Am I offended at God's goodness?  "Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own? Is thine eye evil, because I am good? (Matthew 20:15)"

This statement of the Lord Jesus Christ shows that He has sovereign right to give to whom He will as it pleases Him.  When He gives, it is undeserved and therefore gracious. Men do not like it when the Lord does what He wants with His own.  Men do not like it when He gives to the ill-deserving and undeserving.  Men do not like this because they think they are more deserving than those to whom He is gracious.  Ultimately, this is nothing more than men thinking they are more righteous than God.  If Christ does what He wants with His own; if He does what pleases Him with what is His; if He gives to those who do not deserve it, even gives in spite of their undeserving; then if men find fault with Him, they are claiming that their justice, their own judgment in the matter, is better than His, the Lord of glory!  This is arrogance of the highest order!

God’s glory is seen in His grace.  God’s grace is given through His condescension.  The glory of His grace is never brighter than when He saves the undeserving by humbling Himself to assume their nature and become their sin.  How could any rational creature fault this grace?!  Yet this is precisely what we do.  If we don’t have a problem with God being gracious -- or more gracious from our vantage point -- to one over another, then we imagine that our bad deeds or our good deeds limit or enhance our standing with God.

But in saving a man, God deals exclusively with him on the basis of pure, sheer, free, sovereign grace. This is so because man is nothing but evil.  (Ge 6:5; Rom3:10-19). If man is truly evil with no goodness in him whatsoever (and this is the truth of scripture), then all good that comes to man is owing entirely to God’s goodness.  No reason is ever found in man for God to be gracious.  All reason for God to be gracious is found in God only.  Nothing from the man, everything from God.  This simple truth is the basis of true worship.

When we are dull and find it impossible to believe that God could accept us entirely for Christ’s sake, the fact is, we exhibit the same attitude as the hypocrite.  We think that the lack of our evil would improve our standing before God.  Our self-perceived goodness becomes the basis for joy, and not Christ’s righteousness.  The fact is, we are so thoroughly evil that unless our unbelief is turned to faith, we will hold this view and die in our sins.  We are entirely dependent upon God, both for righteousness and the faith to believe Christ.  Can anything more solidly testify to the evil in our heart than our complaints at God’s free and sovereign grace, and that only in Christ are we accepted, righteous, sanctified and made sons!?

-- Pastor Rick Warta

God’s children are adopted by the electing, predestinating love of God the Father (Jeremiah 3:19; Ephesians 1:4-5; Hebrews 2:10).  We are adopted by covenant promises, commitments and fulfillment. (Romans 9:8; Galatians 3:13-29; Hebrews 2:10-18).  We are adopted by the death of Christ, who fulfilled all covenant obligations and received for us all covenant promises, setting us free from bondage to the law, to the kingdom of darkness, to death, to sin and to the world. (Ephesians 1:4-11; Galatians 1:4; 4:1-7; Hebrews 2:10-18). We have been given the Spirit of Christ to bear witness to our adoption which was accomplished by Christ when He bore our curse and yielded obedience in satisfaction for our obligations to the law, both penalty and obedience. Christ’s own Spirit gives us faith in Him and His redeeming work for us, causing us by these to call on God as our Father. (Romans 8:15-16; Galatians 3:26-29; 4:5-6; Ephesians 1:7). Because we are sons, we are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. (Romans 8:17; Galatians 3:26-29; 4:7; Ephesians 1:11).  As heirs, we have already received God’s Spirit to dwell in us, and we will receive all things with Christ in glory. All of God’s sons are sons both by adoption and by the new birth. (John 1:12-13; 2 Peter 1:3-4).  Adoption and the new birth constitute the greatest display of the love of the triune God to us (1 John 3:1-2). Although we are sons, it does not yet appear -- either to us, but especially to the world -- what we shall be, but when Christ appears, He will openly make known to all of the physical and spiritual universe that we truly are the sons of God! (1 John 3:1-2).

It was the love of God the Father that chose us in Christ and gave His Son to be the propitiation for our sins (1 John 4:9-10). It was the love of God the Son to take our case, our obligations and our nature (John 15:13; Galatians 2:20; Hebrews 2:13). It was Christ's love that caused Him in our nature to assume all of our responsibilities under the law, to redeem us from the curse of the law that we earned from God’s justice by our sin (Exodus 21:1-6).  And it was the love of the Spirit of God (Jeremiah 31:3) that made us alive with Christ, giving us faith in Him, whom He has lifted up and magnified in the preaching of the gospel as our near-kinsman Redeemer.  Christ is not ashamed to call us His brethren. He was crucified to buy us out of our sin-indebtedness and to free us from the captivity of sin's guilt, power and consequences. He, God the Son, the only begotten of the Father, truly set us free (John 8:36), bringing us to God as His sons, and doing all for us according to His eternal Suretyship engagements in the covenant of redemption (John 17; Hebrews 7:22-25; Revelation 13:8).  Truly, we now find it in our hearts to cry, “Blessed by the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath [so] blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ!” (Ephesians 1:3).

- Pastor Rick Warta