There are two ways to view an apple pie: as a whole pie or as individual pieces. The same is true of God’s Grace. Most of us begin to see it in pieces, not as a complete sphere in which the grace believer is to live. It used to destroy me to hear a Bible teacher teach some wonderful facet of Grace and then deny everything he had said by backing up into legalism. Some of my favorite teachers do this regularly. I’ve had to learn to view the cup as half full and rejoice that Grace is being taught, even though in a fragmented way. One of my favorites was the pastor of a world-renowned inner city church, the author of numerous books, and a radio Bible teacher with a ministry to millions. He is a dear man whose love for the Lord is unquestioned by all who know him. He would teach great truths from the Pauline Scriptures for three or four Sundays in a row and then he would have a message that was totally inconsistent with all that he had said. It seemed as though he would come right up to the doorway of pure, unmixed Grace and hesitate, not quite able to step through.

The prospect of God’s treating the believer with the same unadulterated Grace in the believer’s daily life as He did at the moment of salvation seems to many a frightening thing. What is being overlooked here is that, in our salvation, the Grace of God met our need by calling on the Justice of God! The very attribute of God that condemned us, His Justice, now saved us because it judged our sins and executed our Substitute on Calvary.

God was able to deal with us, at the moment of our salvation, wholly apart from the matter of our sins because all of our sins had been dealt with through the death of His Son on the cross. But that is just the reason He can deal with us now, in our daily lives, apart from any question of our present sins, for these too were justly and finally dealt with in the crosswork of God’s Son!

God and Paul teach a "much more" salvation; Religion teaches a "much less" one. For instance, take Romans 5:10,

"For if, when we were enemies, we were
reconciled to God by the death of His Son,
much more being reconciled, we shall be
saved by His life."

This is just one of the "much mores" of Paul, several occurring in this chapter and all worthy of study. It is an argument a priori. In other words, if God has already done the hardest thing He will ever do in all of Eternity--sacrifice His Son to reconcile His enemies--He can be expected to do the easier thing, bless those He has reconciled. The problem is that most people in Christendom teach otherwise. They seem to feel that it was easier for God to deal with the sins of the sinner than it is for Him to deal with the sins of the saint! What calls itself "Christianity" today has God forgiving the sinner's sins wholesale at the moment of salvation and the saint’s sins piecemeal from salvation on. This is a much less salvation, just the opposite of the much more salvation of God and Paul.

Everywhere in the Pauline Epistles this argument a priori holds forth. God has done the difficult, saving us, and this makes blessing us easy. I cannot join with those who see this as a license to sin. If being saved is an inducement to holiness, and it is, then being blessed is also an inducement to holiness. I have friends who hold to the great doctrine of Eternal Security, which all who understand the true nature of Salvation must of necessity believe, and yet they feel that the believer cannot be trusted under pure Grace and so they try to mix in a little Law to ensure his behavior. This is contrary to fact. The believer had to be slain to the Law before he could bear fruit to God (Romans 7:4; Galatians 2:19). Law brings death; Grace brings life. This is what God is teaching in His Word regardless of what men may be teaching in their pulpits.

The first facet of Grace that I came to understand in my odyssey was the security of the believer: that, while I could not stand before God in my righteousness I could not but stand before Him in His. The late Walter Wilson, M.D. showed this to me in Romans. Then I found the two natures in Romans Six and realized that, while I could not make a Christian out of my Old Nature which I had been trying unsuccessfully to do for years, God was not dealing with me on an old nature basis anyway, He was dealing with me on a New Nature basis, as one who had risen with Christ to newness (a new sphere) of life. Then I discovered that John does not teach short accounts in I John 1:9. Martin DeHaan, M.D. showed me the difference between Law and Grace. Then I found the difference between God’s program for Israel and the Body of Christ. When it became plain that Paul is not one of the twelve, that the "great commission" with its legalism belongs to Israel, and that the Body of Christ could not have begun on Pentecost I realized that Grace is a Sphere and stopped viewing it in a fragmented way.

The late J.C. O’Hair aptly said that there is a world of difference between grace in a Dispensation and the Dispensation of Grace. Law is a system of conditional blessing and yet God’s grace came into play repeatedly in the Dispensation of Law. If this were not so, all Israel would have died in a day from law breaking! But Israel lived in a Sphere of Law even though the believing Israeli was saved by grace. The Body of Christ lives in a sphere of Grace!

That is just the difference between our position, which is solely God’s business, and our experience which is partly ours. Some refer to position and experience as "standing" and "state." These are perfectly good terms to use, once we understand them.

We grace believers are a new creation, even though, for the present we are walking around in old creation circumstances. The secret of success is in presenting ourselves to God as those who are alive from the dead (Romans 6:13).