Discounting His Present Work
Most Christians are clear on the truth that they are saved by grace. They make no effort of their own to add to the perfect atonement that Christ has made for their sins. But these same Christians when facing the present tense of salvation, the second part of the threefold Gospel, declare that here our own efforts are necessary. We must co-operate with God in fighting sin. We are justified by faith, but we are sanctified, gradually, by struggle. Their error is that they are mixing works and grace. God’s plan for present salvation from the power of sin is exactly the same as his plan for deliverance from the penalty of sin. It is all of grace.
The test of the truth of our view as to Christ’s Second Coming and the future tense of our salvation is as infallibly certain as the tests of the other aspects of salvation. For salvation is all of grace, and any view which makes salvation for the individual or for the universe a mixture of God’s work and man’s work, a mixture of God’s grace and man’s effort, is in error.