Without an understanding of our need, we cannot really appreciate God’s grace in salvation. Let me illustrate this by a story. In one of his writings about grace, Charles Haddon Spurgeon tells about a preacher from the north of England who went to call on a poor woman. He knew that she needed financial help. So with money from the church in his hand, he made his way through the poor section of the city where she lived, found her building, and climbed the four or five flights of stairs to her tiny attic apartment. He knocked at the door. There was no answer. He knocked again. Still no answer. Eventually he went away. The next week he saw the woman in church and told her that he knew of her need and had been by to help her, but she was not at home.

I have called this study “Justification by Grace Alone.” But to start at the beginning, let me ask right off whether that title seems exactly right to you. If I had called it “Salvation by Grace Alone,” the title of the last chapter, there would be no problem. We all know (or should know) that people are saved by God's grace only; it is what Ephesians 2 says clearly. Again, there would be no difficulty if I had called the chapter “Justification by Faith Alone.” We know that phrase. It was the rallying cry of the Protestant Reformation, Martin Luther having called it the doctrine by which the church stands or falls. But “Justification by Grace Alone”? Is that really right? Isn't it a confusion of terms?

The distant future. The Christian's distant future is that “in the coming ages [God] might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus.” We do not understand very much what this means because, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). It is true that the very next verse adds that “God has revealed it to us by his Spirit” (v. 10), but the context shows that at that point Paul is thinking of the mysteries of the gospel and not our future joy and blessings in heaven specifically. What we can know is that, as God has been gracious to us here, so he will be continuously and exceedingly gracious to us in heaven forever. There is no good thing that he will ever withhold from those who are his people.