Grace Is Free of Debt

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Grace cannot incur a debt. An act is not gracious if, under any circumstances, it incurs a debt. Grace is the unrecompensed favor of God. That includes any past, present or future repayment. Salvation is a gift, and a benefit cannot rightfully be called a gift if it must be paid for before, at the time of, or after (Romans 6:23).

No service is to be given, on the part of the believer, with the thought of repayment. Any such attitude would only cause “distress” to the Giver. These attempts only “frustrate” His grace (Galatians 2:21). How faithfully we should serve Him, as an expression of love, but never as a repayment.

Grace is not exercised as a payment of a debt (Romans 4:4; 11:6). Grace could never be the payment of a debt (i.e., deserving). All worthiness on man’s part has been disposed of absolutely and permanently (Ephesians 2:8-9; Titus 3:5-7). Pure grace is neither treating a person as he deserves, nor treating a person better than he deserves, but treating a person without the slightest reference to what he deserves.

To the praise of the glory of His grace, wherein He has made us accepted in the Beloved (Ephesians 1:6).

Clyde L. Pilkington, Jr.

God’s Portfolio

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God is the Ultimate Investor for the ages. He founded the First-Trusters Universal Bank of God. He deposited us in Christ’s savings account. We are a secured non-negotiable asset by the blood of Jesus Christ. He will cash us out. We will reap the dividends with Christ through a guaranteed investment annuity. God will eventually amortize all of His other investments and have His full returns. We ALL are His portfolio. You can bank on it!

Tim Finch

Nothing to Add

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The work that put sinners right with God is complete. The old hymn tells the truth: “Jesus Paid It All!” We cannot add anything to this saving work that Jesus has accomplished. We cannot improve on it. We cannot supplement it. We cannot make it shine any brighter. We cannot do anything to make God love us more than He already does …

Nothing we can ever learn, nothing that we will ever do, nothing we might ever experience can contribute anything whatsoever to the work that sets us right with God. That work is the perfect doing and the perfect dying of Jesus Christ … Jesus completed the work. God accepted it and stamped it with His endorsement. The work that sets us right with God is finished. “It is finished!” …

The gospel is the “good news” that God has set sinners right with Himself through Jesus Christ.

Edward William Fudge
The Great Rescue: The Story of God’s Amazing Grace (2002), page 86

Need Is the Evidence of Supply

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Judgments are pointers to grace, signposts: and not to a grace which has to be sought somewhere or manufactured; but which was there long before the judgments, and the judgments are only the necessary way of getting the grace through to us, conditioning us to accept it.

Long before there was a condition of need, God had completed His work of perfect creation. The fall and its consequences … [were] provided for in “the Lamb without blemish and without spot; Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world” (I Peter 1:19-20).

Norman P. Grubb (1895-1993)
The Deep Things of God