Aug 20
11
… and were by nature children of wrath, even as others. Eph.2:3
Are you a believer? Are you what is called a saved person, a child of
God? If so, how did that come about? Why did God save you? If your
answer is, “because I believed in Jesus,” then you are over-qualified to
be a candidate for the mercy of God and are therefore deceived and lost.
God saves sinners who are “even as others” and if you have distinguished
yourself from “others” by some kind of faith that you produced, you have
disqualified yourself from receiving the unmerited, free, sovereign,
distinguishing grace of God in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Our text and its context clearly show that when God, Who is rich in
mercy, displayed and dispensed that mercy upon men, that He did so when
they were just like everybody else. If God saved me because I believed
in Jesus and did not save “others” because they did not believe in
Jesus, then the scriptures are meaningless and there is no such thing as
pure grace.
What does it mean to be “even as other?” Read Ephesians 2. It means to
be “dead in trespasses and sins,” in the “lusts of our flesh,” and to be
“by nature the children of wrath.” You may say, “Well I was a sinner and
God saved me by grace, but I ‘improved’ upon that grace, whereas others
did not.” Then you are not “even as others”; God has surely passed you
by and shall until you become so.
This was the Pharisee’s problem. Luke 18:11. The Pharisee stood and
prayed thus with himself, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men
are, extortionist, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican.” Real
sinners, such as the publican referred to here, make no such claim, but
only cry out for mercy! If we have any objection to the title “even as
others,” it is only that surely there is no one quite as wretched as
ourselves.
What is your definition of grace? God saved me out of a world full of
drowning worms just like me. If that’s not grace, then I don’t know what
grace is. — Chris Cunningham