What About Grace? #1 of 3: The Problem

4:19 "And my God will supply all your needs according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus."

We have seen that this verse is not a general promise to supply the needs of all, but rather a specific promise to supply the needs of the Philippians because they have been generous to Paul.

But this notion that God is generous to the generous raises a question: What about grace? If God treats us the way we treat others, if God only promises to supply the needs of the generous, then what has happened to grace? Grace is supposed to begin the process. God gives to us, He loves us, He reaches out to us, He changes us, all unconditionally. He does not wait for us to act or love or be good first. If He requires us to be faithful before He blesses us, then haven’t we slipped back into a works mentality?

There is a difficulty here. And it is not just here in Phil.4:19. Many times the Bible talks about how God’s blessing is conditional upon what we do:

"He who has My commandments and keeps them is the one who loves Me; and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father, and I will love him and will disclose Myself to him." (John 14:21)

"Behold then the kindness and severity of God; to those who fell, severity, but to you, God’s kindness, if you continue in His kindness; otherwise you also will be cut off." (Rom.11:22)

"He is a rewarder of those who seek Him." (Heb.11:6)

"And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.... For if you forgive men for their transgressions, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men, then your heavenly Father will not forgive your transgressions." ( Matt. 6:12, 14–15, Cf. Mark 11:25.)

(This may seem like a lot of verses to list to prove the point, but some are very hard to convince on this. MANY other verses could be added to this list.)

And yet it is equally clear that God’s grace is unconditional:

"For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, so that no one may boast." (Eph.2:8-9)

"He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit." (Titus 3:5)

Appropriately, we are compelled to ask how these two can fit together. However, before we tackle this question, let us stop and assess where we are. We must be cautious here. Our minds play tricks on us when faced with seemingly conflicting truths. These are dangerous intersections that have caused many fatalities. Virtually every heresy down through the ages of the church has arisen in the face of two Biblical truths that seem in conflict with each other.

God’s thinking is far above our thinking. We must not think we will ever comprehend Him completely. We will certainly not comprehend an issue like this lightly. God wants us to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind and strength. And the mind is not included by accident. We must be ready to use our minds with reverence and caution as we grapple with these difficult issues. It would be better to uphold both principles while not understanding how they fit together than to fit the two together wrongly.

Next time we will discuss the dangers here, and then in part three we will try to face the issue itself.

Dear Father, I want to put aside my own fleshly thinking and have the mind of Christ. I don’t want a mind that is conformed to the world or to merely human thoughts. I want a mind that is transformed according to Your holy word. Please give me a mind that is open to Your word. Please help me be diligent to investigate Your word soundly. Give me grace to understand and grace to accept what You teach me in Your word, instead of believing what I would prefer to be true.