Jensens survey of the old testament adam 341
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(Eph. 2:12). But God’s grace is the shining
ray of hope. In the New Testament the word
grace appears about one hundred thirty
times, thus bathing the passages with the
bright hope of salvation through the gift44
of God’s love.
What are your answers to the following:
(a) Reconcile how God can forgive a
murderer. (b) What makes God so
longsu ering in His dealings with sinful
man? (c) If a sinner cannot be saved by
doing good works, where is there hope? (d)
How can God let redeemed sinners into
heaven? All these questions are answered by
the one word grace.
Sinners who refuse the gift of God’s grace
— being clothed in Christ’s righteousness —
will spend eternity in the pain and agony of
separation from Him. God’s grace does not
contradict or cancel His holiness. That is
why we may expect to read much about
judgment in the New Testament (e.g., the
book of Revelation, which is mostly
judgment). All the divine attributes are
absolutely perfect and eternally concurrent.
When God sends awful judgment for sin,
because He is a holy God, He does not
thereby nullify His grace.
4 . The gospel is a universal message. Jesus
and His disciples preached the gospel (“good
news”) rst to the Jews, because they were
of the favored nation whose roots were in
Abraham, to whom was given the promise of
eternal blessing (Gen. 12:1-3; 17:1-8). In this
connection it should be observed that the
story of the gospels is a transition between
the Old Testament law and the postPentecost church era. Israel rejected the
Messianic message, and with that rejection
came the extension of the call to the Gentile
world. Of that John F. Walvoord writes,
The ful llment of the promise of
God to David was postponed, and
into the foreground came the
undeclared purpose of God to call
out from every nation a new
company, composed of both Jew
and Gentile, independent of all His
promises to Israel, having its own
calling and destiny.45
So Israel was not the exclusive audience of
gospel preaching — the priority of the
divine program was only with regard to
time: “ rst for the Jew, then for the Gentile”
(Rom. 1:16, NIV). Before long in the
historical books (gospels-Acts) the gospel is
preached to Gentiles as well as to Jews. That
universal audience of the gospel is what
Jesus had in mind when He gave the
commission to His disciples, “You shall be
My witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all
Judea and Samaria, and even to the
remotest part of the earth” (Acts 1:8).
Throughout the New Testament the gospel
is seen as the power of God for salvation to
every one who believes (Rom. 1:16).
5. The work of Christ is wholly dependent on
the person of Christ. Jesus could do what He
did only because of who He was, the true
God-man. For example, He could perform
miracles because He was God. He was a
genuine substitute for mankind on the cross
because He was genuinely human. And He
was an acceptable sacri ce because He was
sinless and perfect. Because of His humanity,
He could identify with those being tempted
— He Himself su ered when He was
tempted (Heb. 2:18).
The problem with those who reject the
works of Jesus (such as His performing of
miracles) is that those persons do not
believe Him to be who He truly is.46
