THE COUNTERFEIT GOSPEL SERIES POST 5 - WHAT DOES GRACE ACTUALLY DO?

We have spent the last several posts asking what the Gospel actually says.

We began with the question:

What did Christ accomplish?

Then we asked:

Whom did Christ represent?

Then:

What happened to humanity in the Second Adam?

And last, we asked:

What does faith actually do?

The answer was critical:

Faith does not create Christ's accomplishment.

Faith does not complete it.

Faith does not make it effective.

Faith receives it.

But that raises another question.

If faith receives what Christ accomplished, what exactly are we receiving?

We often answer with one word:

Grace.

But what is grace?

And more importantly:

WHAT DOES GRACE ACTUALLY DO?

Because if we reduce grace to nothing more than, “God gives us something we don't deserve,” we haven't gone far enough.

That statement is true.

But Paul takes us much further.

WE WERE NOT JUST UNDESERVING

Think about the difference.

A Christmas gift is something you did not earn.

Someone buys you a present and gives it to you.

You didn't work for it.

You didn't earn it.

You didn't make a contribution toward it.

It is a gift.

But there is something fundamentally different about the Gospel.

We weren't merely people who had failed to earn something.

We were guilty.

We were sinners.

We were without strength.

We were enemies.

And God acted toward us anyway.

That is the scandal of grace.

Paul makes this unmistakably clear in Romans 5.

“For when we were still without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.”— Romans 5:6

Notice the description.

Without strength.

Ungodly.

Then Paul says:

“But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”— Romans 5:8

Not after we became worthy.

Not after we cleaned ourselves up.

Not after we proved our sincerity.

While we were still sinners.

And then Paul takes it even further:

“For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son…”— Romans 5:10

Enemies.

This is grace.

God didn't merely give something valuable to people who hadn't earned it.

God acted for guilty people who stood opposed to Him.

ROMANS 5 BEGINS WITH PEACE

This is why the opening of Romans 5 is so important for understanding grace.

Paul has just spent the first four chapters building his case for justification by faith.

Then he says:

“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.”— Romans 5:1

Stop there.

Peace with God.

Not peace because we finally performed well enough.

Not peace because we have accumulated enough religious merit.

Not peace because we have convinced God to be favorable toward us.

Peace through Jesus Christ.

And then Paul continues:

“Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand…”— Romans 5:2

Look at the movement.

Justified.

Peace with God.

Access into grace.

Standing in grace.

Paul isn't describing some distant theological concept.

He is describing the new reality established through Christ.

And notice where it comes from.

Through Him.

Grace is not centered in us.

Grace is not something we manufacture.

Grace is not a reward for our faith.

Faith receives.

But Christ is the reason grace is ours to receive.

GRACE IS MORE THAN A FEELING

This is where our understanding of grace needs to become bigger.

We sometimes talk about grace as though it were simply God's attitude toward us.

“God is gracious.”

“God is willing to forgive.”

“God isn't counting our sins against us.”

All of that points in the right direction.

But Paul doesn't stop there.

Paul says:

“Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.”— Romans 5:20

And then:

“So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”— Romans 5:21

Look at Paul's language.

Grace reigns.

That's active language.

Sin reigns.

Death reigns.

And Paul places grace against that reign.

Grace doesn't merely sit in heaven with a sympathetic attitude toward us.

Grace reigns.

Grace acts.

Grace accomplishes.

Grace changes the reality of the person who receives it.

And this is where we begin to understand why grace cannot be reduced to a religious word meaning, “God doesn't give you what you deserve.”

Biblical grace is much bigger.

GRACE MEETS US AT OUR WORST

Look again at Paul's progression in Romans 5.

Without strength.

Ungodly.

Sinners.

Enemies.

Paul deliberately removes every reason we could give for why God should have acted.

There is no résumé here.

No religious accomplishment.

No moral leverage.

No bargaining position.

Nothing we can place before God and say:

“Look what I've done.”

And that is precisely where grace appears.

God acted first.

Christ died.

Christ reconciled.

Christ accomplished.

Christ gave Himself.

This is why grace destroys the wage mentality we talked about in the previous post.

A wage says:

“I earned this.”

Grace says:

“God acted when I could not.”

A wage gives me something I can claim.

Grace leaves me looking at the Giver.

GRACE REIGNS

Now we can return to Romans 5:20–21.

Paul says:

“Where sin abounded, grace abounded much more.”

This is not a statement that sin is insignificant.

Paul has spent the entire letter demonstrating the devastating reality of sin.

Sin has consequences.

Sin reigns.

Death reigns.

Adam's transgression brought humanity under the reign of death.

But Paul says something astonishing:

Grace abounded much more.

And then he tells us why:

“So that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

There are two reigns in Paul's contrast.

Sin reigns.

Grace reigns.

The Gospel is not merely that God has decided to overlook sin.

The Gospel announces that another reign has entered the story.

The reign of grace.

And notice where that grace reigns:

through righteousness.

And where does it lead?

To eternal life.

And through whom?

Jesus Christ our Lord.

Once again, Paul will not let us move the center away from Christ.

Grace reigns through Jesus Christ.

GRACE IS POWERFUL BECAUSE CHRIST IS POWERFUL

This is where an insight from Jack Sequeira's treatment of Romans 5 becomes helpful.

Jack points out that grace should not be understood merely as God's favorable attitude toward us.

He emphasizes the active, empowering dimension of grace.

That distinction is worth exploring because Paul himself uses remarkably active language.

Grace reigns.

Grace abounds.

Grace justifies.

Grace leads to life.

Grace is not passive.

And this connects with Paul's broader use of the word dynamis, meaning power or might.

It is the Greek word from which our English word “dynamite” comes.

The point is that the grace of God is not powerless.

The God who acts in grace acts with power.

And that power is not generated by us.

It is God's.

It is not our faith that creates the power.

It is not our performance that supplies the power.

It is not our obedience that produces the power.

The power is in Christ.

And that brings us right back to where this entire series has been going.

The center remains Christ.

GRACE DOES NOT PUT THE POWER IN YOU

This is another place where the center can quietly shift.

We can hear:

“Grace gives you power.”

And immediately make it:

“Now I have to become powerful.”

But that misses the point.

The Gospel isn't:

Christ did His part; now I have to do mine.

We have already dealt with that counterfeit in the previous posts.

The Gospel is about what God has done in Christ.

The power of grace doesn't originate in the believer.

It originates in God.

Paul says:

“My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.”— 2 Corinthians 12:9

And Paul's response?

“Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Notice the center.

Not:

Look how strong I have become.

But:

The power of Christ.

That is grace.

GRACE DOES NOT EXCUSE SIN

There is another counterfeit we need to expose.

If grace is reduced to:

“God forgives you no matter what, so what you do doesn't matter,”

then grace has been distorted.

Paul will not allow that conclusion.

Romans 6 begins with the obvious question:

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?”

And Paul's answer is emphatic:

“Certainly not!”

Why?

Because grace does not exist to make peace with the reign of sin.

Grace comes against the reign of sin.

Romans 5 says:

Sin reigns.

Grace reigns.

Romans 6 then asks:

If grace reigns, can we continue living under the old reign?

Paul's answer is no.

And that means Romans 5 is already pointing us toward Romans 6.

Grace is not permission to remain under the dominion from which Christ has delivered us.

GRACE CHANGES THE QUESTION

This is where the counterfeit Gospel becomes especially subtle—and especially dangerous.

Because once we understand grace, the question changes.

Paul gives us an extraordinary example in Romans 4.

Circumcision was not a small matter to the Jews. It was a covenant sign. It marked identity. It distinguished one group from another.

Yet Paul goes out of his way to show that Abraham was declared righteous before he was circumcised.

“For we say that faith was accounted to Abraham for righteousness.”— Romans 4:9

Then Paul asks:

“How then was it accounted? While he was circumcised, or uncircumcised?”

The answer is unmistakable:

“Not while circumcised, but while uncircumcised.”— Romans 4:10

Abraham received circumcision afterward as “a sign” and “a seal” of the righteousness he already had by faith.

Do you see what Paul is doing?

He is separating the sign from the righteousness itself.

The sign didn't create the righteousness.

The religious marker didn't create the righteousness.

The human action didn't create the righteousness.

God did.

And Paul takes this principle far beyond circumcision.

“Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters.”— 1 Corinthians 7:19

And again:

“For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision avails anything, but a new creation.”— Galatians 6:15

This is dangerous.

This is radical.

Because Paul is dismantling the idea that something we do—or something we don't do—can become the basis of our righteousness before God.

Today, circumcision is not the issue for most Christians.

But we have our own religious markers.

What I do.

What I don't do.

What I eat.

What I don't eat.

What day I keep.

How much I pray.

How much I sacrifice.

How faithfully I attend church.

How much I give.

How perfectly I obey.

And we can quietly turn any of these things into our evidence that we have earned God's acceptance.

Paul says something far more radical:

IT IS CHRIST.

This does not mean that what we do is meaningless.

Paul absolutely cares about how Christians live.

But Paul refuses to make our behavior the basis of our righteousness.

That distinction changes everything.

One counterfeit Gospel says:

“You must work hard enough to earn God's acceptance.”

Another says:

“God has forgiven everything, so what you do doesn't really matter.”

Paul gives us something radically different.

Grace changes the entire question.

We don't obey to earn grace.

We don't obey to make God love us.

We don't obey to make Christ's work complete.

And we don't use grace as permission to remain under sin.

Instead:

GRACE REIGNS.

And because grace reigns, the Christian life is no longer fundamentally about trying to earn God's favor.

It becomes about living from what God has already accomplished in Christ.

That is the difference.

The question is no longer:

“What must I do to make God accept me?”

The question becomes:

“What does it look like to live in the reality of what God has already accomplished in Christ?”

That is a completely different center.

And that is why grace is so dangerous to every counterfeit Gospel.

Because grace takes away our ability to boast.

It takes away our religious résumé.

It takes away our bargaining position.

It takes away the idea that we can stand before God and say:

“Look at what I have done.”

And instead grace leaves us saying:

“Look at what Christ has done.”

Christ is the righteousness.

Christ is the accomplishment.

Christ is the gift.

Christ is the center.

And everything we do afterward must be understood from that center—not as a way of creating it.

GRACE IS NOT CHEAP

This is why the phrase “cheap grace” can sometimes obscure the real issue.

Grace isn't cheap.

Grace cost Christ everything.

Paul doesn't point us to cheap grace.

He points us to abundant grace.

Grace that meets the guilty.

Grace that reconciles enemies.

Grace that brings peace.

Grace in which we stand.

Grace that abounds.

Grace that reigns.

And grace that leads to life.

The question isn't whether grace is cheap.

The question is whether we understand what grace actually is.

SO WHAT DOES GRACE ACTUALLY DO?

Now we can answer the question.

Grace does not merely say:

“You are forgiven.”

Grace says:

God acted for you when you were helpless.

Grace says:

God acted for you while you were a sinner.

Grace says:

God acted for you while you were His enemy.

Grace says:

Christ accomplished what you could never accomplish.

Grace brings:

peace with God.

access to God.

a standing in grace.

And Paul says grace does something even greater:

GRACE REIGNS.

It stands against the reign of sin and death.

It leads through righteousness to eternal life.

And it does all of this:

“THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD.”

So grace does not move the center away from Christ.

Grace reveals why Christ must remain the center.

Faith receives.

Grace reigns.

And if grace really reigns, then we have to ask the next question:

WHAT HAPPENED TO THE LAW?

Because if grace reigns, does that mean the law has been abolished?

Does grace replace obedience?

Does the Gospel set us free from the law—or free us to live differently?

That is where we go next.