The Two Pillars of Paul's Gospel of Grace

Many believers see only one gospel in the New Testament. Such understanding has caused them to miss out on the most important truth God has ever presented in the Word. There are gospels in the New Testament where believers combine law and grace, if you have a mind to so interpret. 1. There is a Judaistic gospel which combines the Old Testament rituals with the laws that Jesus of Nazareth laid out. This is still widely practiced today. 2. There is a Pentecostal gospel that combines self-effort with self-works, mostly to get more faith and more power or more blessings. This also is widely practiced today.

Then there is the final gospel of grace given to Paul, which he calls “my gospel”. This is the most needed gospel today. However you may want to look at it, the New Testament has several groups of people that followed Christ, to some extent, who interpreted their religious worship according to their own desires.

While all Scriptures are for us as born-again believers, not all Scripture is TO us. The greatest growth of Christians today is for them to find out who they are in Christ and grow in that knowledge.

Look at the day of Pentecost. On that day, the Holy Spirit came to fulfill one great desire of the Father. John 14:20 plainly says that on that day the believers were to know that Jesus was in the Father and they were in Christ. Sadly, that day came and went and not many present received the message that Jesus said they would come to know. What were they to know? That they had received the Holy Spirit? No! They could have known that Christ was in them. It is here that the great religious confusion began. Those believers accepted the Holy Spirit and thought He was Christ, and to this day that error has continued.

Today many Christians are told they need the baptism of the Holy Spirit and the receiving of it would constitute the finality of God in them. The problem is that the Holy Spirit is not Christ and Christ is not the Holy Spirit. Receiving the Holy Spirit is receiving the one that will reveal to the believer that Christ is in them (John 14:26; 16:13). You see, the Christ that is in believers came by a birthing when they accepted Christ as Savior. Also, the Holy Spirit came at the same time. In fact, the whole supply of God’s Life was dumped on the believing sinner the moment they accepted Christ. There was no more that God could give the sinner because it was not the believing sinner that was the reason for their salvation, but it was the Cross of Christ that made it all possible. Sinners are never saved on any merit of their own; they are saved by grace, which is Christ’s finished work at the Cross. Even though the believers in the early Pentecostal church had Christ in them, they would not know it until years later. Mixing the Scriptures would continue until the final gospel was given to Paul. That time came when the gospels that were preached in the early church – gospels all mixed with Judaism – would be set aside; and a new gospel, the gospel of grace, would now go to the Gentiles. Of course, Jewish people could be saved and become children of God just like Gentiles, but they would no longer be Jews (Col. 3:10-11).

The difference with Paul’s gospel (Rom. 16:25) is its teaching of God birthing His own children. Now that the Father had temporarily set Israel aside, He could move into His original plan. You see, Israel was God’s earthly people, a created people. They were not children of God; they were children of Abraham, of Israel, created by God but not birthed by God. There is a great difference between the two. God’s created people, Israel, belong to the earth and everything about them concerns earthly blessings. But God’s birthed children have eternal, heavenly blessings. They are a different group of people and consequently have a different gospel.

This plan was not new. It goes back to before the earth was created. It is God’s original plan. It is plainly declared in Ephesians 1:4; there God chose the human race to be in Christ, not just a few, but all of God‘s created humans were chosen to be in Christ. The word chosen in this verse has almost obliterated the true meaning of the verse because many have thought the word was dealing with predestination. The fact is when God created humans they were left incomplete and could only be completed humans by Christ in them (Col. 2:10). This is why Jesus of Nazareth said you must be born again. Ephesians 1:4 goes on to say that believers who have Christ in them stand before God as holy, without blame, and in love. This was the way God originally planned for humanity to live; but before Christ’s Cross, there was no way God could change humanity with its free-will choices. So when Christ died, all humanity died (Rom. 6:3-4).

Through the birthing, (being “born again”), the Father would place Christ in the believer and the believer in Christ, just as you are in the air and the air is in you. God never intended humanity to live their own lives; He intended that the life we live would be the Life of Christ.

THIS IS THE FIRST PILLAR OF THE GOSPEL OF GRACE: WE ARE IN CHRIST AND CHRIST IS IN US. It is upon this new creation Life in the human that there would be a new and final gospel given.

If Christ was to be the Life of the believing human, then a whole different plan would be needed. THE SECOND PILLAR OF THE GOSPEL OF GRACE WAS THE CROSS AND JESUS’ DEATH.

The two pillars in God’s plan, devised before the foundation of the earth was laid, are that the human was to be completed in Christ (Eph. 1:4) and the Lamb was slain, in God’s mind, before the earth was created (1 Peter 1:19-20). These two pillars hold up the entirety of Paul’s final gospel of grace. They are the two truths that make the grace of God the essence of the final gospel.

What about this newborn babe in Christ? It is the same as a newborn human baby. The baby has nothing to do with anything concerning its birthing. Christ in the believer is totally an act of God. The human being has no knowledge of what God is doing in simple salvation. Christ birthed in a human is not some ecstatic and spectacular physical event. But it is the beginning of a new Life for the believer. It will be a continuous event nothing less than a permanent personal union with the living Christ. This is best described in Galatians 2:20. Sadly, today many Christians have missed this new creation Life. They have it, but do not know it.

I think of Paul who is the first one chosen to receive this final gospel of grace. At the time Jesus was giving him this grace gospel, there was a rampant argument going on between various religionists of the day over the subject of law and Judaism. He answered the argument plainly in his epistle to the Galatians. He boldly maintained that the law was abolished at the Cross (Col. 2:14; Eph. 2:15). This introduced a new understanding of the plan of God. The law concerning humans was nailed to the Cross and died, but the need of humans to be lawful would still remain. But it was already proven that humans, within themselves, can never keep the law. So where is the answer? It is Christ IN US. Christ is the only perfect keeper of the law; and as He becomes the Life of the believer, He stands before God as us. The prime objective of the Christian life is that believers learn this first pillar of Christ in them.

Because of this prime objective, it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the death of Christ on the Cross in the gospel Christ gave to Paul. It is the second and other supporting pillar to be found in the gospel of grace. When Christ began to reveal to Paul the essence of the final gospel, it became clear to Paul that everything for humanity hinges on the Cross (1 Cor. 2:2). The Cross is where God’s righteousness meets humanity’s sin. God’s plan of placing Christ in the human will not work unless there is something done radically to the human. What to do with the human’s sin, their background, their lack of need and desire for God is the big question. So the second pillar of Paul’s message becomes absolute. The in-Christ truth cannot and will not work without the Cross.

Strangely, the message of the Cross didn’t strike the other preachers of Paul’s day, including the apostles, as importantly as it did to Paul. The answer to this could be that those in the early church could still well remember the words Jesus of Nazareth gave specifically to Israel, which was still being offered the Messianic kingdom in the book of Acts.

What specifically does the Cross do, other than offering up Jesus as our sacrifice for sin? It’s like this. If God is going to put Christ in humans, He must do something to make them palatable and worthy to the new Life. His grace will not allow Him to kill the human and start all over again with a new human. So His plan calls for Jesus to have our sins and transgressions placed in His body (1 Peter 2:24). Humans did not die; they did not go to the Cross personally; they shed no blood, but God’s perfect plan was for them to die in Christ. But by being in Christ at the Cross, every sinner has his sin and past taken care of judicially as Christ pays the price of redemption for them and as them. In Christ, the believer is crucified with Christ; he is buried with Christ; he is resurrected with Christ; and he is seated with Christ in heavenly places.

All of these events have taken place in every person who has believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. But the shame of Christianity is that many believers don’t know or understand how they can be affected by these works that God has performed in every believing sinner. It is obvious that any believer who does not understand the gospel Jesus gave to Paul can never come to the full realization of who they are in Christ. To not know who you are in Christ is like trying to drive a car that has no engine in it. The engine of the born-again believer is Christ!

As a final admonition, I encourage you to study Paul’s epistles in the light of the fact that two pillars uphold Paul’s gospel, the gospel of grace. Look carefully into Paul’s words in Colossians chapter 3.

Verse 1: “If you then are risen with Christ, seek those things which are above where Christ sits on the right hand of God.” Here is your position in Christ. You are not an earthling; you are a whole new creation in Christ.

Verse 4: “When Christ who is our life shall appear, then shall you also appear with Him in glory.” It does not say, as many say, that if you are good, you’ll become Christ-like. Christ IN YOU NOW is your LIFE.

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