God’s salvation plan , it starts to become clear.

Steven Kovey wrote a book titled ‘the 7 habits of highly successful people’. Number one was ‘start with the end in mind.’ This is exactly what God Almighty did. This is why it says ‘He is before all things’ speaking of Christ. Think about it. If God could be taken by surprise by anything that has happened since creation began until the end of time, then He is not God. The pre-eminence of Christ proves to us that this has never been the case.

Colossians 1:17-18 says of Jesus Christ ‘And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.’

Can you see it? Once Jesus was resurrected and became the first born from the dead, everything that was God’s mind and intention for us was fulfilled in Christ. Every work of salvation has now already happened. There is nothing left to make happen as far as God is concerned. In the New Testament we live in the grace of salvation where everything has been done.

God is not going to save you, deliver you, heal you, help you, etc. Why? Because He already did in Christ! So what is our responsibility to this truth? We ‘Lambano’ or take hold of and seize what belongs to us until we see the manifestation of it in our lives. The way you know the gospel of grace from another gospel is that everything has been done by grace through faith in Christ. Any message that tells you otherwise is not the good news of the ‘finished’ work of Jesus Christ.

APPLICATION

Read through the epistles and notice the tenses in regard to who He has made you, who you are, what you have and what you can do in Christ. These are all written in past tense. This is the language of grace.